Crossing Oceans, Breaking Memories: Identity, Memory, and Trauma in A Gesture Life

跨越海洋、潰散記憶：《姿態人生》的認同、記憶與創傷

陳淑卿(Shu-Ching CHEN)

《英美文學評論》 38期 (2021/06) Pp. 1-36

https://doi.org/10.6711/REAL.202106_(38).0001

摘要

This article examines the trans-Pacific migrant's practice of remembering in Korean American writer Chang-Rae Lee's A Gesture Life, focusing especially on the traumatic nature of remembering under the circumstances of assimilation and identification. A liminal figure positioned between colonizer and the colonized, victimizer and victim, the novel's protagonist Franklin Hata owns memories of Japanese wartime violence of sexual slavery but is unable to give testimony to such a traumatic history, because his acts of recollection are deeply affected by the national ideologies-those of Japan and the U.S.-he pays loyalty to. Contextualized by the history of Japanese colonization of Korea and that of the Asia-Pacific War, Franklin Hata's double migrations from Korea to Japan and from Japan to America consist of a series of concealment, effacement and transformation, leaving behind the trails of his life journey entombed secrets, unrecognized trauma, and unspeakable shame and guilt. Gesturing toward assimilating into American national community, Hata constantly subjects himself to established narratives that drive him to speak at the expense of the truth of history. This paper seeks to scrutinize Hata's strategies of remembering in connection to the suppressed histories of multiple imperialism in the Pacific. The arguments of this essay consist of two parts. First, I investigate Hata's identification problem by unravelling the traumatic nature of his strategies of recognition as he negotiates among several regimes of power in Asia and America at different junctures of self-development. Second, I scrutinize Hata's intricate processes of remembering the comfort woman K and his stepdaughter Sunny, drawing upon Freudian concepts of memories consisting of resistance, repetition (transference), and working-through and theories of trauma and memories proposed by Linda Belau, Petra Ramadanovic, Cathy Caruth, Jenny Etkins and the like. The novel ends with the return of K's embodied ghost which shatters Hata's structure of memories and opens up a possible future beyond trauma. Reading the novel from the perspective of trauma and memories, I seek to reposition Lee's novel from a nation-oriented Asian American immigrant bildungsroman to a trans-Pacific writing.

關鍵字

memory ； trauma ； identity ； Korean American ； haunting ； trans-Pacific writing

並列摘要

本文討論韓裔美籍作家李昌來（Chang-Rae Lee）的《姿態人生》（A Gesture Life）小說中跨太平洋移民的記憶實踐，特別著重在同化與認同情境下記憶實踐的創傷本質。小說的主人翁秦（Franklin Hata）既是殖民者也是被殖民者，既是加害人也是受害人，他雖然擁有日本皇軍二戰期間對殖民地女性施加性暴力的記憶，卻無法見證這段不堪的歷史，因為他的回憶過程受他所效忠的國家－日本和美國－意識形態所影響。在日本殖民韓國與太平洋戰爭的歷史背景之下，秦一生經歷二次遷移，先是從韓國到日本，再來是從日本到美國，一路行來，他的人生充滿塵封的秘密、未曾被認知的創傷，與無法言說的羞愧與罪惡感。秦一心想進入美國國家社群，屢屢屈從於現成的敘述以講述他的故事，藉此規避無法面對的真相。本文意圖檢視秦的記憶策略，以及他的回憶與太平洋多重帝國的關係。文章分成兩部分，前半部討論秦人生不同階段，面對不同權力結構時所採取的認同策略，以及其創傷本質。後半部採用佛洛伊德及貝勞、拉曼丹諾維克、卡如絲、愛德金等當代理論家對記憶與創傷的理論建構，特別是記憶與身分、以及創傷記憶回復的三階段－抵抗、重複（投射）、與解決，藉以檢視他對韓籍慰安婦K及他的養女桑妮的回憶方式，小說結尾的鬼魂回返促成他原先的記憶結構潰散，帶動他遲來的創傷覺醒，指向一個可以超越創傷的未來。從創傷與記憶的角度閱讀這本小說，我試圖將這本小說由亞美移民成長敘述重新定位為跨太平洋書寫。

並列關鍵字

記憶 ； 創傷 ； 認同 ； 韓美 ； 鬼魂纏祟 ； 跨太平洋書寫

參考文獻

Antze, Paul, and Michael Lambek, eds. Tense Past: Cultural Essays in Trauma and Memory. New York: Routledge, 1996. Print.

Appiah, Kwame Anthony. “Liberalism, Individuality, and Identity.” Critical Inquiry 27.2 (2001): 305-32. Print.

Appiah, Kwame Anthony. The Ethics of Identity. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2005. Print.

Belau, Linda, and Petar Ramadanovic, eds. Topologies of Trauma: Essays on the Limit of Knowledge and Memory. New York: Other Press, 2002. Print.

Caruth, Cathy. Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Narrative, and History. Baltimore, Maryland: The Johns Hopkins UP, 1996. Print.