The conference Untying the Mother Tongue intends to re-think affective and cognitive attachments to language by deconstructing their metaphysical and colonialist presuppositions. If traditional constructions of a monolingual speaker, a pure "mother tongue" reveal the ideology of the European nation-state, then today's celebration of multilingual competencies simply reflects the rise of global capitalism and its demand for transnational labor markets. French poststructuralist thought has problematized the notion of a "mother tongue" by dividing it into two discrete elements-the "maternal" and the "linguistic"--And by exposing their metaphysical and colonialist presuppositions. Can something be salvaged of the notion of a mother tongue? What are the remains, traces, or vestiges of a language no longer directly tied to the mother yet resounding with a maternal echo and at the same time manifesting itself as a primary idiom with respect to its affective and aesthetic dimensions? This "residual notion" of a mother tongue supposes that language is indeed a basic human need (like food, shelter, or clothing), since it provides an indispensible access to a symbolic dimension shaping affectivity and knowledge.