On (m)other tongues and (m)othered languages

The seminar On (m)other tongues and (m)othered languages inaugurates the series of events Matter of Language and its main purpose is to occasion discussion and reflection on the notions of maternity and nativity in language, drawing insights from philosophy, linguistic and cultural theory. Special focus will be given to the relationship between mother tongue and its implicit, excluded or homogenised otherness. The notion of mother tongue entails a relationship with what is necessarily its linguistic other, i.e. othered languages that stay outside the boundaries or other languages whose voices within the language have to be silenced to not disrupt the presumed fluency of an authentic immediacy. What exactly protects and reproduces the intimate place of mother tongues? How is otherness produced in language through the establishment of mother tongues? How historical construction of the motherly attachment to language depends exactly on the way the otherness is perceived and experienced? And what occurs when the mother tongue itself becomes an otherness, appearing even in an estranged or alienated form? This seminar will explore these questions, even though it will not be limited to them, in order to frame potential conceptual pathways arising within the notion of mother tongue, and in this way to address the issue of material (re)production of language practices: a/the matter of language.

10.00-12.30

DILEF (Sala Orbatello), Via della Pergola 60

Introduction

Saša Hrnjez (Firenze)

Oltre la lingua madre? Riflessioni sul multilinguismo e l´identità linguistica/

Beyond the Mother Tongue? Reflections on Multilingualism and Linguistic Identity/

Rainer Guldin (Lugano/Vienna)

Speech As Labor and Standardization as a Mechanism of Linguistic Regimes of Capitalist Nation-States

Nina Čolović (Zagreb)

14.30-17.00

DILEF (Sala Orbatello), Via della Pergola 60

Languages: Between Digital Mortality and Vernacular Survival

Boris Buden (Berlin/Vienna)

Diasporic Languages. Translation in German-Jewish Thought/ Lingue diasporiche. Traduzione nel pensiero ebraico-tedesco.

Libera Pisano (Lisbona)

19.00-21.30

Murate Art District, Piazza delle Murate

Strangers in Mother Tongues. Arabic-Hebrew Stories

Yaël Lerer (Paris) in conversation with Maria Nadotti (Milano)

Sayed Kashua (Boston)

The event is organized within LANGEST project CUP: B83C22006370007

For information: [email protected]