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Linguistic Vagabondage: The Driving Force in Jacques Poulin's Volkswagen Blues

MOVING across the world, the nomad carries his home in his native language. But, if he were to lose his language or if it were replaced, would he sever himself from his home? Drawing on this new language, could he create a new notion of self, and subsequently a new identity? For the exiled, language may bridge “the unhealable rift [...] between the self and its true home,” described by Edward Saïd (49). While language can operate as a link to an idyllic personal past and a concrete notion of identity, it risks tying the speaker to a predetermined concept of self. In fact, this view of language does not take into account the heterogeneous blending of language and culture that one encounters on the transcontinental journey depicted in Jacques Poulin’s Volkswagen Blues. Here, Poulin explores the rapport between language and identity that emerges from the collusion of Anglophone and Francophone cultures in North America calling into question the notion of a homogeneous self derived from language. This study explores the ambiguous rapport between language and identity in Volkswagen Blues examining the use of English by otherwise Francophone characters within the context of Jacques Derrida’s conception of the otherness of language developed in Le Monolinguisme de l’autre. Far from innocent, the choice of English is not merely a pragmatic recourse to the langue vehiculaire described by Deleuze and Guattari in Kafka : Pour une littérature mineure (43), but a violent refusal of a past that has become unrecognizable. Derrida explains that while the impossibility of possessing language permits the discourse between belonging and language, it becomes necessary to combat these ideologies in order for language to function properly (121). The transient nature of language described by Derrida reveals