Taking from departure Jacques Derrida and Hannah Arendt's divergent points of view on the cultural role of the mother tongue in totalitarian and democratic contexts, this essay investigates the writings of two poets, Yvan Goll and Eugene Jolas, who both wrote poetry in English during their exiles in New York during the Second World War. The essay analyses how issues of belonging and citizenship are approached in their works through the prism of multilingualism for Jolas, and by challenging mono-referentiality in language and proper names in Yvan Goll's Kabbalistic poetry. The essay investigates how both poets and both thinkers tried to reimagine democracy through the prism of multilingualism or mother-tongue expression in their works.