The Subject As Abject in Postmodern Memoir

Reviving the Vanishing Subject: The Subject as Abject in Postmodern Memoir by Susan Rich A Thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies of The University of Manitoba in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Department of English, Film and Theatre University of Manitoba Winnipeg Copyright © 2017 by Susan Rich Abstract ........................................................................................................................... i Acknowledgements ....................................................................................................... ii Dedication ..................................................................................................................... iii Chapter I: Introduction ................................................................................................. 1 Chapter II: The Sign of Cancer: Bodily Identity in Lucy Grealy’s Autobiography of a Face ......................................................... 25 Chapter III: Foreign Familiars: The Self as Abject Foreign in Suniti Namjoshi’s Goja: An Autobiographical Myth ..................................... 57 Chapter IV: Birth by Death Drive: Literary Immortality in Vladimir Nabokov’s Speak, Memory ............................................................... 86 Chapter V: Speaking in Other Tongues: Substituting the Author Through Prosopopoeia in Robert Kroetsch’s A Likely Story: The Writing Life ................................... 119 Chapter VI: An Inherited Self: The Self as Family in Michael Ondaatje’s Running in the Family ................................................... 159 Chapter VII: Conclusion ........................................................................................... 197 Bibliography .............................................................................................................. 211 i ABSTRACT My dissertation contemplates rhetorical and ontological problems of self- representation in twentieth century postmodern memoir. Many postmodernists contend the self merely deteriorates amid the fallibility of memory, instabilities of ‘truth’, a Lacanian notion of language as inexpressible of the self, and a subjectivity so multiplicitous and constructed that it is impossible to write. Yet Julia Kristeva’s psychoanalytic notion of abjection – a dialectical process that simultaneously dismantles and reinforces the self – illuminates postmodern autobiographical subjectivity as ultimately revived through literary self-alienation. As such a process of abjection, postmodern autobiography thus involves reconstruction amid deconstruction – wherein a “weight of meaninglessness . crushes me” (Kristeva Powers 2) while also ensuring “that ‘I’ does not disappear in it but finds, in . sublime alienation, a forfeited existence” (Kristeva Powers 9). This approach resituates the genre as an ethical form of heteroglossic self-renewal, wherein the recognition of self-as-other facilitates an ethical engagement with community in an increasingly pluralistic world. Postmodern autobiography is thus revealed as a relevant, productive space of renewal despite its own claims of futility. I focus on five exemplars of postmodern autobiography – texts written by Lucy Grealy, Suniti Namjoshi, Vladimir Nabokov, Robert Kroetsch, and Michael Ondaatje – to demonstrate how a view of postmodern autobiography as abject translates across such diverse social constructs as nation, gender, diaspora, physicality, memory, class, and the family. ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank my advisor, Dr. Warren Cariou, for his insight, guidance, mentorship, and enthusiasm. I am honoured to have worked with such a great scholar and truly decent person. I am very grateful for the University of Manitoba’s Duff Roblin Fellowship Program, the Centre for Creative Writing and Oral Culture’s C. D. Howe Foundation Fellowship in Creative Writing, as well as its Dr. Vernon B. Rhodenizer Graduate Scholarship for generous financial support throughout my PhD studies. I am indebted to the University of Manitoba Faculty of Graduate Studies and, in particular, to the very fine faculty and staff members at the University of Manitoba’s Department of English, without whose encouragement and support this dissertation could never have been completed. Dr. Glenn Clark and Anita King – special thanks for all your masterful, kind efforts. Thank you to my family and friends (including the little woodland creatures I would feed during study breaks), who sustained me in moments of stress and lost faith. And to Brad – a steadfast presence of love and inspiration. I couldn’t ask for a better brother. Finally, I must thank my husband, Jim Willows. Your hockey anecdotes, Curb Your Enthusiasm recaps, and boundless love helped me find my way through many a dark forest. Thank you, with all my heart. iii DEDICATION For Jim, without whose wisdom, patience, love, good humour, and support of every variety, this project would never have been more than a fleeting wish 1 Chapter I: Introduction Prevalent in the mid to late twentieth century, the postmodern movement significantly altered the literary landscape. Heavily influenced by what Paul Ricoeur considered a “hermeneutics . of suspicion” (30), writers of the postmodern era were skeptical of literary and social presuppositions – of dominant master narratives preserving traditional ideas about such things as class, race, gender, the family, and even language itself. Postmodernists thus unsettled and ‘deconstructed’ conventional ideas of literature in order to invite new interpretations of being, for example by calling into question ideas of ‘truth’ and knowledge, and by favouring uncertainty over conviction (Bertens 142). As Linda Hutcheon explains, “postmodern art asserts and then deliberately undermines such principles as value, order, meaning, control, and identity” (Poetics 5). Such a subversion of literary convention is often characterized in postmodernism through: [an] absence of closure, the question of identity (cast into doubt by doublings, parallels, disappearances), the problematic nature of language, the artificiality of representation, the deconstruction of binary oppositions . and the intertextual nature of texts . which not only sets up echoes in literary history, but can effectively show us the blind spots of earlier texts. (Bertens 142 – emphasis original) 2 In upsetting traditional expectations of literary fidelity, postmodern autobiography1 is of particular interest, since the genre of autobiography is largely expected to be factual. As Roy Pascal explains, “autobiography [i]s the account of the truth of a life” (viii). Though postmodern thought is deeply concerned with ideas of self2– since “postmodernism . takes the form of self-conscious, self-contradictory, self- undermining statement” (Hutcheon 1) – autobiographical authenticity is nevertheless undermined by the movement. Such skepticism about the ‘truth’ of a written self thus raises the question as to whether postmodern autobiography is even possible. Moreover, today’s ‘post-truth’ world suggests a detrimental consequence of postmodernist ideals as less revolutionary than apocalyptic, such that the postmodern autobiographical self may be seen as naively narcissistic or as deconstructed to the point of meaninglessness. To explore and challenge ideas of the postmodern written self, I focus on five exemplars of postmodern autobiography – texts written by Lucy Grealy, Suniti Namjoshi, Vladimir Nabokov, Robert Kroetsch, and Michael Ondaatje – each of whom offers ideas about the autobiographical self from such differing perspectives as the body, the family, postcolonialism, gender, and class. These authors also represent two 1 Throughout my dissertation, I use the terms “memoir” and “autobiography” interchangeably, although they denote different forms of life writing. This is done stricly for ease of reading, since most of the theory upon which I rely refers to postmodern “autobiography” rather than exclusively to “memoir”. Consequently, while my dissertation focuses on works that would be considered “memoir,” I to refer to them often instead as postmodern “autobiography” for the sake of textual fluidity. 2 I use the terms “self” and “subject” interchangeably when referring to autobiographical identity. While philosophical works often differentiate between the terms “self” and “subject” as representational and reflexive aspects of identity (Kockelman 1) – often characterizing the ‘subject’ as an organizing wholeness that encompasses the ‘self’ (A. Watson 1-2) – my dissertation investigates the written self as a textual ‘subject’ (or topic). Specifically, the “I” of autobiography is both the subject of the text and also a written form of the author’s self or personal subjectivity. Consequently, I use the terms “self” and “subject” interchangeably as denoting a written representation of the author. 3 different periods of the postmodern movement. Specifically, Nabokov represents a very early form of postmodernism, with his autobiography influencing many subsequent writers of the postmodern era. In fact, Max Saunders goes so far as to say that “the first major postmodern autobiography was arguably Vladimir Nabokov’s . Speak, Memory: An Autobiography Revisited” (489). Consequently, Nabokov may be seen as setting, rather than following, many postmodern tenets. Indeed, writing at the end of modernism, the author was largely unaware of a nascent postmodern movement, since, “Nabokov was only marginally a contemporary

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