Untying the Mother Tongue Conference //12//5// Berlin Institute for Cultural Inquiry

Hélène Cixous

Notes taken as follows

Perpetual returning of tongues/Mother tongues are a kind of mood/’The delight of painlessly foreigning oneself’/Soul searching states/angst-with willow wisps-prehistoric cities/Dream-Traum-Trauma/Using the word yesterday even when it has been months since the moment was recorded/Spirituality crisis—she can touch it/Fluidly/She can speak of her own experiences while somehow also talking about so many critical ideas and open it up to allow another’s experience and emotion to enter in the moment/’When I go down into languages I am touched/By contact/By rhythm’/I need to derive pleasure from using language/The more we return the more the Subject gains Strength and Power/Inhabiting/ This is a memoir/’These places are so saturated in Phantasms that they are impossible to see/Here everything is lost so let us hold onto the lost.’