Thesis Format
Monograph
Degree
Doctor of Philosophy
Program
Comparative Literature
Supervisor
Roulston, Christine
2nd Supervisor
Ma, Jia
Affiliation
York University
Joint Supervisor
Abstract
Grand narratives of history are sublime histories that espouse the masculine perspective, celebrate victors as makers of history, and champion the superiority of reason. Women are denied a voice and place in these histories. In my doctoral dissertation, I undertake a comparative study from the transnational feminist and new historicist perspectives to explore how contemporary Mainland Chinese and Chinese North American women writers reconstruct the past to speak for women. I argue that these women writers construct alternative histories with the approach of desublimation, as their narratives uphold the female perspective, applaud marginal individuals as subjects of history, and privilege the private, the corporeal, and the irrational; all of these factors are excluded as the other by the sublime, masculine histories premised on rationality, mind, spirit, abstract politics and public space. The alternative histories constructed by the women writers, based on the undeniable presence of otherness, desublimate grand narratives of history. These alternative histories embody the spirit of resistance, as they counter the totality and challenge the closure of dominant histories. They are also histories of redemption because they rescue the marginalized from being forgotten and assign them a place in history. I also argue that the alternative histories constructed by the women writers challenge boundaries, deconstruct hierarchies, and demonstrate distinct characteristics of openness and multiplicity. I use Emmanuel Levinas’ conception of dialogue between the same and the other to propose an ethical dialogue between the two kinds of histories. These alternative histories speak to dominant histories and force them to respond and recognize the alterity, rendering it impossible for the latter to ignore, appropriate, or absorb the other and thereby avoiding violence against the other.
Summary for Lay Audience
In my doctoral dissertation, I undertake a comparative study from the transnational feminist and new historicist perspectives to explore how contemporary Mainland Chinese and Chinese North American women writers reconstruct the past to speak for women. My thesis seeks to explore the following questions: First, for the women writers, what is the relationship between the past and the present, Memory and history? Second, how do the women writers reimagine the past to give women a voice and inscribe them in history as subjects? Third, how can we understand the relationship between the two kinds of history? Revolving around these questions, the thesis is divided into four chapters.
Chapter one discusses the relationship between the past and the present, memory and history. It examines how the women authors in my study reimagine the past by evoking collective memory of matrilineal community with recourse to female individual stories. They foreground what is dismissed as the other in dominant histories, namely female memory and matrilineal stories, in their reconstruction of the past. The deployment of the female perspective and the focus on marginal individuals as subjects of history are the strategies of desublimation that challenge grand narratives. Characterized by the aesthetics of the sublime, grand narratives of history champion reason and dismiss women as associated with what is opposite. Chapters two to four examine how the women writers deploy what is perceived as the other to reason, namely the private, the corporeal, and the irrational, in their reconstruction of history. The private is opposed to the public, the body to the mind, and the irrational to the rational. Through these multiple perspectives, these authors dismantle the superiority of rationality and thereby desublimate grand narratives of history.
My conclusion examines prominent features of the alternative histories constructed by the women writers and discusses the relationship between alternative histories and dominant histories. I argue that alternative histories challenge boundaries, deconstruct hierarchies, and demonstrate distinct characteristics of openness and multiplicity. I also argue that these two kinds of histories do not evolve into a total history; rather, they form a dialogue that precludes the closure of dominant histories.
Recommended Citation
Wang, Hui, "The Other Is Speaking: Aesthetics and Politics of Desublimation in the Reconstruction of the Past by Contemporary Mainland Chinese and Chinese North American Women Writers" (2024). Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository. 10077.
https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/etd/10077