An Ethico-ontological Testimony and Ontological Signs in Obasan

( Dae Joong Kim ) 한국현대영미소설학회 2014 현대영미소설 Vol.21 No.3

This paper on Joy Kogawa`s Obasan analyzes three different ethico-ontological series of signs?animal signs, dream/memory signs, and ontological sign of death. Kogawa`s Obasan denies the conventional realistic representation of testimonial literature about concentration camps where Japanese Canadians were interned during WWII and rather presents figurative images of animal, dream, and memory that poetically illustrate universal violence and trauma. In this paper, it is argued that true testimony is not a realistic representation of historical atrocity but a poetic representation of the truth of violence and its images (signs). Influenced mostly from Deleuzian idea of art sign, this analysis focuses on the animal cry from the female protagonist`s mother, and its ethico-ontological meaning in an aesthetic context. The paper begins with exploration of animal signs that converge into an allegory of victims and predators which in turn reflects power structures and their political hierarchies. Then, after delving into memory signs envisioning future, it is maintained that in Obasan the reiteration of dream signs leads to the collective memory of history, expanding personal trauma into the historical trauma of war and international violence. The animal cry and the animal signs in conjunction with the signs of the dead and the dream/memory signs in Obasan testify to the ontological truth of humanity in aesthetic, artistic ways to amplify the novel`s contemporaneity, urgency, and universality. Plus, ontological signs illuminate ontological mood of shame and love with which Obasan avoids mere representation of historical atrocity but help maximize readers` sensitivities to art signs emerging from the thin line between humanity and inhumanity. This is true force of aesthetic testimony in Obasan.

An Ethico-ontological Testimony and Ontological Signs in Obasan

김대중 한국현대영미소설학회 2014 현대영미소설 Vol.21 No.3

This paper on Joy Kogawa’s Obasan analyzes three different ethico-ontological series of signs—animal signs, dream/memory signs, and ontological sign of death. Kogawa’s Obasan denies the conventional realistic representation of testimonial literature about concentration camps where Japanese Canadians were interned during WWII and rather presents figurative images of animal, dream, and memory that poetically illustrate universal violence and trauma. In this paper, it is argued that true testimony is not a realistic representation of historical atrocity but a poetic representation of the truth of violence and its images (signs). Influenced mostly from Deleuzian idea of art sign, this analysis focuses on the animal cry from the female protagonist’s mother, and its ethico-ontological meaning in an aesthetic context. The paper begins with exploration of animal signs that converge into an allegory of victims and predators which in turn reflects power structures and their political hierarchies. Then, after delving into memory signs envisioning future, it is maintained that in Obasan the reiteration of dream signs leads to the collective memory of history, expanding personal trauma into the historical trauma of war and international violence. The animal cry and the animal signs in conjunction with the signs of the dead and the dream/memory signs in Obasan testify to the ontological truth of humanity in aesthetic, artistic ways to amplify the novel’s contemporaneity, urgency, and universality. Plus, ontological signs illuminate ontological mood of shame and love with which Obasan avoids mere representation of historical atrocity but help maximize readers’ sensitivities to art signs emerging from the thin line between humanity and inhumanity. This is true force of aesthetic testimony in Obasan.

Chronotope of Congregation in Joy Kogawa’s Obasan

김대중 한국중앙영어영문학회 2013 영어영문학연구 Vol.55 No.1

In this paper, analyzing Obasan written by Joy Kogawa, a Japanese Canadian, I, as an endeavor to get over the binary system of articulation and silence, argue that Obasan dialectically goes beyond contradiction between silence and articulation. Methodologically, I use Walter Benjamin’s explanation of storyteller and storytelling as well as Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s philosophical idea of inter-subjectivity. Meanwhile, I discover that death, reminiscence, mourning and healing are central themes of the novel that constitutes a totality of the novel, the chronotope of congregation. There are four narratives in Obasan: aunt Obasan’s silence, Aunt Emily’s political articulation, Naomi’s contradictory narrative, and narrative of Naomi’s mother. In Obasan, chronotope of congregation embedding storytelling connotes complex poetic relations within the totality of commonplaces which include dialogic, heteroglossic, and intersubjective relations as well as eco-imagery and the healing ritual form. Besides, the narratives in Obasan reveal four aspects: corporeality of narratives; death as the center of the chronotope; the spider web structure within chronotope that interweaves stories (narratives) not in a harmonious but dialectical way; and discovering truth via Naomi’s active listening to her mother’s truthful stories.

Chronotope of Congregation in Joy Kogawa’s Obasan

Kim, Dae-Joong 한국중앙영어영문학회 2013 영어영문학연구 Vol.55 No.1

In this paper, analyzing Obasan written by Joy Kogawa, a Japanese Canadian, I, as an endeavor to get over the binary system of articulation and silence, argue that Obasan dialectically goes beyond contradiction between silence and articulation. Methodologically, I use Walter Benjamin’s explanation of storyteller and storytelling as well as Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s philosophical idea of inter-subjectivity. Meanwhile, I discover that death, reminiscence, mourning and healing are central themes of the novel that constitutes a totality of the novel, the chronotope of congregation. There are four narratives in Obasan: aunt Obasan’s silence, Aunt Emily’s political articulation, Naomi’s contradictory narrative, and narrative of Naomi’s mother. In Obasan, chronotope of congregation embedding storytelling connotes complex poetic relations within the totality of commonplaces which include dialogic, heteroglossic, and intersubjective relations as well as eco-imagery and the healing ritual form. Besides, the narratives in Obasan reveal four aspects: corporeality of narratives; death as the center of the chronotope; the spider web structure within chronotope that interweaves stories (narratives) not in a harmonious but dialectical way; and discovering truth via Naomi’s active listening to her mother’s truthful stories.

차별적 인종화와 디아스포라의 역사적 외상 ―조이 코가와의 『오바상』

김미령 ( Miryung Kim ) 21세기영어영문학회 2017 영어영문학21 Vol.30 No.1

This paper explores differential racialization, diaspora, and historical trauma in Canada in Joy Kogawa`s Obasan. Canadian multiculturalism has been an integral part of the national identity, and the Canadian government has suggested that this multiculturalism is the heritage of tolerance in Canadian history. However, Joy Kogawa, as an ethnic minority writer, rebuts the contention by rewriting the Japanese-Canadian community`s history, which had been silenced and erased in official Canadian history. Obasan presents how white-oriented society has enforced differential racialization and institutional racism. Since Japanese people first immigrated, white Canadians considered them as a `lower order of people.` However, they were also afraid of `Yellow Peril.` Their ambivalent emotion towards Japanese-Canadians took the form of evacuation. Obasan focuses on the evacuation, internment, and diaspora of Japanese-Canadians during World War II. To heal the historical and community trauma, Kogawa presents Naomi, whose hybridity allows her to understand both Canadian and Japanese culture. Obasan insists ethnic minorities have to remember and face history to overcome and heal the disasters in the past.

역사와 침묵 : 코가와의 소설을 한국인의 시각에서 읽기 Reading Joy Kogawa's Novels from a Korean Viewpoint

민태운 한국현대영미소설학회 2003 현대영미소설 Vol.10 No.1

Kogawa's novels, such as Obasan and Itsuka, powerfully portray a time of racist discrimination against Japanese Canadians during and after World War Ⅱ. Canadians once read Obasan with shame, but now perhaps as a novel of national healing. The readers of Japanese ancestry, on the other hand, see in the novel the sad proof that Japanese ethnic culture is being diluted. Thus it seems that where a reader stands determines what he/she sees in the novels. Koreans stand in a special position, since Korea was under the domination of Japan during the same period while Japanese Canadians suffered from racism. This study is an attempt to examine the novels from a Korean point of view. Japanese-Canadians wish to be seen only as “Canadians,” and hide their ethnic identity, even though they dwell in the hyphen between Japanese and Canadian. Emily, for example, insists that even Momotaro, a traditional Japanese tale, is a Canadian story. This imperialistic story, told by mother to daughter every night is part of the Japanese culture handed down to the new generation. Korean readers, who can associate this story with Japan's colonization of the Korean peninsula, cannot see it as anything other than a Japanese story. It is interesting to see that Emily, who protests against racism in Canada, keeps silent about the Japanese atrocities in Japan's colonized lands. And it is ironic for Korean readers to find that her accusations against Canada are the very ones Koreans have made against Japan. Emily knows about her sister's disfigurement by atomic bomb in Nagasaki, and her later death, but keeps silent about the truth, because her sister (Naomi's mother) asks her “not to tell” about it. Together with Obasan, she conspires to tell Naomi only her sister's idealized version. Naomi's mother is representative of her Japanese origin and, by extension, Japanese history. Her mother's destiny parallels Japan's, and her aunt (Emily) hides the ugly face of her mother and motherland. Thus Naomi even idealizes her mother as a “martyr” of the atomic bomb. The bomb is nothing but destructive and inhuman for them; but, for Koreans it brings about their liberation from the inhuman domination of the Japanese empire. This is evidenced by Richard E. Kim's novel, Lost Names, which covers almost the same period as Obasan. Koreans can be resisting readers by asserting themselves against the control of the text. Their resistance to the authorial sensibilities of a Japanese Canadian can open a new perspective on the work, and thus help widen the horizon of interpretation of Kogawa's novels.

The Coming-of-Age Narrative of Confessional Healing in Joy Kogawa`s Obasan

( Chang Hee Kim ) 한국현대영미소설학회 2015 현대영미소설 Vol.22 No.2

Kogawa’s Obasan is a bildungsroman that portrays the narrator Naomi Nakane’s transformation in the wake of her clan’s internment during WWII. Naomi reaches adulthood, in a manner that she changes from an infantile and silent Japanese subject, traumatized by the mysterious absence of her mother as well as her wartime experiences, to a “healthy” Canadian subject. Naomi’s coming of age, as a result, is accompanied by a growing pain, a racial injury and grief that she pays for, while fleshing out a new Canadian subjectivity in exchange for the memory of her “skeleton” mother.” Indebted to Anne A. Cheng’s theory of racial melancholia, this paper shows that the first step towards curing Japanese Canadians’ racial injury is to be able to recognize that they themselves are disciplined to be invisible and silent vis-a-vis white authority, thus allowing them to regain their voice and to reclaim their national identity as Japanese CANADIANs rather than JAPANESE Canadians.

We Are the Country: Rethinking Race, Nation, and Multiculturalism in Canada through Joy Kogawa’s Obasan

Lee, Yoo-Hyeok 한국중앙영어영문학회 2020 영어영문학연구 Vol.62 No.1

This paper revisits some aspects of Joy Kogawa’s Obasan to discuss the cultural politics of race, nation, and multiculturalism in Canada in the context of post 9/11. Her literary representation of Japanese Canadians’ interment experiences during WWII reveals the silenced and forgotten history of racial discrimination that emerged in the form of racism masquerading as nationalism in Canadian history. Notably, Kogawa tries to do so in close relation to her own contemporary racial discrimination minorities including Japanese Canadians confront on a daily basis after WWII until she publishes her novel in 1981. Furthermore, this paper rethinks race, nation, and multiculturalism in Canada through Kogawa’s Obasan, in close relation to the cultural politics of post 9/11. It is because the cultural and political topography of racial politics in post 9/11 era in Canada can also be characterized as the return of racism masquerading as nationalism. By analyzing these two similar forms of racism, this paper questions the official, mainstream discourse of Canadian multiculturalism and argues that the ideal of what Cecil Foster calls “genuine multiculturalism,” the ideal that “all citizens are genuinely equal and share the same rights and privileges,” is often cherished and pursued by those on the margin.

We Are the Country: Rethinking Race, Nation, and Multiculturalism in Canada through Joy Kogawa’s Obasan

이유혁 한국중앙영어영문학회 2020 영어영문학연구 Vol.62 No.1

This paper revisits some aspects of Joy Kogawa’s Obasan to discuss the cultural politics of race, nation, and multiculturalism in Canada in the context of post 9/11. Her literary representation of Japanese Canadians’ interment experiences during WWII reveals the silenced and forgotten history of racial discrimination that emerged in the form of racism masquerading as nationalism in Canadian history. Notably, Kogawa tries to do so in close relation to her own contemporary racial discrimination minorities including Japanese Canadians confront on a daily basis after WWII until she publishes her novel in 1981. Furthermore, this paper rethinks race, nation, and multiculturalism in Canada through Kogawa’s Obasan, in close relation to the cultural politics of post 9/11. It is because the cultural and political topography of racial politics in post 9/11 era in Canada can also be characterized as the return of racism masquerading as nationalism. By analyzing these two similar forms of racism, this paper questions the official, mainstream discourse of Canadian multiculturalism and argues that the ideal of what Cecil Foster calls “genuine multiculturalism,” the ideal that “all citizens are genuinely equal and share the same rights and privileges,” is often cherished and pursued by those on the margin.

The Coming-of-Age Narrative of Confessional Healing in Joy Kogawa’s Obasan

김창희 한국현대영미소설학회 2015 현대영미소설 Vol.22 No.2

Kogawa’s Obasan is a bildungsroman that portrays the narrator Naomi Nakane’s transformation in the wake of her clan’s internment during WWII. Naomi reaches adulthood, in a manner that she changes from an infantile and silent Japanese subject, traumatized by the mysterious absence of her mother as well as her wartime experiences, to a “healthy” Canadian subject. Naomi’s coming of age, as a result, is accompanied by a growing pain, a racial injury and grief that she pays for, while fleshing out a new Canadian subjectivity in exchange for the memory of her “skeleton” mother.” Indebted to Anne A. Cheng’s theory of racial melancholia, this paper shows that the first step towards curing Japanese Canadians’ racial injury is to be able to recognize that they themselves are disciplined to be invisible and silent vis-à-vis white authority, thus allowing them to regain their voice and to reclaim their national identity as Japanese CANADIANs rather than JAPANESE Canadians.