Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-hc48f Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-28T19:25:07.031Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

7 - The Sea of Language

from Part III - The Second Mother Tongue as a (M)other Tongue and the Return to the Body

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 June 2022

By
Georges-Arthur Goldschmidt
Edited by
Sara Greaves  and
Monique De Mattia-Viviès
Sara Greaves
Affiliation:
Université d'Aix-Marseille
Monique De Mattia-Viviès
Affiliation:
Université d'Aix-Marseille
Get access

Summary

‘The Sea of Language’ is the first chapter of Volume 1 of a two-volume work entitled Quand Freud voit la mer: Freud et la langue allemande (When Freud Sees the Sea: Freud and the German Language). The author, as writer and translator, explores how the founding tenets of Freudian psychoanalysis are not concepts that happen to have been framed in German, but were derived from the way German parts of speech are rooted in the body and thus grounded in the German language itself, which is not a language of abstraction, as French admirers of German philosophy tend to believe, but of the body in space and in motion, a language of the common people going about their everyday life. The author’s study of the essence of German takes him from poetry to philosophy to the ‘ultimate perversity’: the language of the Third Reich, which he briefly envisages as a return of the repressed within the German language, possibly intuited by Freud. Through his analysis of German, he illustrates how the character of a language can lend itself to perverse manipulation and how individuals can find themselves rejected by the Mother tongue that had so far nurtured them.

Keywords

Freudian psychoanalysisGerman languageFrench languageThird ReichMother tonguelanguageHegelphenomenologyWilhelm von HumboldtLeibniz
Type
Chapter
Information
Language Learning and the Mother Tongue
Multidisciplinary Perspectives
 , pp. 123 - 136
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Bertaux, Pierre. Hölderlin ou le temps d’un poète. Paris: Gallimard, 1983.Google Scholar
Dahle, Wendula. Die militärische Terminologie in der Germanistik 1933 bis 1945: Eine sprachliche Analyse. PhD thesis. Berlin: Freie Universität, 1968.Google Scholar
Deligny, Fernand. Les détours de l’agir ou le moindre geste. Paris: Hachette, 1979.Google Scholar
Eichendorff, Joseph von. Ahnung und Gegenwart. In Briegleb, Christiane and Rauschenberg, Clemens (eds.), Sämtliche Werke. Berlin: De Gruyter, [1815] 1984.Google Scholar
Eichendorff, Joseph von. A Translation from German into English of Joseph von Eichendorff’s Romantic Novel Ahnung und Gegenwart (1815). Translated by Mahoney, Dennis and Mahoney, Maria. New York: Edwin Mellen, 2015.Google Scholar
Ferenczi, Sandor. Schriften sur Psychoanalyse: Auswahl in zwei Bänden. Berlin: Fischer Verlag, 1915.Google Scholar
Freud, Sigmund. Gesammelte Werke, 13. Band: Jenseits des Lustprinzips/ Massenpsychologie und Ich-Analyse/ Das Ich und das es. Francfort: Fischer Verlag, 1972.Google Scholar
Goldschmidt, Georges-Arthur. ‘Une forêt et ses lisières’. L’Écrit du temps, n° 2. Paris: Éditions de Minuit, 1982.Google Scholar
Goldschmidt, Georges-Arthur. ‘La langue de Freud’. Le Coq héron, n° 88. Paris: Éditions de Minuit, 1983.Google Scholar
Goldschmidt, Georges-Arthur. ‘Quand Freud entend l’allemand’. Nouvelle Revue de Psychanalyse, n° 34. Paris: Gallimard, 1986.Google Scholar
Goldschmidt, Georges-Arthur. ‘Les détours de la mer’. L’Écrit du temps, n° 14/15. Paris: Éditions de Minuit, 1987.Google Scholar
Hart-Nibbrig, Christian L. Die Aufstehung des Körpers im Text. Berlin: Suhrkamp, 1985.Google Scholar
Hegel, Georg W. F. Phämenologie des Geistes. Clairmont, Heinrich and Wessels, Hans Friedrich (eds.). Hamburg: Felix Meiner, [1807] 1987.Google Scholar
Hegel, Georg W. F. The Phenomenology of the Mind. Translated by Baillie, J. B.. New York: Dover, [1931] 2003.Google Scholar
Hölderlin, Friedrich. Dichter 1800–1804: Sämtliche Werke. Stuttgart: Schmidt, 1953.Google Scholar
Hölderlin, Friedrich. Friedrich Hölderlin: Selected Poems. Translated by Constantine, David. Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Bloodaxe Books, [1990] 1996.Google Scholar
Hölderlin, Friedrich. Friedrich Hölderlin: Selected Poems and Fragments. Translated by Hamburger, Michael. London: Penguin, 1998.Google Scholar
Killy, Walter, and Lämmert, Eberhard. Karl Otto Conrady and Peter von Polenz: Germanistik, eine deutsche Wissenschaft. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1967.Google Scholar
Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm. Unvorgreifliche Gedanken Betreffend die Ausübung und Verbesserung der Teutschen Sprache. Pörksen, Uwe and Schiewe, Jürgen (eds.). Stuttgart: Reclam, [1680] 1983.Google Scholar
Rey, Jean-Michel. Des mots à l’œuvre. Paris: Aubier-Montaigne, 1979.Google Scholar
Rilke, Rainer Maria. Duino Elegies. Translated by Crucefix, Martyn. London: Enitharmon Press, [1923] 2013.Google Scholar
Schaffner, Bertram. Father Land: A Study of Authoritarianism in the German Family. New York: Columbia University Press, 1948.Google Scholar
Winckler, Lutz. Studie zur gesellschaftlichen Funktion faschistischer Sprache. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1977.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×