Echolalias On the Forgetting of Language

Just as speech can be acquired, so can it be lost. Speakers can forget words,phrases, even entire languages they once knew; over the course of time peoples, too, let go of thetongues that were once theirs, as languages disappear and give way to the others that follow them.In Echolalias, Daniel Heller-Roazen reflects on the many forms of linguistic forgetfulness, offeringa far-reaching philosophical investigation into the persistence and disappearance of speech. Intwenty-one brief chapters, he moves among classical, medieval, and modern culture, exploring theinterrelations of speech, writing, memory, and oblivion.Drawing his examples from literature,philosophy, linguistics, theology, and psychoanalysis, Heller-Roazen examines the points at whichthe transience of speech has become a question in the arts, disciplines, and sciences in whichlanguage plays a prominent role. Whether the subject is Ovid, Dante, or modern fiction, classicalArabic literature or the birth of the French language, structuralist linguistics or Freud's writingson aphasia, Heller-Roazen considers with clarity, precision, and insight the forms, the effects, andthe ultimate consequences of the forgetting of language. In speech, he argues, destruction andconstruction often prove inseparable. Among peoples, the disappearance of one language can mark theemergence of another; among individuals, the experience of the passing of speech can lie at theorigin of literary, philosophical, and artistic creation.From the infant's prattle to the legacy ofBabel, from the holy tongues of Judaism and Islam to the concept of the dead language and thepolitical significance of exiled and endangered languages today, Echolalias traces an elegant,erudite, and original philosophical itinerary, inviting us to reflect in a new way on the nature ofthe speaking animal who forgets.