Untying the Mother Tongue

Untying the Mother Tongue explores what it might mean today to speak of someone's attachment to a particular, primary language. Traditional conceptions of mother tongue are often seen as an expression of the ideology of a European nation-state. Yet, current celebrations of multilingualism reflect the recent demands of global capitalism, raising other challenges. The contributions from international scholars on literature, philosophy, and culture, analyze and problematize the concept of `mother tongue , rethinking affective and cognitive attachments to language while deconstructing its metaphysical, capitalist, and colonialist presuppositions.

Introduction / Antonio Castore, Federico Dal Bo
But You Don t Get Used to Anything / Deborah Achtenberg
Philosophy s Mother Envy / Michael Eng
`My Mother Tongue Is a Foreign Language / Federico Dal Bo
The Mother Tongue at School / Jakob Norberg
Scarspeak / Juliane Prade-Weiss
The Shuffling of Feet on the Pavement / Teresa Prudente
`I know you can cant / Jeffrey Champlin
The Mother Tongue of Love and Loss / Caroline Sauter
The Staircase Wit / Antonio Castore
Wandering Words / Libera Pisano