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
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.