Language as fractured home. A postcolonial reading of linguistic paradox in return adoptees’ literacy practices

This discussion explores the linguistic paradox in adult adoptees reconnecting with their first socio-linguistic communities. We raise theoretical reflections about return adoptees proficient in the second (adoptive) language and encountering a deficiency in their first language. We build on the work of Gayatri Chakrabarty Spivak to chart a postcolonial perspective on language as a fractured home. We deploy Spivak’s ‘enabling violation’ and ‘learning from below’ as theoretical grounds to theorise the return adoptee’s intersecting proficiency and deficiency. As a vast majority of adoptees are expatriated from subaltern and disenfranchised families, the return adoptee’s literacy practices entangle with the asymmetry between Global North and Global South. The deficiency in their first language obstructs their ability to listen and learn with their first socio-linguistic community. Furthermore, proficient in a colonial language, the power of their words risks silencing the first world and contributing to a reproduction of the asymmetrical world order. Yet, if the return adoptees manage to ‘learn from below’ and engage in the practice of translating between the first and adoptive world, they are potentially subversive subjects in the rehabilitation of their first families’ political agency. This notion requires critical literacy research and critical adoption studies to further engage with the intricacies of language and dialogue in return adoptees’ literacy practices.