(dis)Locations: Language, Autobiography and Identity in Dialogue with Jacques Derrida

Editors: Arvind-Pal Singh Mandair and Pal Ahluwalia

Link: “(Dis)Locations: Autobiography and Identity in Dialogue With Jacques Derrida,” special issue for the journal Social Identities: Journal for the Study of Race, Nation and Culture ed. with Pal Ahluwalia, May 2007

About: Arvind-Pal Mandair provides an Introduction and a major essay to this major edited volume which focuses on Jacques Derrida’s small but important text “Monolingualism of the Other OR The Prosthesis of Origin”.  The essay in this collection address Derrida’s enigmatic statement “I have but one language – yet that language is not mine”. Combining theoretical reflection with historical and cultural specificity, each author analyses her or his own relationship to the idea of the so called “mother tongue” and identity politics.