The Discourse of Absence: A Study of Interethnic dialogues in McCunn's Wooden Fish Songs

• Main Authors: Huang Huiling, 黃惠翎
• Other Authors: Chuang Kunliang
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 1999
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/13458811249338850789

碩士 === 國立臺灣師範大學 === 英語研究所 === 87 === Abstract Wooden Fish Songs can be regarded as a breakthrough of the author’s own literary creation as well as a new vision of Asian American literature. It complicates colonial themes with gender and race issues; what’s more, it widens the scope of Asian American experiences. By juxtaposing voices of different races, McCunn designs the novel into a Bakhtinian system, in which three narratives complement and contradict each other. The three narrators center on a historical figure whose story used to be deliberately forgotten and erased; their witnesses map out the fragmentary history of this diasporic soul. On the other hand, the three female narrators tell stories of their own, which provide historical backgrounds of different peoples in the same age. Their narratives, however, are full of contradictions and paradoxes; the ruptures and disassociations among each discourse manifest the limitation of individual ideology and perspective. By playing on gaps among discourses, McCunn lets the absent texts speak themselves and thus orchestrates the novel into a symphony of stories of absence. The strategic utilization of discourse of absence initiates interethnic dialogues, which in consequence provide a deeper level of exploration for different issues. Drawing on the discourse of absence, this thesis is to explore the author’s critical thinking on such postcolonial themes as fallacies of Orientalism and Western humanism and dilemma of cultural hybridization. It also intends to expose the phallocentric nature of patriarchy which deprives women of subjectivity and their mutual understanding toward each other. The three narrators are seemly singing their own wooden fish songs; but their echoing voices articulate the inarticulate texts in hegemonic cultures. Through the songs of absence, McCunn not only probes for subversive powers of minority discourses against hegemonic cultures but also offers a new perspective to envision Asian American literature.