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UC Berkeley UC Berkeley Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title Performing Postcolonial Feminine Identity as Shaman: Building Narrative Bridges Between Two Worlds Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1jp6k3wg Author Lee, Soo Mi Publication Date 2015 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California Performing Postcolonial Feminine Identity as Shaman: Building Narrative Bridges Between Two Worlds by Soo Mi Lee A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Japanese Language in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in charge: Professor Alan Tansman, Chair Professor Daniel C. O’Neill Professor Jiwon Shin Professor Trinh T. Minh-ha Fall 2015 Abstract Performing Postcolonial Feminine Identity as Shaman: Building Narrative Bridges Between Two Worlds by Soo Mi Lee Doctor of Philosophy in Japanese Language University of California, Berkeley Professor Alan Tansman, Chair This dissertation examines the construction of women’s autobiographical voices within literature, particularly those produced for Japanese-reading audiences by Zainichi women. Zainichi typically refers to a specific group of “foreigners” residing in postwar Japan— Korean residents who can trace their diasporic roots to Japan’s colonial rule of Korea (1910-1945). Throughout postwar Japanese history, the Zainichi experience has been a complicated one, as it has been informed by racism in Japan as well as by Japan and Korea’s postwar relationship. My dissertation looks at literary arts produced by Zainichi women, with a special focus on the illocutionary power of autobiographical expression as a means to promote social change and equality in contemporary Japanese society. This dissertation analyzes various trans-medial forms of autobiographical expression utilized by three female authors—Lee Yang-ji (1955-1992), Kim Manri (1953- ) and Yu Miri (1968- ). These women have a particular commonality: in addition to their writing, they are all, or once were, performing artists (Lee a musician/dancer, Kim a performance artist, and Yu a theater actress/playwright). Despite their different choices of media for self-expression as performing artists, they share similarities in that each artist incorporates such non-verbal elements as dance, music, and theater into their written autobiographical narratives. By constructing complex layers of self-representation through a mixture of verbal and non-verbal public performances, they present the “self” as an expression of an in-between, ambiguous identity. Using the diasporic notion of ambivalence in their autobiographical voices, they not only challenge the power of homogenous hierarchies of ethnicity, race, nationality, culture, gender, and class, but also enhance their ability to reach audiences beyond such social differentiation. They have chosen an empowered stance, rather than speaking from the voice of victimhood as the marginalized “Other” of postwar Japanese society. Building on the concept of the art of storytelling for personal and community healing, my dissertation explores the ways in which Zainichi women share their personal life stories with audiences in the context of Korean women’s traditional medium of artistic expression—including shamanism—, producing art as a kind of prayer for social peace 1 and postcolonial reconciliation. Using a shamanic trope in their autobiographical storytelling, the three Zainichi women emphasize the presence of their own physical bodies as mediums or in-between entities in relation to their diasporic existences in postwar Japan—in which they are regarded as neither completely Japanese nor entirely Korean. In constructing an “I” that emerges beyond the limits of either subject or object, Japanese or (Zainichi) Korean, each woman performs a shamanistic identity of her own choosing—an identity that is both personal and collective—through which to speak to the female ancestors she identifies with, through shared hope for social transformation. For the Zainichi women artists that are the focus of my dissertation, autobiographical expression represents a form of prayer that facilitates communication between two worlds—this world and that of the “Other”—thus subverting such artificial boundaries as nationhood, race, ethnicity, class and gender. 2 Table of Contents Introduction: Zainichi Women Artists’ Self-Expressions in Postwar Japan 1 Chapter One: Performing Postcolonial Autobiographical Self as Shaman 10 Writing Selves in the Colonizer’s Language 12 The Feminization of Race: Male-Authored Representation of Zainichi Women as the Other 15 Lee Yang-ji’s Nabi T’aryǒng: Resisting Zainichi Womanhood as the Voiceless Other 17 Writing a Life Story from the Perspective of Death and Dying 21 Darkness, Abjection and Colonial Violence 26 Words that Hurt: Verbal Pain and the Violence of Dominant (Colonial) Language 30 Performing Body Memories, Resisting the Silencing of Female Voices 32 The Power of Hallucinations: Materializing Invisible Violence in the Realm of Performance 38 The Singing Sori of a Butterfly 51 Chapter Two: Presenting Autobiographical Theater as Ritual of Healing 58 Subverting Discourses of Otherness: Performing a Shamanistic Self in In-between Spaces 60 Colonized Others, Fettered Words and Identity: Opening Ears to Voices on the Other Side 65 Women’s Physical Writing Bodies as Trans-generational Mediums 69 Women’s Collective Storytelling Voice of Han as a Space of Healing 78 Chapter Three: Unearthing Autobiographical Memory of Bodies 87 Body as a Site of Transformation: Performing a Borderland, In-Between, and Shamanistic Identity 89 Postcolonial Childhood in the Borderlands 92 i Ideologies of Blood and Body: Modern Japan’s Eugenic Violence toward the Unfit Other 96 Toward Greater Acceptance of Body and Flesh 101 Resisting Total Control: Body in Balancing Acts, Self in Living between Two Worlds 106 Conclusion: The Performance of Ambiguous Belonging, Transformative Self: Toward A New Metaphor for the Borders of Human Culture 107 Bibliography 109 ii Introduction: Zainichi Women Artists’ Self-Expressions in Postwar Japan This dissertation explores the construction of autobiographical voices by three ethnic Korean women artists in Japan: Lee Yang-ji (1955-1992), Kim Manri (1953- ) and Yu Miri (1968- ). As the daughters of Korean parent(s) who immigrated to Japan during Japan’s colonial rule of Korea (1910-1945), these women explore the existential nature of their experiences living in contemporary Japanese society by performing their personal life stories and autobiographical memories through the art of theatre and the written word. Within the creative spaces in which they share their life stories with Japanese- speaking audiences, each woman weaves her artistry through incorporating such non- verbal elements as dance, music and theatre into their written narratives. By constructing complex layers of self-representation through a mixture of various verbal (e.g., both Korean and Japanese languages) and non-verbal public performances—hence making them difficult to define and/or hierarchize in the accepted systems of meaning and knowledge—they deconstruct their “authentic” voices as writers/speakers. In deconstructing while performing the “I” behind the mask of ambiguous identities and voices, they present complex and multifaceted self-portrayals, through which to subvert their audience’s gaze, a gaze that—to these women—reduces their existences to a postcolonial Other. With strong emphasis placed upon the multiplicity of the “self,” rather than conceptualizing individual victimhood as the oppressed “Other,” each woman engages in artistic endeavors to perform reality through her own perceptions and the experiences of her lived/living female body, instead of through the worldview shared by the dominant culture’s collective identity. Using their own performing/writing/speaking bodies as a site of resistance to assimilation into any single political community, they relentlessly challenge the alienating effects of the hegemonic worldview created by the cult of ethnic, cultural, and national purity in Japan, during both the colonial and postcolonial periods. Autobiographical Subversion of the Colonialist Gaze and its Production of the Other Through a close analysis of their exploration of the self and its expression in the light of post-colonial and feminist theories, this research aims to offer a scholarly approach to the various trans-medial forms of autobiographical expression that Lee Yang-ji, Kim Manri, and Yu Miri employ in their work. These women have a particular commonality: in addition to their writing, they are all, or once were, performing artists (Lee a musician/dancer, Kim a performance artist, and Yu a theater actress/playwright). Despite their different choices of media for self-expression as performing artists, they share similarities in that each artist incorporates her nonverbal live performances—such as dancing in front of an audience—into her written autobiographical narratives, with the specific aim of emphasizing the presence of her own physical performing/writing body as a medium of communication among multiple (spoken, written, and gestural) voices, identities and realities. By placing special emphasis on their female bodies as mediums or “in-between” entities in relation to their diasporic existences in postwar Japan, they 1 position their own personal identities and voices in a place of ambiguity,