Mother Tongue: Theories of Language and Maternality

(4 Credits)

How does the maternal figure in language? Is “mother” a contained otherness that operates within the symbolic order? Is it a biological fiction that perpetuates nationalist exclusions? Does it bear a generative capacity? Mother tongue, a metaphorical notion of the national imagination, is a deeply charged ethnocentric concept. At the same time, the range of affects and attachments that the mother tongue entails cannot be denied. This interdisciplinary seminar navigates between changing conceptualizations of mother tongue from a range of theoretical and cultural perspectives. Considering the maternal in language through the lens of psychoanalytic, feminist, and queer thinking, it asks whether mother tongue can be at once the product of ethnocentric ideologies and a form of resistance to cultural hegemonies. The course examines a diverse selection of critical theory alongside works of literature, cinema and art. Class discussions will trace the rise of the mother as a mark of a biological link between nation and language; explore the sexual politics of language; and focus on a set of accounts of diasporic and postcolonial linguistic experiences, in which the mother tongue appears to be fleeting and its “possession” is repeatedly questioned.