Beyond the Mother Tongue: The Postmonolingual Condition

by Yasemin Yildiz

2014 Honorable Mention in Humanities

Jury Statement (Honorable Mention)

No problem is more crucial for European identity than that of the relationship of the monolingual to the multilingual and the relationship of each to the concept of the nation-state. Yasemin Yildiz’s Beyond the Mother Tongue is a finely-crafted exploration of a group of 20th-century German writers which excitingly recasts how these authors are defined or define themselves in terms of German as a language, revealing how the powerfully affective notion of the “mother tongue” functions for writers as different as Kafka (and Yiddish), Adorno (and the Fremdwort), Tawada (and Japanese), and Zaimoglu (and Turkish). Her studies disrupt a “monolingual paradigm,” showing how multiple our relations with languages can be. Yildiz brilliantly highlights what is at stake, ethically and politically, in the monolingual paradigm and in resistance to it, even where—perhaps especially where—the resistance might simply appear as linguistic playfulness. At stake is whether national identities can come to terms with multilingual realities. All future work will have to take account of her innovative work.