Language and National Identity in Theodor Adorno and WG Sebald
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City University of New York (CUNY) CUNY Academic Works All Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects 6-2017 The Space of Alterity: Language and National Identity in Theodor Adorno and W.G. Sebald Agata Szczodrak The Graduate Center, City University of New York How does access to this work benefit ou?y Let us know! More information about this work at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/2118 Discover additional works at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu This work is made publicly available by the City University of New York (CUNY). Contact: [email protected] THE SPACE OF ALTERITY: LANGUAGE AND NATIONAL IDENTITY IN THEODOR ADORNO AND W.G. SEBALD by AGATA SZCZODRAK A dissertation submitted to the Graduate Faculty in Comparative Literature in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, The City University of New York 2017 ii ©2017 AGATA SZCZODRAK All Rights Reserved iii The Space of Alterity: Language and National Identity in Theodor Adorno and W.G. Sebald by Agata Szczodrak This manuscript has been read and accepted for the Graduate Faculty in Comparative Literature in satisfaction of the dissertation requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. ______________ _____________________________________________________ Date RICHARD WOLIN Chair of Examining Committee ______________ _____________________________________________________ Date GIANCARLO LOMBARDI Executive Officer Supervisory Committee: Professor Richard Wolin Professor Vincent Crapanzano Professor Caroline Rupprecht THE CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK iv ABSTRACT The Space of Alterity: Language and National Identity in Theodor Adorno and W.G. Sebald by Agata Szczodrak Advisor: Distinguished Professor Richard Wolin The German Romantic monolingual paradigm of national identity emerged in the late eighteenth century to establish a mother tongue as a national backbone. This paradigm portrayed multilingualism as destabilizing, impoverishing, and unsuitable for aesthetics. Radicalized by the Nazis and overlooked in postwar debates over German national identity, this paradigm persists in contemporary societies and continues to conceal, belittle, and discredit multilingualism. To oppose that paradigm, this dissertation unveils the enriching and nourishing qualities of foreign languages, presents translingualism as a viable alternative to monolingualism, and reveals how translingual literature creates transnational connectedness. The limitations of the paradigm are traced from the late eighteenth century to contemporary German literature to show how the German Romantics sacralized the concept of the mother tongue through religious and ethical qualities, and to expose how the exaltation of linguistic purity spreads hostility to foreign languages and fuels violence. Theodor Adorno and W.G. Sebald secularize the notion of the mother tongue and rehabilitate multilingualism. Adorno advocates a philosophical and an aesthetic framework with one language open to foreign expressions, whereas Sebald promotes translingual literature that mixes languages to create transnational bridges. This exploration of foreign tongues in Adorno and Sebald adds an ideological and an aesthetic dimension to the scholarship on their multilingualism and refutes the invocations of linguistic purity. v Acknowledgements This dissertation would not have been possible without the guidance and support from several individuals. I am immensely grateful to my advisor, Richard Wolin, for his mentorship, criticism, patience, and encouragement. Throughout years, he has directed me to invaluable sources and has patiently and thoroughly evaluated numerous papers and drafts of this project. He gave me priceless suggestions, kept encouraging me to trust my intuition, and always took the time to respond to my questions and concerns with courtesy and professionalism. It has been an honor to work with my reader, Vincent Crapanzano. I thank him for his judicious feedback on my project, for directing me to the field of language ideology, and for his unwavering support and generosity with his time. I would like to thank my other reader, Caroline Rupprecht, for serving on my committee and critiquing my work. I am also grateful to Charity Scribner for her feedback on my research. I thank my department for the Doctoral Student Research Grant, and both Deutsches Literaturarchiv in Marbach and Akademie der Künste in Berlin for access to their archival materials. I would like to thank my parents, siblings, and in-laws for their encouragement. I would not have completed this dissertation without my husband. As a token of gratitude for his unswerving support, love, patience, and humor, I dedicate this dissertation to him. vi Table of Contents 1. Introduction ……………………………………………………………………………… 1 2. Chapter 1: The “Sacred” Mother Tongue: Herder and Fichte on Language, Ethics, and Religion ……………………………………………………………………………. 17 3. Chapter 2: Adorno on Linguistic Purity and the Manufacturing of Homogeneity……... 47 Excursus 1: Adorno on Religious Language in Fascist Propaganda ………....………... 81 Excursus 2: Martin Luther and Religious Stigmatization ……………......…………...... 92 4. Chapter 3: Creating Difference: Adorno on Language, Redemption, and Dissonance ................................................................................................................ 97 5. Chapter 4: Spectral Identities and Translingual Subjects in W.G. Sebald’s Austerlitz ..124 6. Chapter 5: Panta Rhei: Translingual Aesthetics in W.G. Sebald’s Austerlitz ............... 167 7. Conclusion ..................................................................................................................... 211 8. Works Cited ................................................................................................................... 221 vii List of Figures Fig. 1. Pegida Banners in Dresden on January 12, 2015. 7 Fig. 2. Pegida Demonstration in Dresden on January 25, 2015. 91 1 Introduction Nationalism today is at once both obsolete and up-to-date. Theodor Adorno, “The Meaning of Working Through the Past” Statement of the Dissertation Problem Contemporary societies invoke the late eighteenth century German Romantic monolingual paradigm of national identity. This paradigm presents a mother tongue as a quasi- sacred foundation of national identity and rejects multilingualism as politically destabilizing, culturally impoverishing, and unsuitable for aesthetics.1 Although radicalized by the Nazis, this paradigm has been neglected in postwar debates over national identity in Germany. As a result, the paradigm continues to conceal, discredit, and misrepresent the value of multilingualism, thereby making our understanding of multilingual cultures inadequate. This dissertation explores how Theodor Adorno and W.G. Sebald, eminent German writers of the twentieth century, oppose the German Romantic monolingual model of national identity. This study shows how they use multilingualism to secularize the notion of the mother tongue sacralized by the German Romantics. The scholarship on Adorno and Sebald has examined their multilingual texts biographically and psychoanalytically, but the relevance of multilingualism to national identity in Adorno and Sebald remains unexplored. This scholarly gap is paradoxical because both writers often contributed to discussions over national identity in postwar Germany. Adorno, a Holocaust survivor who returned to Germany after World War II, sought to debunk Nazi linguistic myths and to foster openness 1 In this dissertation, multilingualism is an umbrella term for the use of Fremdwörter (foreign derivations or borrowings), speaking foreign languages, and translingualism (the mixing of tongues). Fremdwörter are non- Germanic words that have partially assimilated to German but remain recognizable to native speakers as foreign (Yildiz 68). This study employs the term das Fremdwort because the expression “a foreign word” can designate a derivation, a loanword (das Lehnwort), or code switching (inserting a word from another language). A loanword is a borrowing that has fully integrated into German and no longer sounds foreign to native speakers (78). 2 toward foreign languages. His famous statement that Auschwitz had rendered all subsequent writing of poetry barbaric expressed his belief that German required decontamination and revitalization. Sebald, a son of a Nazi soldier, frequently depicted the implications of the Holocaust for postwar generations, portrayed the Nazi linguistic legacy as haunting German, and strove to invigorate German with his literary translingualism that mixes tongues. This dissertation fills the scholarly gap and argues that Adorno and Sebald defy the German Romantic monolingual paradigm of national identity. Adorno endorses a philosophical and an aesthetic framework with one mother tongue open to foreign languages. Sebald, by contrast, promotes translingual literature that mixes tongues to create transnational linguistic and literary bridges. Background The German Romantic monolingual paradigm of national identity glorifies language as a quasi-sacred foundation of a nation, expresses hostility toward multilingualism, and originates in Johann Gottfried Herder. Herder celebrates language as a fundament of a nation (Volk) and as the element that demarcates the nation’s linguistic, cultural, and political territory.2 He describes language as a national treasure and an archive that stores the nation’s history, customs, morals, and culture.3