Philosophy’s Mother Envy

Abstract

This essay approaches the problem of untying the mother tongue using Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe’s critique of onto-typology, along with the concept of the outre-mère (the ‘beyond-mother’), a limit-figure he and Jean-Luc Nancy devised in their critical assessments of psychoanalysis and its relationship to politics and the problem of mimesis. The essay argues that it will not be possible to deconstruct the figure of the mother tongue, or to untie ourselves from it, as long as we leave unquestioned both the theoretical dependence on figuration and our affective tie (Gefühlsbindung) to theory.