Chapman, Edmund (2023) Language, Soil and "Jewish" Alienation in Levinas and Adorno. Diacritics, 51 (1). pp. 1-33.

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Abstract

Emmanuel Levinas and Theodor Adorno are both post-Shoah philosophers who experienced refugeedom. In different contexts, both discuss the question of a linkage between language and soil, and ultimately show that the distinction between the native and the foreign is untenable. I suggest that Levinas’s evocation of linguistic soil illustrates his understanding of Jewishness as defined by a ceding of ground, thus showing that Levinas’s thought relies on a conception of ground in order to then reject it. Adorno, in evoking a “language without soil,” argues for a conception of language that rejects organicism, seeing both loanwords and Jews as examples of difference without foreignness.

Item Type:	Article
Keywords:	Language; Soil; Jewish; Alienation; Levinas; Adorno;
Academic Unit:	Faculty of Arts & Humanities > School of English, Media & Theatre Studies > English
Item ID:	18360
Depositing User:	Mr Edmund Chapman
Date Deposited:	16 Apr 2024 08:49
Journal or Publication Title:	Diacritics
Publisher:	Johns Hopkins University Press
Refereed:	Yes
Funders:	Irish Research Council
URI:	https://muse.jhu.edu/issue/52278
Use Licence:	This item is available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial Share Alike Licence (CC BY-NC-SA). Details of this licence are available here

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