Keeping it in the Family: Responses to Monolingualism

Dissertation submitted in partial fulfilment of therequirement of the degree of Master of Arts©

This copy of the thesis has been supplied on conditionthat anyone who consults it is understood to recognisethat its copyright rests with the author and that no

quotation from the thesis, nor any information derivedthere from, may be published without the author’s prior

consent.

2012

Keepingit in the Family:Examining Responses to Monolingualism

Callam Green

Student Number: 3872599Degree Course: Culture and Modernity MAWord Count: 16,274

CONTENTS

Introduction: What is monolingualism?...................11: Connecting nothing with nothing.....................102: The end of the affair...............................213: Twisted tongues.....................................32Conclusion: Beyond the mother tongue?..................45Notes..................................................46Bibliography...........................................51

Keeping it in the Family 3872599

INTRODUCTION: WHAT IS MONOLINGUALISM?

Notions of opposing monolingual and multilingual

paradigms have occupied a space within theoretical

thought throughout history, from the earliest recorded

texts1 to a number of fields in contemporary academia.

Yasemin Yildiz’ 2012 book Beyond the Mother Tongue is

subtitled “The Postmonolingual Condition” and continues

theoretical examinations of monolingualism and

multilingualism by framing them historically by use of

this term ‘postmonolingual’. The introduction of this

term advances the idea that the monolingual paradigm is

historically contingent, therefore, the possibility

exists that it is somehow surpassable. Yildiz argues,

To capture this ongoing dominance of themonolingual as well as the incipient moves toovercome it, I introduce the term"postmonolingual." This "post" has, in thefirst place, a temporal dimension: it signifiesthe period since the emergence ofmonolingualism as dominant paradigm, whichfirst occurred in late eighteenth-centuryEurope.2

Yildiz notes that monolingualism emerges at a specific

period in European history simultaneous to specific

1


political developments; monolingualism, rather than

simply meaning ‘to speak a single language’ actually

functions as a political tool serving to limit linguistic

possibilities by marginalising multilingual practices and

safeguarding the dominant political ideology. Yildiz’

argument is that, “emerging only in the course of the

eighteenth century at the confluence of radical

political, philosophical, and cultural changes in Europe,

the notion of monolingualism rapidly displaced previously

unquestioned practices of living and writing in multiple

languages.”3 It is clear from this statement that

monolingualism is an intrinsic part of the apparatus of

capitalist politics which became the hegemonic political

power in Europe in the late eighteenth century. This

argument is continued with the statement that

Monolingualism is much more than a simplequantitative term designating the presence ofjust one language. Instead, it constitutes akey structuring principle that organizes theentire range of modern social life, from theconstruction of individuals and their propersubjectivities to the formation of disciplinesand institutions, as well as of imaginedcollectives such as cultures and nations.4

2


Yildiz views monolingualism as a key part of the

ideological state apparatuses that allow capitalist

politics to sustain their power over the subjectified

monolingual population precisely because they are rendered

monolingual, whichs leads to a further

monolingualisation.

The relationship between monolingualism and

hegemonic capitalism is also argued by Benedict Anderson,

who further highlights the connection between the rise of

the nation state in the late eighteenth and early

nineteenth centuries, and the upsurge in state sanctioned

monolingualism. He states, “[the] European conception of

nation-ness as linked to a private-property language had

wide influence in nineteenth-century Europe”,5 and this

was achieved in a number of ways but foremost through the

commodification of literature and rise of industrial

printing, leading to nation-specific consensuses on the

rules of language and grammar. This historical critique

of monolingualism differs from previous studies because

it places monolingualism and multilingualism in a

specific historical framework. In an echo of Paul de

3


Man’s remark on Walter Benjamin’s The Task of the Translator,

“we are to understand natural changes from the

perspective of history, rather than understanding history

from the perspective of natural changes”,6 Yildiz’ account

attempts to understand the hegemonic linguistic paradigm

(in this case monolingualism) from a perspective of

history, rather than explain history through the

privileging of a monolingual paradigm.

Concurrent to Yildiz’ critique of monolingualism

Beyond the Mother Tongue is also an attempt to find a method

by which a multilingual paradigm can be achieved. This is

explored by going against the grain of monolingual

processes and utilising its own apparatus against it to

create a realm of postmonolingualism. For Yildiz,

multilingualism is a recognition that, “the distance

between humans and their things is produced socially and

cannot be closed by language, but it can be expressed in

it,”7 leading to the conclusion that multilingual writing

can be achieved and expressed within a monolingual

paradigm. This possibility is explored in two ways in

Beyond the Mother Tongue; firstly, Yildiz reads Kafka and

4


Adorno as historical examples of multilingual writers who

operate in differing ways, before examining the

contemporary multilingual literature of Yoko Tawada,

Emine Sevgi Özdamar and Feridun Zaimoğlu.

Yildiz argues that Franz Kafka’s status as a Czech

Jew, writing in German rather than Czech or Hebrew,

appears to place him within the monolingual paradigm;

however, due to his position within a minority community—

as a Jew in German-speaking Prague—and his very specific

choice not to write in Hebrew or Yiddish, his work is

multilingual. Kafka’s nationality and race place him in a

position whereby his mother tongue is not actually his to

own, he works through the mother tongue,

reterritorialising it away from High-German, infusing it

with his own identity as a Czech Jew. Kafka’s speech on

‘Jargon’, highlights the defamiliarising power that

‘foreign’ words can have within the monolingual paradigm.

Adorno reaches this conclusion also, focusing on fremdwort

(foreign-derived words), much maligned by speakers of

High-German in his time of writing. Adorno professed that

these fremdwörter imbue language with a certain exoticism,

5


a shock, which holds within it a kernel of desire,

comparing it to a desire for exotic women. Yildiz

suggests that what allows Kafka to write multilingually

and yet still in his mother tongue, is a transfer from

looking for a ‘foreign’ mother (tongue) to the

realisation that one’s own mother tongue acts as an

insurmountable barrier to communication.

Further to this, Yildiz posits that the individual’s

relationship with the mother tongue reflects Freud’s

concept of a ‘family romance’, that is, the fantasy of a

child that their mother and father are not actually its

birth parents but that the child is adopted and its real

parents are of a far higher social status. Yildiz refers

again to Kafka, arguing that, the “mother tongue stands

for authentic, bodily origin from which language is

supposed to emanate and thus guarantee a deep natural

link”8 The German language is Kafka’s birth mother, whilst

Yiddish is (briefly) his “fantasized Yiddish ‘mother’.”9

Multilingualism is achieved through the fetishisation of

another language; replacing the mother tongue with a

fantasy ‘mother’ allows a new pathway by which to

6


navigate through the mother tongue. The mother tongue is

not bypassed in this way but the subject is irrevocably

alienated from it, fundamentally altering its

articulation.

The crucial anchoring point of the monolingual

paradigm, that which perpetuates its hegemony, is the

mother tongue. Yildiz underlines how important the

concept of the mother tongue is to monolingualism,

specifically its maternal connotations, arguing, “the

"mother tongue" is the affective knot at the center of

the monolingual paradigm and therefore a knot worth

unraveling. This knot relies heavily on the invocation of

the maternal, without however necessarily referencing

actual mothers.”10 With this Yildiz advances to reading

the mother tongue as a historical construction, she

states

Around 1800, the bourgeois mother began to beincorporated into the role of teaching herchildren to read. [. . .] The child wassupposed to see and hear the mother’s mouthproduce sound at the same time that she pointedto the corresponding letter. Thereby, aconnection would emerge between the mother’smouth, the sound, and the letter. The mother,however, was first instructed in textbooks bymale experts in how to produce the sounds

7


properly. Her body was meant to function as amedium for those male experts in their attemptto control the proper (re)production oflanguage.11

The mother tongue acts as an instrument through which the

subject is interpellated by the nation state of its

birth; the mother is a vessel by which the child learns

to speak, leading to an equation between the maternal

relationship and language. In this model the mother

tongue becomes a place of safety and nurture and if this

apparatus becomes the accepted norm, as it has been since

the early nineteenth century, then it results in, “a

disavowal of the possibility of writing in nonnative

languages or in multiple languages at the same time.”12

The term ‘mother tongue’ holds within it far more

than the notion of a first language, rather

The "mother tongue" functions as a shorthand [.. .] It stands for a unique, irreplaceable,unchangeable biological origin that situatesthe individual automatically in a kinshipnetwork and by extension in the nation [. . .]the "mother" – a markedly gendered kinshipconcept-stresses a static mode of belonging tothe national collective.13

The mother always exists within the law of the father;

the closeness of the motherly body is exploited as a

8


political tool to exert a monolingualising force upon

newly interpellated subjects. The mother tongue is

irrevocably intertwined with the articulation of the

capitalist nation-state.

Yildiz states that “it is the affectively charged

dimension of the "mother tongue" that accounts for the

persistence of the monolingual paradigm and its

homologous logic”,14 and as a result of this predominance

of the mother tongue the monolingual paradigm is

perpetuated, leading to further monolingualisation of

subjects within it. The mother tongue is the tool par

excellence for political subjectification. Yildiz states

that, “this notion of the mother tongue has been in turn

a vital element in the imagination and production of the

homogenous nation-state”,15 and this is crucial in

accounting for the predominant monolingual paradigm

because the mother tongue is inescapable, it is bestowed

onto the speaker by circumstance of their birth and is

irreplaceable, even if the subject works in another

language.

9


Hannah Arendt, whose mother tongue is German, notes

the inescapable nature of one’s birth language in her

answer to the question as to why she writes in English

(in an interview conducted by Günter Gaus). She replied,

“I write in English but I have never lost a feeling of

distance from it. There is a tremendous difference

between your mother tongue and another language… there is

no substitution for the mother tongue.”16 The mother

tongue acts as an analogue to the biological mother; even

if there is a disavowal of the mother (tongue) its

intrinsic biological relationship with the subject can

never be erased. Yildiz posits that because it is

impossible to escape the grasp of the mother tongue then

it must be confronted head on. Her argument opens up a

specific method of critiquing the mother tongue, arguing

that, “we thus need to work through the mother tongue and

not simply sidestep its force”,17 opening the way for a

psychoanalytic response to the mother tongue,

specifically the Freudian notion of working through.

As illuminated in her reading of the artwork

Wordsearch Yildiz is clear to point out that simply

10


working in multiple or differing languages does not

automatically go beyond the monolingual paradigm and open

up new affective pathways in multilingualism, rather,

working in a language apart from the mother tongue can

serve to reaffirm the power of the monolingual paradigm.

Likewise, working in one’s mother tongue does not

necessarily mean that they are stuck within the

monolingual paradigm but, as Yildiz notes of Kafka,18 the

mother tongue can be used in such a way that it is

reformulated so its effect is that of estrangement rather

than to provide familial shelter, as is the case within

the monolingual paradigm. Yildiz states that, “viewed

from this vantage point, writing "beyond the mother

tongue" does not simply mean writing in a nonnative

language or in multiple languages. Rather, it means

writing beyond the concept of the mother tongue.”19 Yildiz

reads the mother tongue through a psychoanalytic

framework in order to formulate a way by which one can

transcend its interpellative force. Yildiz views the

mother tongue as a linguistic family romance so as to

consolidate the three strands of contention she has with

11


it, namely: its reinforcement of the patriarchal notion

of motherhood, its status as always-already original but

always-already received, and its refusal to allow any

multilingual alternatives to it. She argues that, “within

the monolingual paradigm, “mother tongue” is more than a

metaphor. Instead, it constitutes a condensed narrative

about origin and identity,”20 and it is this narrative

that must be rewritten in order to escape the monolingual

paradigm. She intends to do this by examining the concept

of mother tongue as family romance, arguing that, “the

model [of a family romance] offers a blueprint for

tracing the emergence of possible alternative family

romances that produce different conceptions of the

relationship between languages and subjects and origins

of their affective ties.”21 If alternative family romances

appear—with regard to the mother tongue—then its

interpellative mechanism will be significantly altered,

paving the way for an alternative to the monolingual

paradigm.

If we are to entertain the notion of a

postmonolingual paradigm, one without a mother tongue,

12


then what is required is a total reformulation of

ideological apparatus, something that Yildiz argues

already occurs when writing within the monolingual

paradigm on certain occasions. It is texts which confront

this possibility of already occurring multilingualism

that I wish to focus on within this essay. Again, Yildiz

attributes this growing visibility of multilingual

practices to new political developments, stating that,

Globalization and the ensuing renegotiation ofthe place of the nation-state have begun toloosen the monolingualizing pressure and havethereby enabled the contestatory visibility ofthese practices in the first place, albeitstill in circumscribed fashion.Multilingualism, then, has not been absent inthe last couple of centuries, but it has beenand continues to be refracted through themonolingual paradigm.22

The constant comparison between monolingualisation and

the emergence of certain political practices exposes the

need for a total reformulation of the political sphere

otherwise the postmonolingual condition will always

remain out of reach.

Writing about multilingualism and its place within

the monolingual paradigm has dominated theoretical

13


discussion for the best part of a century and yet there

is no clear consensus on how the monolingual paradigm

operates, or how to go beyond it. My foremost aim in this

essay is to examine responses to the monolingual paradigm

and evaluate, if possible, how these responses propose a

multilingual paradigm is to be achieved. I shall begin my

investigation from the historical extremities of

discourse on monolingualism by comparing Walter

Benjamin’s 1923 essay Die Aufgabe des Übersetzers (‘The Task of

the Translator’) and Yasemin Yildiz’ Beyond the Mother

Tongue. I take Benjamin’s essay as the origin of

discussions of monolingualism and multilingualism

because, despite not confronting the issue directly, it

has been the point of departure for several other

writers. Jacques Derrida’s Monolingualism of the Other and

Deleuze and Guattari’s Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature develop

notions of monolingualism and multilingualism from

Benjamin’s essay, but take widely differing views on how

the monolingual paradigm articulates itself, and how it

may be possible to shift from monolingualism to a

multilingual paradigm. I shall compare the three

14


divergent notions of monolingualism and multilingualism

found in the works of Benjamin, Derrida and Deleuze and

Guattari, meanwhile also noting their influence on

Yildiz’ argument in Beyond the Mother Tongue.

15


1: CONNECTING NOTHING WITH NOTHING

Yildiz identifies the field of translation as

approximate to multilingualism, stating that “the history

of translation offers an important correlate to the study

of multilingualism since the field of translation, too,

deals with the conjunction of multiple languages.”23

Nevertheless, despite noting the similarity between

translation and multilingualism, Yildiz calls attention

to a difference between these two modes in her argument,

asserting that “[translation] emphasizes the process of

moving from one language to another, whereas

multilingualism focuses on the forms of simultaneous

presence.”24 This move leads Yildiz to neglect the

possibility that the disparity between translation and

multilingualism is a difference in articulation rather

than process, and if we follow Walter Benjamin’s

16


assertion that, “just as the manifestations of life are

intimately connected with the phenomenon of life without

being of importance to it, a translation issues from the

original – not so much from its life but its afterlife”,25

theories of translation can provide a model by which to

view a multilingual paradigm. It is my intention in this

chapter to elucidate, through a reading of Benjamin’s The

Task of the Translator, how translation can serve to both

illuminate the apparatus of the monolingual paradigm and

provide a model for multilingual practices.

The intrinsic (auratic) relationship between

translation and original text mirrors multilingualism, in

that, the translation can only exist after the original

text has come into existence much like the way the mother

tongue always precedes multilingualism. The predetermined

nature of translation being part of the afterlife of an

original text reflects the inescapable preordainment of

the mother tongue; it is impossible for multilingualism

to exist if the monolingual does not always anticipate

it. Yildiz states that “the notion of the unique “mother”

insists on one predetermined and socially sanctioned

17


language as the single locus of affect and attachment”,26

mirroring the idea that an original text is precisely

that, original. If the mother tongue and an “original”

text are analogous, due to their creation ex nihilo, then

multilingualism and translation both rely intrinsically

on the modes by which they arrange themselves against.

To continue this approximation between mother tongue

and original text one must first consider the position of

the receptive subject concerning the anticipatory nature

of these modes. Benjamin asserts that the possibility of

reception bears no importance to the execution of a work

of art because the nature of reception is reactionary,

thus any assumed receiver can only be perceived as a

vessel that will eventually consume the work:

In the appreciation of a work of art or an artform, consideration of the receiver neverproves fruitful. Not only is any reference to acertain public or its ideal representativesmisleading, but even the concept of an ‘ideal’receiver is detrimental in the theoreticalconsideration of art, since all it posits isthe existence and nature of man as such. Art,in the same way, posits man’s physical andspiritual existence, but in none of its worksis it concerned with his response. No poem isintended for the reader, no picture for thebeholder, no symphony for the listener.27

18


This model exists, as far as Yildiz is concerned, within

the monolingual paradigm. The mother tongue always

precedes its speaker; it is forced upon the subject and

they receive it without choice. In the same way that the

work of art does not assume anything from its receiver

other than the fact that they exist, the mother tongue

unwaveringly forces itself upon the hapless child before

it is born and their mother tongue is given to them out

of historical circumstance. The ramifications for

translation and multilingual writing are that their

perceived consumer and its creator are already tainted with a

stain of monolingualism. If the original text is not

intended for any reader in particular then this has

consequences for the reactionary mode of translation.

Benjamin argues, “if it [a translation] were intended for

the reader, the same would have to apply to the original.

If the original does not exist for the reader’s sake, how

could the translation be understood on the basis of this

premise?”28 If a translation does not exist for the sake

of the reader and neither does the original text, then

multilingualism cannot escape the fact that there must be

19


a mother tongue, which exists prior to and despite of its

speaker. Consequently, the two disciplines, translation

and multilingual writing, must follow identical processes

to one another.

Benjamin argues, “if translation is a mode,

translatability must be an essential feature of certain

works,”29 and so, if multilingualism is a mode, then

surely multilingual tendencies are features of

monolingualism. Here we come to Benjamin’s claim that

“languages are not strangers to one another, but are, a

priori and apart from all historical relationships,

interrelated in what they want to express”,30 which

seemingly supports Yildiz’ reading of Emine Sevgi

Özdamar, where she argues that, “writing in literal

translation, then, Özdamar presents a form of

multilingualism that is both visible and invisible in the

text.”31 However, this is not the case; Özdamar’s

unmediated translations of Turkish phrases into German

intend to reveal the alienation inherent within

translation and not a natural kinship between languages.

Yildiz writes,

20


“In contrast to literal translation as a modeemployed by a translator, passages directlywritten as “literal translation” do not rely onthe existence of an original text, but ratheron a reader’s recognition of linguistic formsas stemming from elsewhere. Such recognition,in turn, is only possible, if the phrases inquestion are familiar—a situation that onlyapplies to linguistic forms fully establishedin a language.”32

This is a mode of translation unconsidered by Benjamin, a

literal translation which does not require an original

text per se, but relies on the “figures of speech,

idiomatic expressions, and well known proverbs [. . .]

which constitute the scaffold of every language.”33

These common phrases are inherently woven into the

fabric of language; they do not act as a text but rather

provide a shortcut to an idea in much the same way that

the signifying word is supposed to point towards the

signified object. The very phrase “mother tongue” works

in this manner as a significatory shortcut, meaning, the

language that one is born into. “Mother tongue” has this

designated meaning but also holds within it myriad hidden

meanings. The notion that one’s birth language is

maternal suggests the shelter and nourishment that one

21


has in speaking their mother tongue, one is always at

home there; however, the reference to motherhood also

reiterates the inescapable nature of the mother tongue

and the interpellative power that it holds. Yildiz uses

the example, “‘tongue has no bones’ (Zunge hat keine

Knochen), [which] for instance, translates dilin kemiği yok,

an expression that means speaking without thinking

first,”34 to highlight that Özdamar’s literal rendering of

these common phrases serves to defamiliarise them. It is

in this defamiliarisation, a form of deterritorialisation

(on which I shall elucidate in the following chapter),

that the meaning of these common phrases becomes knowable

again.

Because expressions such as “mother tongue” have

become so ubiquitous, the proliferating meanings that are

held within them remain hidden and it is only when the

mask of familiarity is removed that they become knowable

again. A literal translation articulates itself as a

reverse-translation; what stands in for the original text

—the idiomatic expression—is, in fact, already a

translation, but a translation internal to a language. By

22


following Özdamar’s process of literal translations

across languages, it is possible to translate within a

language, and in doing so expose the multilingual

possibilities inherent within that language. Returning

again to Benjamin, he argues,

The relationship of the translator and theoriginal is the relationship between languageand language, wherein the problem of meaning orthe desire to say something, the need to make astatement, is entirely absent. Translation is arelation from language to language, not arelation to an extralinguistic meaning thatcould be copied, paraphrased, or imitated.35

It is my assertion that the relationship of original text

and its author is often the relationship between

“language and language” because the familiarity that is

inherent in one’s mother tongue obscures the intrinsic

metaphorical nature of language. Translation, as

encapsulated by Özdamar’s work, can have recourse to an

extralinguistic meaning precisely because this meaning is

more often than not “copied, paraphrased, or imitated” in

the metaphorical means by which the original text

attempts to communicate.

23


Benjamin’s concept of a ‘pure language’ becomes

realisable if one recognises that translation works two

ways, that is, the rendering of an original text into

another language and the use of translatory techniques to

reveal hidden meanings internal to a single language. The

deficiencies of the monolingual paradigm are revealed

through comparison to other languages and this is the

kinship that Benjamin alludes to; however, this kinship

is not defined through similarity, as Carol Jacobs notes,

“kinship may only be defined negatively. The kinship

between languages generates their difference: on what basis

could translation claim to duplicate the original if no

language, however original, in turn guarantees the

objective reality of that which it names?”36 That is, the

apparent kinship of language serves only to reaffirm the

radical differences between them. Because of this

negative kinship between languages a multilingual space

opens up in the mother tongue, it becomes defamiliarised

by recognising the radical difference of other languages

within one’s own.

24


David Ferris notes that, “every single language is

incomplete in some way, but in their multiplicity,

languages relate to one another in such a way as to

supplement one another,”37 that is to say, all languages

are alike in what they are attempting to achieve, if not

in how they try to realise this intention. The inherent

communicatory intention of language is always present in

other languages, thus, a ‘pure language’—where

signification is unfailingly achieved—is imaginable;

however, this ‘pure language’ could never exist, as

Benjamin argues, without recourse to translation, through

the perpetual use of translatory techniques to

defamiliarise language.

The result of the total defamiliarisation of

language would be a ‘pure language’ self-consciously

aware that signification is impossible, aware that its

very modus operandi is a lie. Carol Jacobs reads total

defamiliarisation as the essential lesson of The Task of the

Translator,

If, one by one, once familiar words becomeincomprehensibly foreign, if they relentlesslyturn on their past (althergebrachte, herkommliche)meanings, if the essay systematically roots

25


itself in that tradition only to shift the veryground it stands on, this, after all, is theway in which translation functions. ForBenjamin, translation does not transform anoriginal foreign language into one we may callour own, but rather, renders radically foreignthat language we believe to be ours.38

The radical foreignisation of the mother tongue is a way

out of the monolingual paradigm. In recognising that

one’s birth language is defamiliarised through

translation, then the safe, homely aspects of the mother

tongue irrevocably dissolve. Paul de Man elucidates this

predicament, arguing, “translation, to the extent that it

disarticulates the original, to the extent that it is

pure language and is only concerned with language, gets

drawn into what he [Benjamin] calls the bottomless depth,

something essentially destructive, which is in language

itself.”39 This bottomless depth is the realisation that,

if even our mother tongue becomes defamiliarised, the

possibility of flawless commnication through language is

impossible. As Jacobs states, “what is meant by “Brot”

and “pain” is “the same,” but not to say that they mean

the same thing. The same that is meant is “pure

language.”40 The two words “Brot” and “pain”, utilised by

26


Benjamin to illustrate how two words can hold different

connotations despite signifying the same thing, actually

signify the radical impossibility of signification.

It would be false to assume that Benjamin’s

metaphor, “fragments of a vessel which are to be glued

together must match one another in the smallest details,

although they need not be like one another”,41 points

toward the possibility that disparate fragments of

languages bound together can achieve ‘pure language’. The

rebuilding of a fragmented vessel only serves to recreate

the language of the original as it exists prior to

translation, but as I have already argued, this

‘original’ already goes through a process of intralingual

translation prior to its own existence as a whole. The

vessel is always-already fragmented; it never existed as

a whole in the first place. Patrick Primavesi argues

that, “translation reaches a state of pure language (reine

Sprache) only through the demolition of the individual

unity of form and content of the original”,42 that is,

pure language cannot be an all-encompassing whole,

rather, that is the hegemonic dream of the monolingual

27


paradigm; however, this dream is unattainable because

there will always be irreconcilable fragments of

multilingualism. Nor can fragments be placed together to

form a kind of ‘fragmentary totality’ acting as a

metaphor for hegemonic multilingualism, this would be a false

multilingualism, it would articulate itself as the

monolingual paradigm articulates itself, through a

totalitarian notion that pure wholeness and unity is the

only road to perfection. De Man’s reading of the metaphor

supports the notion that wholeness is both impossible and

undesirable

Just as fragments are part of a vessel” is asynecdoche; “just as fragments,” says Benjamin,“are the broken parts of a vessel”; as such heis not saying that the fragments constitute atotality, he says the fragments are fragments,and that they remain essentially fragmentary.They follow each other up metonymically, andthey will never constitute a totality.43

Language is already fragmentary and can never constitute a

totality. The very essence of fragmentation is that its

existence as part of a complete whole is inconceivable,

for if language is always-already fragmentary, it can

never have formed part of a totality.

28


The only possibility that fragments—minor languages,

translations, self-aware internal translations—can

achieve anything remotely similar to Benjamin’s pure

language is by the reformulation of the essence of what

constitutes a fragment. For fragments to establish a pure

language the entire notion of a totality must be done

away with forever. As long as the desire exists to piece

fragments back together these fragments are incapable of

articulating themselves fully for they are always living

with the terror that they will be reterritorialised into

a hegemonic totality. The monolingual paradigm tries to

give the impression that it is a totality and it adopts

totalising techniques but because the assimilation of all

fragments into a whole is impossible, total

monolingualisation is as hopeless as Benjamin’s pure

language. Fragments must be alienated from one another—

they must revel in their radical difference—and through

this alienation the true apparatus of language becomes

clear; signification is impossible and is only thinkable

with recourse to the possibility of an undamaged,

comprehensive whole. De Man argues

29


According to this image [the fragments of avessel], there is an original, pure language,of which any particular work is only afragment. That would be fine, provided wecould, through that fragment, find access againto the original work. The image is not that ofa vessel, of which the literary work would be apiece, and then translation is a piece of that.It is admitted that the translation is afragment; but if the translation relates to theoriginal as a fragment relates, if thetranslation would reconstitute as such theoriginal, then—although it does not resembleit, but matches it perfectly (as in the wordsymbolon, which states the matching of twopieces or two fragments)—then we can think ofany particular work as being a fragment of thepure language, and then indeed Benjamin’sstatement would be a religious statement aboutthe fundamental unity of language.44

If Benjamin’s vessel metaphor is a “religious statement

about the fundamental unity of language” it is a

messianism that radically opposes the unity desired by

the monolingual paradigm. Benjamin’s unity is a unity of

fragmentation, a unity wherein all attempts at rebuilding

the fantasy vessel are disavowed. The unity of

fragmentation requires total surrender to the

impossibility of signification, a pure language would

unmask the need for translation by recognising the fact

that language is always-already translated.

30


Benjamin achieves a renewal of the sacred in

modernism through his messianism of pure negation. De Man

argues that the realisation that language is always-

already metaphorical and that the impossibility of

signification, which follows this realisation, achieves a

new kind of religious experience. He states

“if one can think of modernity [. . .] as aloss of the sacred, as a loss of a certain typeof poetic experience, as its replacement by asecular historicism which loses contact withwhat was originally essential, then one canpraise Benjamin for having re-established thecontact with what had there been forgotten.”45

In opposition to the sacred being the exaltation of a

kind of purity, Benjamin finds purity in the removal of

exaltation. Through the realisation of the essential

fragmentation of language, one is capable of mastering

their mother tongue. The force of the mother tongue comes

through the exaltation of language as something

unattainable, and this unattainability is hidden,

whereas, in Benjamin’s model the interpellative force of

the mother tongue is negated through one’s awareness that

the claims of the monolingual paradigm to unity and

guaranteed signification are false. The sacred in

31


Benjamin is inaccessible but that is only because it is

the result of a radical fragmentation, it is literally

ungraspable as a whole.

De Man argues that Benjamin’s recourse to messianism

is a transference of anxiety from being alienated from

the mother tongue to being alienated from concrete

reality

What translation does, by reference to thefiction or hypothesis of a pure language devoidof the burden of meaning, is that it implies—inbringing to light what Benjamin calls “die Wehendes eigenen”—the suffering of what one thinks ofon one’s own—the suffering of originallanguage. We think we are at ease in our ownlanguage, we feel a coziness, a familiarity, ashelter, in the language we call our own, inwhich we think we are not alienated. What thetranslation reveals is that this alienation isat its strongest in our relation to our ownoriginal language, that the original languagewithin which we are engaged is disarticulatedin a way which imposes upon us a particularalienation, a particular suffering.46

It is clear that the messianic tendencies of The Task of the

Translator are not the vague, assertive hopefulness that

Benjamin is often reproached for; rather, it is the

possibility that a reformulation of language is possible

through the same process that language is bestowed onto a

32


speaker within the monolingual paradigm. De Man states

that, “language is not human, it is God-given: it is the

logos, as that which God gives to man. Not specifically

to man, but God gives, as such”,47 and it is this notion

of language as God-given that allows Benjamin to seek a

multilingual future through messianic means. The notion

that language is God-given refers to that fact that the

speaker does not choose it but they are born into it;

language acts as an inescapable monotheism. Because

Benjamin sees no way of altering the top-down apparatus

of language bestowal, he might as well pray for new gods

to come along, opening up a potential polyvocal

polytheistic language structure. Benjamin does not await

one messiah but an infinite number of interventions.

Benjamin’s conclusion, whereby he claims that a

literal translation is the best kind of translation,

perpetuates the notion that he achieves a definition of a

kind of sacredness through his exaltation of radical

fragmentation. Jacobs argues

Yet no sooner is the figure of man abandonedthan another appears to offer itself. At thebeginning and the end Benjamin turns to therealm of the theological, which seems to redeem

33


this monstrous loss (if also, in a sense, tocause it). This is the way, in the essay’sclosing paragraph, he writes of Hölderlin’stranslations—the most perfect of their kind.The overwhelming danger they create may only becontained by the Holy Writ48

The revelation inherent to literal translation is that an

original text is always-already translated and through

this literal translation language gains a kind of

sacredness. Religious texts are sacred because, in

essence, they are the literal translation of the word of

God. If we replace God with the messianic pure language

achieved through total fragmentation, what is achieved is

a total inversion of the notion of sacredness. Literal

translation reveals the fragmentary nature of the

original, the holy, unknowable lack of signification, and

corresponds to the Holy Writ because it makes this word

of God knowable. The literal translation is sacred

because it means absolutely nothing; it is the opposite

to notions of a supreme being as omnipotent, omniscient

and omnipresent, rather, it is nowhere, it is radical

nothingness.

34


2: THE END OF THE AFFAIR

In Kafka: Toward A Minor Literature Gilles Deleuze and Félix

Guattari proceed from Walter Benjamin’s 1934 essay Franz

Kafka: On the Tenth Anniversary of His Death, in which Benjamin

promotes a way of reading Kafka which eschews previous

techniques of psychoanalytical and theological

interpretation.49 The blockade of other avenues of

investigation—placing Kafka within a framework in which

he does not fit—serves only to deny the political and

ethical implications that are also apparent in his works.

Deleuze and Guattari’s steadfast refusal to countenance

any kind of psychoanalytic reading of Kafka is affirmed

by Réda Bensmaïa, who argues that “one misses the mark in

Kafka either by putting him in the nursery—by

oedipalizing and relating him to mother-father narratives

35


—or by trying to limit him to theological-metaphysical

speculation to the detriment of all the political,

ethical, and ideological dimensions that run through his

work.”50

Despite Deleuze and Guattari’s argument that “dreary

psychoanalytic interpretations”51 of Kafka only serve to

limit his work, their aversion to psychoanalytical tools

can provoke accusations that they are doing the very same

by refusing to consider it. They state that,

“psychoanalysis, because it understands nothing, has

always confused two sorts of incest: the sister is

presented as a substitute for the mother, the maid as a

derivative of the mother, the whore as a reaction-

formation.”52 Here they are not truly engaging with

psychoanalysis, but rather doing away with the entire

field of study by selectively critiquing a certain use of

it. In fact, it appears that Deleuze and Guattari are

foremost attacking psychoanalysis for continually

treading the same well-worn path whereas, as is evident

in the quotation above (metaphorical incest) they utilise

its strategies but come to different conclusions. Deleuze

36


and Guattari’s radical reformulation of psychoanalytical

standards such as potentially incestuous familial

relationships requires further investigation. The attack

on psychoanalysis has two functions: foremost it

distances Deleuze and Guattari from ‘traditional’

psychoanalytical readings of literary texts which

prescribe a very specific technique of interpretation,

secondly, and as a consequence of this distancing,

Deleuze and Guattari are able to utilise certain tools of

psychoanalysis so as to provide a radically different way

of reading, both vocally anti-psychoanalytic and

concurrently utilising the investigative tools of

psychoanalysis in such a way that they are

unrecognisable.

Kafka: Toward A Minor Literature53 is an attempt to drag the

reader of Kafka from the impasse that appears through

psychoanalytic and theological interpretations and point

them towards a new way of reading, which avoids

archetypes and tropes per se and attempts to place the

works within a complex ideological field. In Bensmaïa’s

introduction to Kafka he argues that “the reading of Kafka

37


both in Benjamin and in Deleuze and Guattari is

determined by the prominence they give to a politics of

Kafka; but, as Deleuze and Guattari go on to articulate,

this politics is “neither imaginary nor symbolic.””54 I

intend to argue, through a discussion of the similarities

between Yildiz’ reformulation of the mother tongue as a

family romance and Deleuze and Guattari’s notion of the

‘familial triangle’, that Kafka is a writer of ‘minor

literature’ which exists outside of the monolingual

paradigm. I propose that Deleuze and Guattari’s notions

of reterritorialisation and deterritorialisation provide

a framework by which one can view how monolingual and

multilingual paradigms coexist and depend on one another

to exist. Through the prism of the family romance, it is

clear that Kafka attempted escape from the monolingual

paradigm is a political struggle, which takes place on

two planes. The personal conflict between subject and

mother tongue is mirrored in the relationship between

monolingual and multilingual paradigms, and these

conflicts are played out on the shifting sands of

constant deterritorialisation and reterritorialisation.

38


Although Yildiz’ notion of the mother tongue as a

family romance is clearly influenced by psychoanalysis,

it deals neither with the imaginary nor the symbolic that

Deleuze and Guattari guard against, because the

interpellative function of the mother tongue is very

real. The subject is born into their mother tongue

without any choice in the matter and language forced onto

them as a consequence of their. Foremost we must turn to

Freud’s original text on family romances in order to

fully explicate Yildiz’ conception of it and how, in

actual fact, it influences Deleuze and Guattari’s reading

of Kafka. Freud states that

The liberation of an individual, as he growsup, from the authority of his parents is one ofthe most necessary though one of the mostpainful results brought about by the course ofhis development. It is quite essential thatthat liberation should occur and it may bepresumed that it has been to some extentachieved by everyone who has reached a normalstate. Indeed, the whole progress of societyrests upon the opposition between successivegenerations. On the other hand, there is aclass of neurotics whose condition isrecognizably determined by their having failedin this task.55

39


It is clear that Freud believes opposition to parental

authority to be normalised behaviour, thus, it would

appear that conflict with the mother tongue allows a

route out of it; whereas, those who do not achieve this—

Freud’s neurotics—are stuck within the monolingual

paradigm. This, however, is not the case; the subversion

of parental authority is simply a temporary phase and the

law of the father—which is bestowed onto the subject

through the apparatus of the ventriloqiual mother tongue—

is reaffirmed and passed on to the next generation. Freud

goes on to argue

The later stage in the development of theneurotic's estrangement from his parents, begunin this manner, might be described as ‘theneurotic's family romance’. It is seldomremembered consciously but can almost always berevealed by psycho-analysis. For a quitepeculiarly marked imaginative activity is oneof the essential characteristics of neuroticsand also of all comparatively highly giftedpeople. This activity emerges first inchildren's play, and then, starting roughlyfrom the period before puberty, takes over thetopic of family relations. A characteristicexample of this peculiar imaginative activityis to be seen in the familiar day-dreamingwhich persists far beyond puberty. If theseday-dreams are carefully examined, they arefound to serve as the fulfilment of wishes andas a correction of actual life. They have twoprincipal aims, an erotic and an ambitious one—

40


though an erotic aim is usually concealedbehind the latter too.56

If the neurotic has, on average, greater imaginative

activity and is, compared to the non-neurotic, a “highly

gifted person”, then it appears, according to Freud’s

diagnosis, that Kafka is the archetypal neurotic. Kafka’s

‘daydreams’, made manifest through his literary work,

hold within them the fulfilment of a wish, and one could

infer that that wish is for a surrogate mother (tongue).

If we compare Freud’s conception of the family

romance to Deleuze and Guattari’s formulation of the

familial block within Kafka’s work, what occurs is a

psychoanalytic reading in the guise of politico-

ideological inquiry. The key to Deleuze and Guattari’s

conception of a minor literature (and also Yildiz’

multilingualism) is that it does not act as a barrier to

politics or psychoanalysis but marries them in such a way

that it is not identifiably either. Deleuze and Guattari

argue that

Memory yells “Father! Mother!” but thechildhood block is elsewhere, in the highestintensities that the child constructs with hissisters, his pal, his projects and his toys,

41


and all the nonparental figures through whichhe deterritorializes his parents every chancehe gets. [. . .] The child doesn’t ceasereterritorialising everything back onto hisparents (the photo); he has need of loweredintensities. But in his activity, as in hispassions, he is simultaneously the mostdeterritorialized and the mostdeterritorializing figure – the Orphan. He alsoforms a block of deterritorialisation thatshifts with time, the straight line of time,coming to reanimate the adult as one animates apuppet and giving the adult livingconnections.57

Deleuze and Guattari here explain the psychology of the

neurotic child within a family romance using different

terminology to Freud, and, in doing so, open up new

avenues of investigation. If the child deterritorialises58

themself into becoming an orphan59 then perhaps we can

align it with Yildiz’ conception of the family romance.

Yildiz argues that a reformulation of the family romance

within a linguistic framework can provide a route out of

the monolingual paradigm, and here Deleuze and Guattari

perform the same manoeuvre. The (neurotic) child, by

deterritorialising themself towards orphanhood,

reformulates the traditional family romance. If the non-

neurotic child has the same fantasies as the neurotic,

but eventually reconciles themselves with the family,

42


they will inevitably assume the role of the father in the

next generation of family romance.

A parallel is found in Yildiz’ critique of the

artwork Wordsearch; there is a deterritorialisation of the

mother tongue when different words in separate languages

are given equal standing because of their difference to

one another; however, the act of translating these words

into every other language is an act of

reterritorialisation into the monolingual paradigm.

Wordsearch is the non-neurotic artwork par excellence.

Contrary to this, if the neurotic child refuses to

reconcile themself with the traditional family they

irrevocably alter their relationship with the mother

tongue. Whilst the non-neurotic assumes the role of the

father, and thus arbiter of the law in the patriarchal

monolingual paradigm, the neurotic does not, and any

claim to authority over language (which comes with the

role of the father who bestows the laws of language onto

the child through the mouth of the mother) dissolves.

Kafka has no authority over his language despite it being

his mother tongue because he never assumes the role of

43


the father. He is cast adrift, always in search of a

surrogate mother tongue.

As Yildiz explains, Kafka’s search for a surrogate

mother tongue is not only the search for a different

mother, but a mother capable of providing him with

confirmation of his own identity as a Czech Jew, which is

not found in his German mother tongue. She states,

“briefly, the fantasy of an alternative—Yiddish speaking—

mother, affirming a positively lived Jewish origin and

belonging, takes shape.”60 In his brief flirtation with

Yiddish Kafka is dislocated from his mother tongue but

this dislocation is necessary as it isolates him from the

unrelatable German mother precisely because he is not the

archetypal German speaking subject. Because the surrogate

mother tongue it not one’s true birth language it is

impossible to become fully assimilated into the family

romance of that language, the subject can only hover on

the fringes, a member of the extended family, with only

the notion of a kinship of languages to cling to. Yildiz

writes of Kafka that, “the fantasized Yiddish "mother"

does not lead Kafka to a new Yiddish "mother tongue,"

44


however, but rather to a recalibration of the link both

to the "mother" and the "mother tongue" in German.

"Mutter" (mother) becomes the pivot through which the

experience of Yiddish leads to the questioning of

German.”61

It is in this notion of the mother tongue as a

pivot, in the comparison of the relationship with both

birth and surrogate mother, that Benjamin’s notion of

languages as kin to one another becomes useful as tool of

analysis. The kinship between languages is not simply the

assumption that they are attempting to do similar things,

but rather, languages other than the mother tongue can

offer a certain familial function. Through this function

one can compare these other languages to the mother

tongue and open up a line by which to critique it, much

the same way that the neurotic child is seen by Freud to

examine other children’s parents and see that their own

parents are not as special as they seemed previously.

Kafka’s search for a fantasy surrogate mother is seen in

his investigations into languages other than German,

specifically Yiddish, Hebrew and Czech, because he hopes

45


to find some semblance of his own identity within them,

thus experiencing the familial nurturing nature of the

mother tongue that evades him in German.

Kafka’s problem is that through his orphaning from

the mother tongue he is set adrift, switching from one

surrogate mother to another (alongside Yiddish, Hebrew

and Czech he claimed to speak some French, English and

Italian); however, the mother tongue is irreplaceable.

Here Kafka has two options: he can either embrace German

and take up his expected position within the family and

assume the role of the father, or he can stay distanced

from German and disavow the traditional family forever,

forgoing the shelter and nourishment that it provides.

Kafka follows the latter option, but does so in an

unexpected way, he returns to his mother tongue and

writes in it as an orphan—which stems from his position

as a neurotic child—rather than assuming the role of the

father. In Deleuze and Guattari’s work this is seen as a

deterritorialisation of the German language, as Kafka

writes in German, but in doing so he removes any notion

of German as a familiar language from his work. Kafka

46


reformulates the accepted usage of German and reframes it

as a defamiliarised (in both senses of the word)

language, haunted by the ghosts of ungraspable surrogate

mothers.

The difference between Deleuze and Guattari’s

utilisation of psychoanalytical tools and the

psychoanalytical reading of Kafka that they view as

taking a reified vision of reality, is that they do not

remove Kafka from what they see as the real, political

world. The way of reading Kafka that Deleuze and Guattari

write against forces onto the reader a reality that

negates its own political implications and, in answer to

that, Deleuze and Guattari deterritorialise

psychoanalysis for use within a political framework. It

is specifically readings of Kafka which simply point

towards an oedipal relationship with the law that Deleuze

and Guattari find so unappealing, they write

The Oedipal incest occurs, or imagines that itoccurs, or is interpreted as if it occurs, asan incest with the mother, who is aterritoriality, a reterritorialisation. Schizo-incest takes place with the sister, who is nota substitute for the mother, but who is on theother side of the class struggle, the side ofmaids and whores, the incest of

47


deterritorialisation. Oedipal incestcorresponds to the paranoiac transcendental lawthat prohibits it, and it works to transgressthis law, directly if it can bear to do so,symbolically for want of anything better:demented father (Kronos, the most honest offathers, as Kafka said); abusive mother;neurotic son – before becoming paranoiac inturn and before everything starts up again inthe familial-conjugal triangle – since in factsuch transgression is nothing but a simplemeans of reproduction. Schizo-incestcorresponds, in contrast, to the immanentschizo-law and forms a line of escape insteadof a circular reproduction, a progressioninstead of a transgression (problems with thesister are certainly better than problems withthe mother as schizophrenics well know).62

It is clear from this quotation that recourse to an

oedipalisation of Kafka is a way of forcing Kafka into

assuming the position of the father in the family romance

or, as Deleuze and Guattari put it, the familial-conjugal

triangle, which acts as an analogue to Yildiz’ conception

of the family romance. If the child’s relationship to the

father is oedipal then the desire of the child is to take

the place of the father (to reterritorialise the mother)

and this is clearly not what occurs in Kafka’s work. As

Deleuze and Guattari argue, there is no

deterritorialisation in the acts of the transgressive

oedipal child; the transgression is a means of producing

48


a new generation of law-bearing fathers and the same role

played by the non-neurotic child in Freud’s conception of

the family romance. Deleuze and Guattari’s introduction

of schizo-incest in opposition to oedipal incest provides

a reformulation of the family romance. If the child is

involved in a schizo-incestual relationship with the

sister then the normative, non-neurotic oedipal

relationship with the mother cannot take place,

irrevocably altering the familial triangle. This

disavowal of oedipalism is a way out of the familial

triangle in much the same way that turning against the

mother tongue is provided as a way out of the monolingual

paradigm by Yildiz.

Deleuze and Guattari call their formulation of the

family romance the familial triangle because of the

necessity of having three subjects in relation to one

another for ideological interpellation to occur, these

triangles then extend from one another and tessellate to

form a coherent whole.63 Deleuze and Guattari argue

The triangulation of the subject, familial inorigin, consists in fixing one’s position inrelation to the two other represented terms(father-mother-child). The doubling of the

49


subject, as subject of enunciation and assubject of the statement, concerns the movementof the subject in one of its tworepresentatives or in both together: sometimesit is more fraternal—based on shame—thanpaternal; sometimes more professional—based onrivalry—than familial.64

The subject can be, and often is, part of more than one

triangle, for example one can be the child in the

familial triangle, the father in the next generation of

familial triangles and also the citizen of the state in a

bureaucratic triangle. The purpose of each triangle is to

fix each subject within a web of interconnected

triangles, which make up a tessellated whole and is

described by Deleuze and Guattari thusly

By making triangles transform until they becomeunlimited, by proliferating doubles until theybecome indefinite, Kafka opens up a field ofimmanence that will function as a dismantling,an analysis, a prognostics of social forces andcurrents, of the forces that in his epoch areonly beginning to knock on the door.65

The personal and political interact because the personal

familial triangle is a fragment of the tessellated whole

that is the political plane. If we recall Benjamin’s

metaphor of fragments of a vessel and de Man’s assertion

that these fragments are essentially fragmentary, then we

50


can apply this logic to Deleuze and Guattari. The

fragment is essentially fragmentary in that it has its

own dynamic potentiality for deterritorialisation and

reterritorialisation. If one of these triangles is

broken, as is the case with the neurotic child, then

there is the potential for the individual to escape this

fragmentary whole. As long as one is subjectified within

an ideological triangle, there is always a line of escape

because, as is the nature of the triangle, one needs only

to take flight on a straight path, bisecting a relational

line, for the triangle to be broken.

The tessellated whole is not a totality because,

separate to it, there is a sphere of individuals

deterritorialised from the interpellation of the nation-

state. This sphere of deterritorialisation corresponds to

the multilingual paradigm, whereas, the realm of the

oedipal family romance which Deleuze and Guattari see

Kafka as taking flight from corresponds to the

monolingual paradigm. Neither realm is solid; there is

the potential for constant deterritorialisation and

reterritorialisation. The deterritorialised zone is the

51


realm of minor literature, the realm of multilingualism,

because it is cut off from the interpellative power of

the mother tongue. Kafka achieves this flight from the

monolingual paradigm through his literature, quoted by

Deleuze and Guattari, he writes, “‘in the past,

especially, the person I am in the company of my sisters

has been entirely different from the person I am in the

company of other people. Fearless, powerful, surprising,

moved as I otherwise am only when I write.’”66 Kafka’s

freedom from the subjectification of the monolingual

paradigm is through the familial triangle precisely

because it is broken. The schizo-incestual relationship

with the sister provides a block whereby Kafka does not

assume the normative role of the oedipal subject, this

renders him motherless and so, when he writes, he writes

the literature of an orphan. That is, someone with the

freedom to do what they please without parental

intervention but forever unable to take authority over

the mother tongue that they have disavowed. A minor

literature is not a literature written by a subject

52


marginalised within their community but an individual who

has taken it upon themself to become minoritarian.

Finally, one must consider Kafka’s explicit request

to Max Brod to destroy all evidence of his unpublished

work. This wish for the total erasure of his literary

remains is Kafka’s wish for the annihilation of any

evidence of his hand in perpetuating the law of the

father. By writing in—albeit defamiliarised—German, Kafka

still wrote in what is recognisably his mother tongue,

and, despite denying himself the possibility of having

any semblance of authority over this mother tongue by

disavowing an oedipal relationship with it, Kafka is

uneasy with his use of the language. The desire for the

destruction of his testimony to kinship with the mother

tongue is a final attempt to take flight from the

normative notion of the family romance. By asking for his

work to be destroyed, Kafka is finally and irreversibly

cutting the umbilical cord that connects him to his

mother tongue. It is Kafka’s final refusal to assume the

role of the law-bearing and language-bestowing father, a

refusal to assume the identity assigned to him through

53


his interpellation as a German-speaking citizen,

precisely because it is an identity to which he cannot

relate.

This reading is the opposite of what Benjamin

interprets from Kafka’s final request. Benjamin states

that

Kafka could understand things only in the formof a gestus, and this gestus which he did notunderstand constitutes the cloudy part of theparables. Kafka’s writing emanates from it. Theway he withheld them is well known. Histestament orders their destruction. Thisdocument, which no one interested in Kafka candisregard, says that the writings did notsatisfy their author, that he regarded hisefforts as failures, that he counted himselfamong those who were bound to fail.67

The ultimate severance from any engagement with the

mother tongue is not an admittance of failure, which

suits Benjamin’s view of Kafka as the preeminent

messianic modernist, but is rather the gestus of success,

success in finally and immutably taking flight from one’s

expected position within the family. Kafka’s continued

use of multilingual techniques is testimony to his failed

escape from the monolingual paradigm through literature;

none of his surrogate mothers are willing to adopt him.

54


Kafka’s (ultimately failed) literary suicide is the only

permanent way he has to circumvent the familial triangle

because, as I have noted, there is always the possibility

that his work will be reterritorialised and domesticated.

An oedipal or theological reading of Kafka attempts to

make his work accessible; to make major a minor

literature; to assimilate into the monolingual paradigm

the work of a multilingual writer.

55


3: TWISTED TONGUES

Yasemin Yildiz states that Jacques Derrida’s

Monolingualism of the Other, or, The Prosthesis of Origin “suggests the

exclusionary institutional force of this concept

[monolingualism] as well as the inherent fissures that

could help unravel it”.68 With this statement Yildiz

positions Derrida within the same sphere as Benjamin, de

Man and Deleuze and Guattari, as a writer who exposes the

insidious force of the mother tongue. Nevertheless,

Yildiz proceeds to criticise Derrida’s reading of

monolingualism, stating that, “in his focus on

monolingualism, even if it is the “monolingualism of the

Other,” he tends to overlook multilingualism too

completely.”69 It is my intention in this chapter to

illuminate, through his reading of monolingual

articulation, how Derrida explores multilingual

possibilities. I argue that the product of Derrida’s

reading of monolingualism corresponds to Benjamin’s, in

56


that, the requirement in achieving a multilingual

paradigm is a pure language of negation. However,

Derrida’s conclusion is not messianic in the same manner

as Benjamin; it engages with the political in the same

manner as Deleuze and Guattari by attempting to rejoin

the personal experience of monolingual articulation

through familial relationships and the political

apparatus that perpetuates the interpellation of the

subject through these familial relations.

Although Yildiz utilises Monolingualism of the Other as a

text which deciphers monolingual techniques, she does so

in such a way that limits its potency. Because Yildiz is

unable to reconcile the othering of the mother tongue

with her own conception of linguistic a family romance

she neglects the multilingual possibilities that come out

of Derrida’s text by reading it simply as a criticism of

monolingualism. Yildiz states

Drawing on his own experience as a monolingual,French-speaking Algerian Jew whose claim to hisonly language became unsettled at an early age,Derrida reflects how the withdrawal of Frenchcitizenship from Algerian Jews during the Vichyregime did not just leave his communitystateless for several years, but also shook thesense of legitimate linguistic grounding and

57


direct, inalienable connection to its onlylanguage, French. What he describes, in otherwords, is the painful revelation that asubject’s relationship to his or her ownlanguage is institutionally mediated and can beruptured. “Having” a language, even if it isone’s only language, does not ensure therecognition of one’s claims on it. This “other”monolingualism lacks the attributes ascribed tothe mother tongue: the sense of an almostorganic, intimate link to a language thatresults in socially sanctioned and reproducedidentitarian claims.70

If one recognises monolingualism as the “monolingualism

of the other” it does not mean that it lacks the

attributes Yildiz ascribes to the mother tongue, rather,

Derrida manages to open up a multilingual space through

this very othering. Yildiz rightly recognises the

intrinsic link between mother tongue and the

interpellative methods of the nation-state, yet she does

not consider that what Derrida manages to elucidate is

what happens to the monolingual paradigm with the

destruction of the mother tongue.

Derrida’s reference to the French-speaking Algerian

Jewish community he was born into provides a way of

imagining a multilingual paradigm because it is a

community in which there is a reformulation of the

58


traditional family romance against the monolingual

paradigm. The French-speaking Algerian Jewish community

is already minoritarian, much the same as Kafka’s

situation as a German-speaking Czech Jew; however,

Derrida’s predicament differs from Kafka’s because his

family romance is not reconfigured as neurotic; rather,

its interpellative force is fully exposed by the removal

of the nation-state that prescribes it. The “almost

organic, intimate link” that Yildiz refers to as an

attribute of the mother tongue is not lost in a

“monolingualism of the other” and it is Yildiz’ use of

the word “almost” that brings this to light. The mother

tongue is manifestly nonorganic because it is forced upon

the subject through their place within the family

romance, which is always-already dominated by the

descendent interpellative force of the nation-state.

Derrida manages to perfectly illuminate Yildiz’ use

of the word “almost” by arguing, “the language called

maternal is never purely natural, nor proper, nor

inhabitable. To inhabit: this is a value that is quite

disconcerting and equivocal; one never inhabits what one is

59


in the habit of calling inhabiting.”71 The attributes

ascribed to the mother tongue by Yildiz are not concrete;

otherwise there would be no way of escaping the

monolingual paradigm. It is impossible to have an

intimate relationship with the mother tongue if it is

unknowable, yet, it is imperative that the nation-state

persuades the subject that this familial link with the

mother tongue is intimate and organic. Nevertheless, as

Derrida so performatively argues, one cannot truly and

wholly inhabit any identity, specifically the role of the

child with an intimate link to the mother tongue.

Linguistically, all children are adopted and all mothers

are surrogate; however, this information is kept hidden

by the state so that individuals can be easily and

efficiently interpellated as subjects. If, as in

Derrida’s case, this nation-state then dissolves, the

subject becomes literally stateless but remaina still

stuck within the ideological structure that previously

subjectified him. The interpellative process of the

mother tongue is unmasked but the subject remains within

the familial romance without any supreme paternal

60


referent. The father, in an act of ventriloquism through

the mother, bestows the mother tongue onto the child but

now, lost for words, the child is irrevocably distanced

from the mother. The alteration of the mother tongue

inherent to a “monolingualism of the other” is not a

crucial structural change but a new awareness on behalf

of the subject, defined by Derrida as, “this a priori

universal truth of an essential alienation in language—

which is always of the other—and, by the same token, in

all culture.”72 The subject is always estranged from the

mother tongue, despite its apparent organicity and

intimacy, it is simply that a “monolingualism of the

other” renders this “a priori universal truth” visible to

the subject.

Derrida’s repeated statement of “I have one

language; it is not mine”,73 reveals how the subject gains

an awareness of the fact that it is impossible to ever

have any kind of authority over their mother tongue.

Derrida’s self-awareness is a consequence of the state

repossession of the mother tongue; without the illusory

notion of a nation-state, it becomes clear that the

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perpetuation of the monolingual paradigm is achieved

through, and because of, the impossibility of mastering

one’s mother tongue. Those individuals who have power

over the nation-state—and thus the workings of the mother

tongue—reaffirm the monolingual paradigm because they

(consciously or unconsciously) realise the impossibility

of having authority over their language. Because of the

anxiety that occurs with this realisation they seek to

reaffirm dominance over “their” language by forcing

others to subject themselves to it. It is by prescribing

the authoritarian lie that it is possible for one to own

and master their mother tongue that those who control the

nation-state consolidate their power thus perpetuating

the monolingual paradigm.

The realisation that an individual can never have

authority over their language, which is the realisation

of an intrinsic lack within oneself, has two possible

outcomes. In Derrida’s case, because he has no nation-

state to refer to as his own, due to the revocation of

his French citizenship, he arrives at the realisation of

his total subjection to his utter dependence upon the

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mother tongue but, paradoxically, his total estrangement

from it also. In the case of those who wield the

interpellative power within the framework of a nation-

state this estrangement causes alarm because it is a

symptom of the synthetic nature of the nation-state. The

mother tongue is evidently nonorganic because it is

created and perpetuated by a structure whose very

existence is an illusion. It is in the interest of the

monolingual nation-state to trick the individual into

thinking that their mother tongue is theirs to own

because, as Yildiz recognises “multiple languages

constituted a threat to the cohesion of individuals and

societies.”74

Here I refer back to Yildiz’ assertion that the

monolingual paradigm emerged at a very specific point in

history, coinciding with the rise of the nation-state.

For a nation-state to reinforce its authority, it must

force its subject to speak the national mother tongue in

order to perpetuate and reaffirm the very notion of the

nation-state. Simultaneous to the rise of the nation-

state is the emergence of capitalism as the hegemonic

63


economic and political system, which brings with it a

second potency to the delusion of language ownership.

Capitalism perpetuates itself through the notion that it

is possible for a subject to own a number of commodities,

be they, food, land, people or language; however, the

actuality of this ownership is impossible unless

permitted by an illusion. It is this illusion, a curtain

draped over the Real, which says to the subject, “you

have a language. It is yours.” Alongside this

commodification of language, the disavowal of the

impossibility of taking ownership of the mother tongue by

those in control of a nation-state betrays a

fetishisation of language. Yildiz recognises this

fetishisation, arguing

This "I know very well, but nevertheless"structure is, of course, the signature offetishism. Fetishism, we recall, preserves thewholeness of the mother in order to disavowcastration and lack. In the case of themonolingual paradigm, it is the mother tonguewhose wholeness and exclusivity needs to bepreserved.75

Preservation of the mother tongue is achieved through the

commodification of language and this need for

64


preservation comes about due to the necessarily

fetishistic attitude towards language by those in power

in a capitalist nation-state. It is upon realising the

connection between the rise of the capitalist nation-

state and the rise of monolingualism that we come to see

the only potential formulation of a postmonolingual

paradigm is through the institution of a post-capitalist

political superstructure.

The difficulty with any reformulation of political

systems and, as a consequence, the family romance and the

mother tongue itself, is that its effects would only

touch those born into the new paradigm and not those

already tainted by monolingualism because this

monolingual birth renders the subject traumatised from

the very onset of their life. Even prior to the hegemonic

reign of monolingualism, there was no utopian

multiplicity of languages. As Peggy Kamuf explains, “if

there is only multiplicity, then there is no master

language, although in the history of the West various

tongues have pretended to this throne”.76 There has never

been a true multiplicity of languages where each

65


individual language is as equal as any other. If we

glance at the history of Britain it is clear that each

political system prior to the high capitalism of the late

eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries used

monolingualisation as a key tool in suppressing hostile

subjects.77 It is only through being born into a

linguistic paradigm that it becomes accepted.

The mother tongue is the branding of a child with

something they can never fully assimilate, and this

mirrors Freud’s conception of a generational trauma,

which provides yet another way of unravelling the mother

tongue. In Beyond the Pleasure Principle Freud states that “it

is a distinctive feature of the dream-life of patients

with traumatic neurosis that it repeatedly takes them

back to the situation of their misadventure, from which

they awake with a renewed sense of fright.”78 This

statement not only applies to nightmares caused by

traumatic neuroses but to language itself, in that we can

only speak in response to what has happened previously.

Language attempts to master stimulus retrospectively in

the same way that traumatic dreams attempt to recapture

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the missed experience of the traumatised individual. All

language holds within it the trauma of its own

impossibility, the trauma of the individuals own

inability to ever be fully assimilated into the mother

tongue.

Every time an individual speaks they are re-

traumatised in the same manner that Freud notes occurs in

people with traumatic neuroses. Every word, every

utterance, holds within it that kernel of radical

nothingness that goes beyond the mother tongue; however,

this re-traumatisation helps perpetuate the hegemony of

monolingualism. Derrida is made aware of his own

traumatic birth into language through his orphaning from

the mother tongue. Any legal (the law of the father_

notion of potential authority over his French mother

tongue is irrevocably removed through the withdrawal of

Derrida’s French citizenship. The law of the father

dissolves because its mouthpiece, the mother tongue,

unravels and, as we have seen with the example of Kafka,

no number of surrogate mother tongues can take the place

of that original, traumatising language.

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Freud’s case study of generational trauma is his

psycho-history of the monotheisisation of the Jewish

people. The Jewish belief in monotheism is rooted in an

individual trauma which becomes transcendental, “the

emergence… of the sense of being incomprehensibly chosen

by God to survive – is very similar, in certain respects,

to the curious nature of the survival of trauma.”79 Cathy

Caruth infers that the generational trauma comes not from

Moses’ (the paternal figure of the community) followers

involvement in the traumatic event of his murder, but

from the incomprehensibility of surviving the experience

without knowing how. This incomprehension leads to a

short circuit whereby the individual attempts to master

the missed experience by returning to the moment before

what has been missed and Caruth argues this in regard to

the Jewish people, “the traumatic separation from the

father [Moses], ultimately leads to a belated attempt to

return to the moment before the murder, to Moses’

doctrine of chosenness.”80 It is the eventual

metamorphosis of the individual trauma into a historical

trauma that brings about the tradition of monotheism in

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the Jewish religion and, analogous to this, it is the

individual trauma of their inability to master the mother

tongue of those who control the nation-state that becomes

the traditional generational trauma of every subject born

into the monolingual nation-state.

The eventual development of monotheism is explained

by Freud in reference to the oedipal complex. The

assassination and subsequent replacement of Moses by a

second Moses is akin to a child wishing to kill their

father and subsequently usurp him as the paternalistic

figure, the normalised behaviour of the non-neurotic

child in the family romance. By acting out the oedipal

fantasy, the trauma resulting from the murder of the

father (Moses) is ingrained within each of his followers

and thus the assimilation of the second Moses into the

first is the beginnings of monotheistic tradition. In

linguistic terms the rejection of the law of the father

and later assimilation into the role of the father is the

beginning of a monolingual tradition. The repression of

the oedipal trauma becomes manifest in the replacing of

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the father which subsequently becomes the dependence upon

a paternal figure in Jewish tradition.

The repression of one’s inability to assimilate into

the mother tongue becomes replaced by the desire to take

on the role of the father as law giver and apparent

author of language. The trauma resulting from the death

of Moses is not a trauma resulting from the act itself,

but “having [been] violently separated from Moses and

survived”,81 and this is mirrored in the intrinsic trauma of

language. We speak in order to convey meaning and this

meaning, often seemingly understood, is impossible due to

the radical nothingness that lies behind the veil of

language. The individual can never master their mother

tongue. The idea that monotheistic religion comes from a

model of trauma reflects language, in that, as Maurice

Blanchot states “it is upon losing what we have to say

that we speak—upon an imminent and immemorial disaster”,82

and this disaster is that we have already forgotten what

we want to say because the law of the father is impotent

and lacks any real authority. Language is the individuals

attempt to work through (in a Freudian sense) what it is

70


they have experienced; however, if this language already

has within it the trauma of alienation from one’s mother

tongue then every sentence that we speak is really a

stream of unintelligible babble which is only ever

understood by pure coincidence.

With Derrida’s reading of the original the myth of

alienation from language, the Biblical story of the Tower

of Babel, in Des Tours de Babel, we come full circle and back

to translation. Derrida writes, “Babel means not only

confusion in the double sense of the word, but also the

name of the father, more precisely and more commonly, the

name of God as name of father.”83 Out of its

polysemousness, the word “Babel” provides a shortcut for

the total alienation from the mother tongue that is

inherent within language. The confusion intrinsic to

“Babel” is the radical nothingness that lies behind

language, the impossibility of signification and the

babble that follows; whereas, the name of the father is

the subjectification inherent to language, the

impossibility of mastering it. This name of the father

also refers to the trauma inherent within language, like

71


the generational trauma that followed the murder of Moses

that became monotheism, the name of the father is the

generational trauma of the oedipal assimilation into the

role of the father, which perpetuates monolingualism.

Monotheism and monolingualism share the same common mode

of production and perpetuation; they become inscribed

through an original trauma and are continue through

subjectification of the individual by a paternal figure,

in one case God, the other, the law of the father, which

is spoken through the mouth of the mother.

Derrida outlines the paradox at the centre of the

inscription of the name of the father within language by

stating

God, the God, would have marked with hispatronym a communal space, that city whereunderstanding is no longer possible. Andunderstanding is no longer possible when thereare only proper names, and understanding is nolonger possible when there are no longer propernames. In giving his name, a name of hischoice, in giving all names, the father wouldbe at the origin of language, and that powerwould belong by right to God the father. Andthe name of God the father would be the name ofthat origin of tongues. But it is also that Godwho, in the action of his anger (like the Godof Böhme or of Hegel, he who goes out ofhimself, determines himself in his finitude andthus produces history), annuls the gift of

72


tongues, or at least embroils it, sowsconfusion among his sons, and poisons thepresent (Gift-gift). This is also the origin oftongues, of the multiplicity of idioms, of whatin other words are usually called mothertongues.84

There is a duality at work within the notion of a mother

tongue. The name of the father is the origin of language

but concurrent to this gift of language, the father,

through his unquestionable law, takes away language. What

is left, as Derrida states, is, “the multiplicity of

idioms”, those tongues which seek to be a master

language, those tongues which seek to totally dominate

through monolingualisation; however, because of this lack

intrinsic to them—the impossibility that they can signify

anything concretely—they cannot reconcile themselves with

the name of the father. For the name of the father

always-already means confusion as well as mastery.

In both assimilating into the role of the father

like the good non-neurotic child and by refusing this

demand like the neurotic child, the subject is forever

alienated from their mother tongue; however, depending on

which role is adopted by the subject, the name of the

73


father articulates itself in one of two ways. In assuming

the role of the father and finding within it the

impossibility of gaining authorship over language, the

subject fantasises a kind of pure language like that

which exist before Babel. A pure monolingualism where

meaning is concrete and authority wielded by a supreme

paternal figure. The neurotic child however fantasises

the pure language of Benjamin where the father is

murdered and never replaced, thus unravelling the mother

tongue denied its force as a ventriloquist’s puppet. Each

of these positions is driven by a desire, the desire to

radicalise their own situation. The non-neurotic wishes

for that supreme authoritarian subjection where the law

of the father must be obeyed at all times, whereas the

neurotic wishes for further alienation, the cutting of

all familial ties, to be left floating in that pure

babble of nonsignification.

The Semites reject each of these possibilities, and

it is because of this that they are denied both authority

over language and a total removal from the mother tongue.

Derrida states

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Does he [God] punish them [the tower builders]for having wanted to build as high as theheavens? For having wanted to accede to thehighest, up to the Most High? Perhaps for thattoo, no doubt, but incontestably for havingwanted thus to make a name for themselves, to givethemselves the name, to construct for any bythemselves their own name, to gather themselvesthere (“that we not be scattered”), as in theunity of place which is at once a tongue and atower, the one as well as the other, the one asthe other. He punishes them for having thuswanted to assure themselves, by themselves, aunique and universal genealogy.85

The builders of the tower are punished for their attempt

at reformulating the family romance, instead of being

branded with the name of the father at birth with the

bestowal of a proper name upon them, they wish to build

their own language, free of this birth trauma that scars

all subjects as they are interpellated by the mother

tongue. The desire for a free language, free from the

trauma of birth, is described in Monolingualism of the Other as

A desire to reconstruct, to restore, but it isreally a desire to invent a first language thatwould be, rather, a prior-to-the-first languagedestined to translate that memory. But totranslate the memory of what, precisely did nottake place, of what, having been (the)forbidden, ought, nevertheless, to have left atrace, a specter, the phantomatic body, thephantom-member—palpable, painful, but hardlylegible—of traces, marks and scars. As if it

75


were a matter of producing the truth of whatnever took place by avowing it.86

That is, the Babelian pure language is one of radical

negativity; it is a language where the name of the father

is replaced by the memory of the name of the father. The

pure language of Babel exalts the painful memory of the

alienation from the name of the father. The unceasing

interpellative force of this language is not something

which positively subjectifies an individual as something,

but, rather, interpellates the subject as irredeemably

alienated from the possibility of mastering their mother

tongue. Derrida continues by stating

Invented for the genealogy of what did nothappen and whose event will have been absent,leaving only negative traces of itself in whatmakes history, such a prior-to-the-first language doesnot exist. It is not even a preface, a“foreword,” or some lost language of origin. Itcan only be a target, a promised sentence, alanguage of the other, once again, but entirelyother than the language of the other as thelanguage of the master or colonist, eventhough, between them, the two may sometimesshow so many unsettling resemblances maintainedin secret or held in reserve.87

The building of a pure language of radical negativity

halted by the intervention of God is the exact opposite

76


of the language structure those building the tower were

condemned to. A utopian celebration of the confusion that

is inherent to language is replace by an anxiety caused

through the very same confusion. The distant memory of an

alienated name of the father, which serves only to remind

the individual of their radical estrangement from that

father, is replaced by the authoritarian father who

bestows his law onto the subject through the mother

tongue, urging his subjects to try (and fail) to

assimilate into a role whereby one can achieve mastery

over language. Both languages are called Babel; the

homonym signifies the same two things: name of the father

and confusion, but their radical difference provides two

distinct paradigms. The Babel of subjectification and

proliferation of different languages is monolingualism,

whereas the Babel of radical alienation is

multilingualism. Each paradigm requires the same

processes in order to articulate itself; however, these

processes must be the inverse of one another. Because

paradox is at the centre of the Babel language it is a

question of how this paradox is translated that

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determines the creation of a monolingual or multilingual

paradigm, nevertheless, being a paradox the language is

not fully translatable, this is the unnavigable aporia at

the centre of the mother tongue. This aporia is what

exists at the centre of Derrida’s language, for he speaks

a language tainted by the name of the father but this

father has abandoned him. It is only when the monolingual

and multilingual possibilities of a Babelian language

exist together that each paradigm becomes imaginable.

Derrida is both subjectified by the father and abandoned

by him, confused at his inability to ever master his

language yet celebratory of this impossibility and the

babble that follows the impossibility of signification.

In reading Monolingualism of the Other and Des Tours de Babel it

appears that Derrida’s conception of a multilingual

paradigm is one in which monolingualism is seen as a

constant lurking threat. Radical alienation, a pure

language of negativity, must hold at its centre the

terrifying memory of name of the father and the only way

of achieving this is by murdering the paternal figure and

displaying his body for all eternity.

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CONCLUSION: BEYOND THE MOTHER TONGUE?

It would be facile to call for the total

restructuring of contemporary political superstructures

so as to find a way out of the monolingual paradigm, for,

as I have previously mentioned, monolingualisation has

been the preferred method of subjectification of

individuals for as long as history has been recorded.

And, perhaps this very recording of history by various

monolingual cultures has contributed to the perpetuation

of monolingual practices. The postmonolingual condition

that Yildiz is writing towards cannot be a multilingual

paradigm, for the very notion of a paradigm would cease

to exist if multilingualism became hegemonic. What would

ensue is the proliferation of paradigms, each one feeding

into its neighbour. If we are to imagine Deleuze and

Guattari’s tessellation of interpellative triangles as a

79


solid, honeycomb like structure, the multilingual

paradigm would be a boundless sea, its only attribute

utter fluidity.

Postmonolingualism is a fallacy, for if multilingual

writing, or multilingual writers, were to come to the

forefront of mainstream monolingual culture they would

cease to be multilingual writers. The never-ending

deterritorialisation of language into the holding bay of

literature that is multilingualism is opposed by the

never-ending reterritorialisation of language back into

the monolingual paradigm. Postmonolingualism would end

this dynamic, language would become petrified, left to

erode in the lapping waves of history.

Derrida writes,

Very quickly: at the very moment whenpronouncing “Babel” we sense the impossibilityof deciding whether this name belongs, properlyand simply, to one tongue. And it matters thatthis undecidability is at work in a strugglefor the proper name within a scene ofgenealogical indebtedness. In seeking to “makea name for themselves,” to found at the sametime a universal tongue and a unique genealogy,the Semites want to bring the world to reason,and this reason can signify simultaneously acolonial violence (since they would thus

80


universalize their idiom) and a peacefultransparency of the human community.88

If we are, like the Semites, to “bring the world to

reason” then the outcome would be the end of culture.

Through the “colonial violence” of universalization—even

if it resulted in “a peaceful transparency of the human

community”—that is, the acceptance of the impossibility

of signification—all anxiety, in regard to the

individual’s alienation from the mother tongue and the

death of the dream of mastering language that accompanies

it, would cease to exist.

It is this anxiety, this neurotic terror, caused by

the cruelty of the mother tongue that perpetuates human

culture. Without our linguistic anxieties there would be

no reformulation of the mother tongue and consequently,

no deterritorialisation of the monolingual paradigm. It

is this deterritorialisation and the eventual

reterritorialisation of language that which drives culture

into the future, holding at bay the petrifying force of

history. Without the monolingual paradigm, there would be

no multilingualism to speak of, and with no

81


multilingualism there would be no hope of ever generating

anything new culturally.

As Eve Tavor Bannet argues the task of the

translator is to give up. 89 Not give up translating but

to give oneself up to the impossibility of signification,

give oneself up to the new sacred that is radical

difference, the proliferation of nothingness. The only

choice is to babble on into the future and, as Paul Celan

writes in Tübingen, Jänner, talk our eyes into blindness from

the interpellative power of the mother tongue.

Eyes talked intoblindness.Their – “an enigma isthe purelyoriginated” –, theirmemory ofHölderlin towers afloat, circledby whirring gulls.

Visits of drowned joiners tothesesubmerging words:

Should,should a man,should a man come into the world, today,

withthe shining beard of the

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patriarchs: he could,if he spoke of thistime, hecouldonly babble and babbleover, overagainagain.

(“Pallaksh. Pallaksh.”)90

This non sense is all we can rely on, “Yes/no. Yes/no.”

is our everlasting response to futile attempts at

signification. There exists a framework, which covers

reality like a blanket, proposing concrete signification

through language, but this blanket is an illusion and it

is only in waking up from this dream that we inhabit the

postmonolingual condition.

NOTES

83

Dissertation submitted in partial fulfilment of therequirement of the degree of Master of Arts©

This copy of the thesis has been supplied on conditionthat anyone who consults it is understood to recognisethat its copyright rests with the author and that no

quotation from the thesis, nor any information derivedthere from, may be published without the author’s prior

consent.


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1

The Sumerian epic Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta (ca. twenty-first centuryBCE) foreshadows the Biblical story of the tower of Babel when thedivine leader of the gods, Enki, forces mankind to speak multiplelanguages, whereas previously a single common language was spoken.2 Yildiz, Yasemin. Beyond the Mother Tongue: The Postmonolingual Condition. NewYork: Fordham University Press, 2012. p. 4.3 Ibid., p. 6.4 Ibid., p. 2.5 Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities. London: Verso, 2006. p. 68.6 de Man, Paul. “‘Conclusions’: Walter Benjamin’s ‘The Task of theTranslator.’ The Resistance to Theory. Minneapolis: University of MinnesotaPress, 1986. p. 83.7 Yildiz. Beyond the Mother Tongue. p. 81.8 Ibid., p. 42.9 Ibid., p. 41.10 Ibid., p.18.11 Ibid., p. 11-12.12 Ibid., p. 9.13 Ibid.14 Ibid., p. 13.15 Ibid., p. 7.16 Arendt, Hannah. “‘What Remains? The Language Remains’: AConversation with Günter Gaus.” The Portable Hannah Arendt. Ed. PeterBaehr. London: Penguin, 2000. p. 13.17 Yildiz. Beyond the Mother Tongue. p. 13-14.18 “Early twentieth-century Prague, where Kafka lived, for instance,becomes graspable as both a multilingual space in which multiplelanguages coexisted and as a place rapidly transitioning to amonolingual structure with individuals increasingly embracing onlyone, ethnically predetermined language.” Ibid., p. 5.19 Ibid., p. 1420 Ibid., p. 12.21 Ibid., p. 12.22 Ibid., p. 3-4.23 Ibid., p. 217.24 Ibid.25 Benjamin, Walter. “The Task of the Translator.” Illuminations. Trans.Harry Zohn. London: Fontana Press, 1992. p. 72.26 Yildiz. Beyond the Mother Tongue. p. 13.27 Benjamin. “The Task of the Translator.” p. 70.

28 Ibid., p. 71.29 Ibid.30 Ibid., p. 73.31 Yildiz. Beyond the Mother Tongue. p. 144.32 Ibid.33 Ibid.34 Ibid., p. 143.35 de Man. “‘Conclusions’.” p. 81.36 Jacobs, Carol. In the Language of Walter Benjamin. Baltimore: John HopkinsUniversity Press, 1999. p. 80-81.37 Ferris, David S. The Cambridge Introduction to Walter Benjamin. Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 2008. p. 64.38 Jacobs. In the Language of Walter Benjamin. p. 76.39 de Man. “‘Conclusions’.” p. 84.40 Jacobs. In the Language of Walter Benjamin. p. 82.41 Benjamin. “The Task of the Translator.” p. 79.42 Primavesi, Patrick. “The Performance of Translation: Benjamin andBrecht on the Loss of Small Details.” TDR (1988-), Vol. 43, No. 4, GermanBrecht, European Readings (Winter, 1999), p. 55.43 de Man. “‘Conclusions’.” p. 91.44 Ibid., p. 90.45 Ibid., p. 78.46 Ibid., p. 84.47 Ibid., p. 100.48 Jacobs. In the Language of Walter Benjamin. p. 88.49 “There are two ways to miss the point of Kafka’s works. One is tointerpret them naturally, the other is the supernaturalinterpretation. Both the psychoanalytic and the theologicalinterpretations equally miss the essential points.” Benjamin, Walter.“Franz Kafka: On the Tenth Anniversary of his Death.” Illuminations.Trans. Harry Zohn. London: Fontana, 1992. p. 123.50 Bensmaïa, Réda. “Foreword: The Kafka Effect.” Trans, Terry Cochran.Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature. Minneapolis: University of MinnesotaPress, 1986. p. ix.51 Ibid.52 Deleuze, Gilles and Félix Guattari. Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature.Trans. Dana Polan. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986.p. 66.53 Henceforth Kafka.54 Bensmaïa. “Foreword: The Kafka Effect.” p. x-xi.

55 Freud, Sigmund. “Family Romances.” The Standard Edition of the CompletePsychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Volume IX (1906-1908): Jensen's ‘Gradiva’ and OtherWorks Trans. James Strachey. London: Hogarth, 1950. p. 237.56 Ibid., p. 238.57 Deleuze and Guattari. Kafka. p. 79.58 Deterritorialisation, for Deleuze and Guattari, is thedecontextualisation of relations. For example, Joyce’s Ulysses is adeterritorialisation of the English language; the medium ofliterature is removed from its context of recognised rules andstructures, Joyce takes the notion of a ‘realistic’ novel and movesit to new territory. Reterritorialisation generally follows adeterritorialisation; the context by which one views what a‘realistic’ novel is is expanded so as to recognise Joyce’s newformulation of it. In the context of multilingualism I am arguingthat Deleuze and Guattari’s notion of a minor literature—that is, adeterritorialised literature—is multilingual because it moves thegoalposts, so to speak, and allows use of language not prescribed bythe nation-state to proliferate. Once the monolingual paradigm comesto accept the previously revolutionary aspects of aminor/multilingual literature it is assimilated into the monolingualparadigm, the minor literature becomes a major literature. Adeterritorialisation is never permanent and nor is areterritorialisation because of the dynamic nature of what is definedas a minor or major literature.59 I used ‘orphan’ because as Freud explains in the followingquotation, a key occurrence in the family romance is the child’sfantasy that their parents are in fact not their parents. The non-neurotic child exalts the father, replacing the imperfect father theyhave come to know with the original notion of the ‘perfect’ father.This reaffirmation of the father is the first step the child takes ineventually replacing the father and becoming the author of familiallaw. The neurotic child is incapable of reconciling the originalfather with the new ‘perfect’ fantasy father and is unable to everemulate and take up the role of the father. The neurotic childbecomes stuck in the world of fantasy parents and the familialtriangle is broken up. “If we examine in detail the commonest ofthese imaginative romances, the replacement of both parents or of thefather alone by grander people, we find that these new andaristocratic parents are equipped with attributes that are derivedentirely from real recollections of the actual and humble ones; sothat in fact the child is not getting rid of his father but exalting

him. Indeed the whole effort at replacing the real father by asuperior one is only an expression of the child's longing for thehappy, vanished days when his father seemed to him the noblest andstrongest of men and his mother the dearest and loveliest of women.He is turning away from the father whom he knows today to the fatherin whom he believed in the earlier years of his childhood; and hisphantasy is no more than the expression of a regret that those happydays have gone. Thus in these phantasies the overvaluation thatcharacterizes a child's earliest years comes into its own again”Freud. “Family Romances.” p. 240-241.60 Yildiz. Beyond the Mother Tongue. p. 46.61 Ibid.62 Deleuze and Guattari. Kafka. p. 67.63 The familial triangle is not the only triangular formulation thatDeleuze and Guattari at work in the world and is thusly elucidated inKafka’s work, they use the bureaucratic triangle as an example:“Kafka constantly presents trios, formal bureaucratic triangulations.The two bureaucrats emanate necessarily from a superior third one,for whom they function as a right arm and a left arm. Inversely,then, if the bureaucratic double refers back to the familialtriangle, the latter in turn can be replaced by bureaucratictriangles.” Ibid. p. 54. The importance of the triangle is that theremust be three individuals or apparatuses that complete it and it musttessellate as part of a whole so that reterritorialisation ispossible if one of the triangles breaks down.64 Ibid., p. 53-54.65 Ibid., p. 55.66 Ibid., p. 65.67 Benjamin. “Franz Kafka.” p. 125.68 Yildiz. Beyond the Mother Tongue. p. 16.69 Ibid.70 Ibid., p. 40-41.71 Derrida, Jacques. Monolingualism of the Other; or, The Prosthesis of Origin.Trans. Patrick Mensah. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996. p.58.72 Ibid.73 Ibid., p. 1.74 Yildiz. Beyond the Mother Tongue. p. 6.75 Ibid., p. 22.76 Kamuf, Peggy. “More Than One Language.” A Derrida Reader: Between theBlinds. Ed. Peggy Kamuf. Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1991.

p. 241-242.77 For example the Roman invasion of Britain and its attemptedmonolingualisation through Latin, followed by Normans who introducedFrench and Anglo-Saxons with German, the interpellative tool parexcellence for the ruling political elite has been through the mothertongue.78 Freud, Sigmund. “Beyond the Pleasure Principle.” The Penguin FreudReader. Ed. Adam Phillips, Trans. John Reddick. London: Penguin Books,2006. p. 139.79 Caruth, Cathy. “Traumatic Departures: Survival and History in Freud.” Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Narrative and History. Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press, 1996. p. 68.80 Ibid., p. 69.81 Ibid., p. 71.82 Blanchot, Maurice. The Writing of the Disaster. Trans. Ann Smock. Lincoln:University of Nebraska Press, 1995. p. 21.83 Derrida, Jacques. “From ‘Des Tours de Babel’”. A Derrida Reader: Betweenthe Blinds Ed. Peggy Kamuf. Trans. Joseph F. Graham. Hemel Hempstead:Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1991 p. 245.84 Ibid., p. 246.85 Ibid., p. 248.86 Derrida. Monolingualism of the Other. p. 61.87 Ibid., p. 61-62.88 Derrida. “From ‘Des Tours de Babel’.” p. 253.89 “What Benjamin is saying in de Man's translation is that it is the task or duty (Aufgabe) of the translator "to give up [aufgeben—ETB] in relation to the task of refinding what was there in the original" (C 80), and thereby to make the original give up—give up in relation to the poetic and the sacred (C 81, 92), give up in relation to historical remembrance (C 79), give up in relation to "the desire to say something, the need to make a statement" (C 81), give up any "burden of meaning" (C 84), and give up hope (C 79).” Bannet, Eve Tavor. “The Scene of Translation: After Jakobson, Benjamin, de Man, and Derrida.” New Literary History, Vol. 24, No. 3, Textual Interrelations (Summer, 1993) p. 582.90 Celan, Paul. The Poems of Paul Celan. Ed. and Trans. Michael Hamburger. London: Anvil, 2007. p. 199.

Keeping it in the Family: Responses to Monolingualism

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