“The Remnant is the Whole”: Collage, Serial Self-Representation, and Recovering Fragments in Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s Dictée
2009; Johns Hopkins University Press; Volume: 40; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
1920-1222
Autores Tópico(s)Asian American and Pacific Histories
Resumoare in an era of simultaneous, of juxtaposition, of near and far, of side-by-side, of scattered. We exist at a moment when world is experiencing, I believe, something less like a great line that would develop through time than like a network that connects points and weaves its skein. Michel Foucault, Different Spaces (175) decapitated forms. Worn. Marred, recording a past, of previous forms. The present form face face reveals missing, absent. Would-be-said remnant, memory. But remnant is whole. Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Dictee (38) Widely accepted as a self-referential text, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha's Dictee (1982) often confounds readers because of its heterogeneous and collaged narrative, its alinear structure, and its resistance traditional generic forms of autobiography. (1) Anne Cheng writes that, while Dictee is often read as Cha's autobiography, is hard pinpoint what it is exactly that makes this text an autobiography, since we are not offered a name or a consistent narrating voice. If anything, this text exhibits a great deal of resistance toward autobiography as a traditional where an author might appear be retrieving or chronicling her life (140; emphasis added). In a similar vein, Serena Fusco suggests that, [i]f Dictee is be considered an autobiographical narrative ... it is at some conditions that definitely enlarge traditional scope of that genre as it straddles across autobiography and biography ... play[ing] with conventions of both genres, blending these conventions with strategies coming from other genres, and moving beyond all of (180). The generic classification of Dictee, along with many other contemporary writing texts, is both complicated and significant ways in which text gets read. Autobiography, Roy Pascal asserts in his foundational work Design and Truth in Autobiography, involves reconstruction of of a life, or of a life, in actual circumstances in which it was lived. Its centre of interest is self, not outside world, though necessarily outside world must appear so that ... personality finds its particular shape (9). (2) The strict focus on self, often at expense of a larger cultural context, is crucial definition of a traditional autobiography. Moreover, as autobiography scholar Georges Gusdorf suggests, author of autobiography tries to reassemble scattered elements of his individual and regroup them in a comprehensive sketch. The of wishes produce his own portrait, but while painter captures only a moment of external experience, autobiographer strains toward a complete and coherent expression of his entire destiny (35; emphasis added). Gusdorf's emphasis on entirety of autobiographer's project is placed in contrast Pascal's position that autobiography can involve either of a life or, simply, of part of a life. And yet, both Pascal and Gusdorf stress that autobiographer moves toward a final moment: present. If writer, as Gusdorf says, is an historian of himself (35), then that author will want move his discussion of self toward present: point at which he is able write autobiography and pen his final thoughts. Pascal asserts that significance of autobiography is more revelation of present situation than uncovering of past. If this present position is not brought home us ... there is a failure (11). The movement in autobiography, then, must be toward present in order illustrate achievements of autobiographer reader and discover, as Pascal writes, the concrete reality of meaning of their life (10). The definitions of autobiography posited by Pascal and Gusdorf, among others, however, do not adequately describe self-referential texts written by many contemporary authors, including Cha's Dictee. …
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