Book Section
This chapter proposes the scar as a productive image to conceptualize the relation of speakers to the particular language otherwise called mother tongue, native or first language. Thinking of this relation in terms of a scar avoids the biopolitical implications of concepts derived from the context of family and birth that have, throughout the nineteenth and twentieth century, come to present language as basis of a nation state. The image of the scar also avoids the biographical normalization and linguistic hierarchization implied in the term first language, as both are equally important biopolitical strategies of forming individuals and communities. Thinking of the mother tongue in terms of a scar emphasizes the intensity of lasting formation and identification entailed by acquiring this particular language, and it highlights the violence inherent to these processes that tends to be covered up by the naturalizing and family-related imagery of native or mother tongue as well as by the favour implied in the term first language.
Keywords: multilingualism; trauma; scar; lament; origin of language; language acquisition; Freud; Joyce; Veteranyi
Rights: © by the author(s). Except for images or otherwise noted, this publication is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Part of Untying the Mother Tongue Containing:
Introduction / Antonio Castore, Federico Dal Bo
But You Don’t Get Used to Anything: Derrida on the Preciousness of the Singular / Deborah Achtenberg
Philosophy’s Mother Envy: Has There Yet Been a Deconstruction of the Mother Tongue? / Michael Eng
‘My Mother Tongue Is a Foreign Language’: On Edmond Jabès’s Writing in Exile / Federico Dal Bo
The Mother Tongue at School / Jakob Norberg
Scarspeak: Thinking the Mother Tongue as a Formative Mark
The Shuffling of Feet on the Pavement: Virginia Woolf on Un-Learning the Mother Tongue / Teresa Prudente
‘I know you can cant’: Slips of the Mother Tongue in Fred Moten’s B Jenkins / Jeffrey Champlin
The Mother Tongue of Love and Loss: Albert Cohen’s Le Livre de ma mère / Caroline Sauter
The Staircase Wit: or, The Poetic Idiomaticity of Herta Müller’s Prose / Antonio Castore
Wandering Words: Translation against the Myth of Origin in Fritz Mauthner’s Philosophy / Libera Pisano
Title
Scarspeak
Subtitle
Thinking the Mother Tongue as a Formative Mark
Author(s)
Juliane Prade-Weiss
Identifier
https://doi.org/10.37050/ci-26_5
Description
This chapter proposes the scar as a productive image to conceptualize the relation of speakers to the particular language otherwise called mother tongue, native or first language. Thinking of this relation in terms of a scar avoids the biopolitical implications of concepts derived from the context of family and birth that have, throughout the nineteenth and twentieth century, come to present language as basis of a nation state. The image of the scar also avoids the biographical normalization and linguistic hierarchization implied in the term first language, as both are equally important biopolitical strategies of forming individuals and communities. Thinking of the mother tongue in terms of a scar emphasizes the intensity of lasting formation and identification entailed by acquiring this particular language, and it highlights the violence inherent to these processes that tends to be covered up by the naturalizing and family-related imagery of native or mother tongue as well as by the favour implied in the term first language.
Is Part Of
Untying the Mother Tongue
Place
Berlin
Publisher
ICI Berlin Press
Date
4 September 2023
Subject
multilingualism
trauma
scar
lament
origin of language
language acquisition
Freud
Joyce
Veteranyi
Rights
© by the author(s)
Except for images or otherwise noted, this publication is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/
Language
en-GB
page start
105
page end
126
Source
Untying the Mother Tongue, ed. by Antonio Castore and Federico Dal Bo, Cultural Inquiry, 26 (Berlin: ICI Berlin Press, 2023), pp. 105–26

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Cite as: Juliane Prade-Weiss, ‘Scarspeak: Thinking the Mother Tongue as a Formative Mark’, in Untying the Mother Tongue, ed. by Antonio Castore and Federico Dal Bo, Cultural Inquiry, 26 (Berlin: ICI Berlin Press, 2023), pp. 105-26 <https://doi.org/10.37050/ci-26_5>