THE WOMAN WHO SINGS:

REFLECTIONS ABOUT THE MATERNAL LANGUAGE FROM THE MOVIE INCENDIES

Abstract

"Incendies"  is a 2011 Canadian film produced by the director Denis Villeneuve. After their mother's death, the twins Jeanne and Simon are placed by her - for her speech, for her language that still echoes - in certain positions. They are demanded to assume certain positions in relation to the Other. We take this work as a starting point to develop some reflections about the mother language - a relatively unstable and polysemic notion/concept. Writing from an interlocution between French Discourse Analysis and Psychoanalysis, we seek to answer the following provocation: How does the mother language cross the subjects and collaborate in the construction of subjectivities? More than a research problem, this is a concern that presents itself to us. To answer this question, we have as a general objective to discuss the concept - or notion - of mother language from « Incendies ». As a specific objective, we seek to analyze a possible approximation between mother language and speech - within this filmic work. Based on the literature consulted for the development of this text, we were able to consider at the end of its writing, that the mother tongue affects the subject in an extremely potent way, in a way that other languages ​​do not necessarily do, since this language called mother language, due to the proximity to the mother, brings marks of this singular relationship that never fail to affect the subject. Keywords: Mother language; Cinema; Speech; Psychoanalysis.