More than a Mother Tongue: Derrida, Arendt, Cassin
Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal, 2020
Jacques Derrida subjects Hannah Arendt to a rather trenchant
critique in Monolingualism of the Ot... more Jacques Derrida subjects Hannah Arendt to a rather trenchant
critique in Monolingualism of the Other; Or, the Prosthesis of Origin.
Focusing on just a few sentences from her famous 1964 television
interview with Günter Gaus, Derrida charges Arendt with an inability
to think beyond a unique mother tongue, aligning her with Martin
Heidegger in having a “rooted” understanding of the German language. By contrast, a very different picture emerges in Barbara
Cassin’s Nostalgia: When Are We Ever at Home?, in which Arendt is
presented as precisely anti-Heideggerian on the question of the mother
tongue. Cassin advances her interpretation in Derrida’s shadow, drawing
inspiration from Monolingualism, even as she promotes a view of Arendt
that opposes the one offered in Derrida’s text. In this essay, I follow
Cassin in arguing that, against what Derrida suggests, Arendt can in
fact be enlisted as an ally in his resistance to a view of language that
elevates the mother tongue.
critique in Monolingualism of the Other; Or, the Prosthesis of Origin.
Focusing on just a few sentences from her famous 1964 television
interview with Günter Gaus, Derrida charges Arendt with an inability
to think beyond a unique mother tongue, aligning her with Martin
Heidegger in having a “rooted” understanding of the German language. By contrast, a very different picture emerges in Barbara
Cassin’s Nostalgia: When Are We Ever at Home?, in which Arendt is
presented as precisely anti-Heideggerian on the question of the mother
tongue. Cassin advances her interpretation in Derrida’s shadow, drawing
inspiration from Monolingualism, even as she promotes a view of Arendt
that opposes the one offered in Derrida’s text. In this essay, I follow
Cassin in arguing that, against what Derrida suggests, Arendt can in
fact be enlisted as an ally in his resistance to a view of language that
elevates the mother tongue.