About the Book
Just as speech can be acquired, so can it be lost. Speakers can forgetwords, phrases, even entire languages they once knew; over the course of timepeoples, too, let go of the tongues that were once theirs, as languages disappearand give way to the others that follow them. In Echolalias, Daniel Heller-Roazenreflects on the many forms of linguistic forgetfulness, offering a far-reachingphilosophical investigation into the persistence and disappearance of speech. Intwenty-one brief chapters, he moves among classical, medieval, and modern culture, exploring the interrelations of speech, writing, memory, and oblivion.Drawing hisexamples from literature, philosophy, linguistics, theology, and psychoanalysis, Heller-Roazen examines the points at which the transience of speech has become aquestion in the arts, disciplines, and sciences in which language plays a prominentrole. Whether the subject is Ovid, Dante, or modern fiction, classical Arabicliterature or the birth of the French language, structuralist linguistics or Freud'swritings on aphasia, Heller-Roazen considers with clarity, precision, and insightthe forms, the effects, and the ultimate consequences of the forgetting of language.In speech, he argues, destruction and construction often prove inseparable. Amongpeoples, the disappearance of one language can mark the emergence of another; amongindividuals, the experience of the passing of speech can lie at the origin ofliterary, philosophical, and artistic creation.From the infant's prattle to thelegacy of Babel, from the holy tongues of Judaism and Islam to the concept of thedead language and the political significance of exiled and endangered languagestoday, Echolalias traces an elegant, erudite, and original philosophical itinerary, inviting us to reflect in a new way on the nature of the speaking animal whoforgets.