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“Please show me / Where the language will go down”, the Yiddish poet Avrom Sutzkever anxiously asked. Questions surrounding the potential disappearance of Yiddish resonate far and wide, in literary works, personal testimonies, social dynamics, and psychoanalytical inquiries in a range of other languages. The studies gathered in this volume all point at the resulting linguistic confusion as a symptom of historical trauma, singularly combining intimate resonances and collective experiences. They also argue for the necessity to sketch out new ways of thinking about interactions among languages as an essential moment of reckoning with historical tragedies and a productive step towards a more nuanced understanding of issues of multi-culturalism and plurilingualism as an essential feature of our times.
“Please show me / Where the language will go down”, the Yiddish poet Avrom Sutzkever anxiously asked. Questions surrounding the potential disappearance of Yiddish resonate far and wide, in literary works, personal testimonies, social dynamics, and psychoanalytical inquiries in a range of other languages. The studies gathered in this volume all point at the resulting linguistic confusion as a symptom of historical trauma, singularly combining intimate resonances and collective experiences. They also argue for the necessity to sketch out new ways of thinking about interactions among languages as an essential moment of reckoning with historical tragedies and a productive step towards a more nuanced understanding of issues of multi-culturalism and plurilingualism as an essential feature of our times.