Beyond the Mother Tongue

Identifies the idea of monolingualism as a modern European invention dating to the 18th century that functions to obscure the widespread nature of multilingualism. Analyses the tension between multilingual practices and the monolingual paradigm in 20th century literature through the German writings of Kafka, Adorno, Tawada, Özdamar, and Zaimoglu.

Yasemin Yildiz is Associate Professor of German and Conrad Humanities Scholar at the University of Illinois.