Overview

The Exile of Language uncovers early twentieth-century German-Jewish thinkers such as Fritz Mauthner, Gustav Landauer, Margarete Susman, Franz Rosenzweig, and Walter Benjamin. Their sceptical and diasporic approach to language challenges traditional notions of national belonging, offering fresh insights into the dynamic interplay of identity and community.

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Reviews

""Libera Pisano’s The Exile of Language is a theoretically sophisticated and rhetorically nuanced study of German-Jewish thought from the vantage point of linking the linguistic crisis and the diasporic philosophy of language. In the poignant image of gypsy literature, coined by Kafka, the reader is encouraged to walk the tightrope between the sometimes conflictual poles of the Jewish heritage and the German language. Pisano provides a bridge that connects what must remain disparate: on the one hand, a fundamental skepticism regarding the autochthonous efficacy of language, and, on the other hand, the inevitable role accorded language as the pathway that leads to a homeland freed from the idolatry of a crude nationalist affiliation. The symbiotic and yet bifurcated relationship of Jew and German, deftly explored by Pisano, opens the door to a deeper philosophical understanding of the exilic gesture of being at home in the solitude and forsakenness of one’s homelessness. In what is arguably a timely message for this perilous historical moment, the conception of the Jewish diaspora, elicited from the German-Jewish writers discussed in this book, offers a concept of Heimat that is not bound by spatial territory but is rather a mode of cultural-linguistic belonging without the propriety of ownership. Exile in the particularity of the Jewish tradition thus becomes indexical of the universal state of humanity, a sense of redemption too often concealed by the duplicitous obscuration of the modern nation-state. Far from being an impediment, the homelessness of the Jew may serve as the utopian antithesis to the toxic enrootedness of a vulgar geopolitical nationalism."" - Elliot R. Wolfson, Marsha and Jay Glazer Chair of Jewish Studies Emeritus, University of California, Santa Barbara ""This brilliant work is a unique contribution to the knowledge of the elective affinities between a group of German-Jewish philosophers: Fritz Mauthner, Franz Rosenzweig, Margarete Susman, Gustav Landauer, and Walter Benjamin. Despite their obvious differences, they share a diasporic philosophy of language, inspired by an “anti-bourgeois” impulse, and a deep rejection of the idolatry of the nation. Libéra Pisano discovered a hidden chapter of the intellectual history of Jewish-German thought.” - Michael Löwy, Emeritus Research Director CNRS, Paris ""In this book, Libera Pisano has produced a work of brilliance, but even more than that, of importance. In this exposition of German Jewish thought on language and nation and Jewish resistance to linguistic autochthony, Pisano manages to produce the most useful work for reimagining the nexus between nation and state and the grounds for driving a wedge between them. I was particularly thrilled by the chapter on Gustav Landauer, who, it seems, had unbeknownst to me anticipated my own thought on these matters by well over a century and not surprisingly done it better. I would conclude, therefore, that Pisano’s is a necessary book for anyone considering Jewish future and indeed the future of all peoples at this moment of danger."" - Daniel Boyarin, Taubman Professor Emeritus of Talmudic Culture at the University of California, Berkeley

Author Information

Libera Pisano is currently a research associate at the IFILNOVA (Nova Institute of Philosophy) at Nova University Lisbon. She has authored numerous essays on the role of language and politics in contemporary German and German-Jewish philosophy.

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