Identity, Language, and Writing in the Works of Nancy Huston Mary Elizabeth Ku

University of Alberta Immigration and the Cyborg: Identity, Language, and Writing in the Works of Nancy Huston by Mary Elizabeth Kupchenko A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research in partial Mfilhiient of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Comparative Literature Office of Interdisciplinary Studies ©Mary Elizabeth Kupchenko Spring, 2011 Edmonton, Alberta Permission is hereby granted to the University of Alberta Libraries to reproduce single copies of this thesis and to lend or sell such copies for private, scholarly or scientific research purposes only. Where the thesis is converted to, or otherwise made available in digital form, the University of Alberta will advise potential users of the thesis of these terms. 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While these forms may be included Bien que ces formulaires aient inclus dans in the document page count, their la pagination, il n'y aura aucun contenu removal does not represent any loss manquant. of content from the thesis. 1*1 Canada Table of Contents Abstract Introduction 1 Chapter I: Fractured Persons: Identity and the Cyborg 12 Saffie: Maid, Wife and Mother 12 Erra: Multiple Personas 21 Chapter II: Caught between Languages: Speech, Separation and Translation 34 Silence and Speech 35 Separated from Language 40 The Question of Translation 45 Chapter III: The Translingual Voice: Expression and Possibility 54 Translingual Writing 55 Saffie' s New Narrative 62 Erra's New Song 69 Conclusion 76 Works Cited 86 Abstract Nancy Huston's works, fiction and non-fiction, offer perspectives for the examination of immigration, specifically the female experience, of living across and between languages and cultures. An exploration of migrant individuals, utilizing Donna Hara way's cyborg metaphor, reveals situations of lirninality, in which the individual exists poised between various concepts of self. In both The Mark of the Angel and Fault Lines, this space will be explored, with a focus on questions of identity and language. Additionally, the potential of writing, living, and the pursuit of the creative, as a result of the above existent state, will be examined. 1 Introduction It is my intention to examine, in the works of Nancy Huston, the figure of the immigrant in states of division and synthesis. The migrant individual exists poised in a state of liminality, between the world of her past and the world she strives to create. If one examines this figure in Huston's writing, while considering Donna Haraway's concept of the cyborg, the immigrant individual emerges as one in a state of transition across culture and history, progressing through self-established partitions of identity and language and seizing the disparate portions of her self-concept to pursue new opportunities for living, writing, and creativity. Bom in Calgary, Alberta in 1953, Nancy Huston moved to Boston at the age of 15 after the separation of her parents. She studied at Sarah Lawrence College, and after relocating to Paris in 1973, studied at the 1'Ecole des hautes etudes en sciences sociales. There, working under Roland Barthes, she completed her thesis on profanity (later published as Dire et interdire: Elements de jurologie). She currently lives in Paris with her husband, Tzvetan Todorov, and their two children. As a writer, Huston has been prolific. Since 1981. with the publication of her first novel Les variations Goldberg, she has published multiple novels, as well as numerous works of non-fiction including Nord Perdu: suivi de Douze France, Lettres parisiennes: autopsie de 1'exil, and Journal de la creation. Writing primarily in her adopted tongue of French, she has translated many of her texts into English — of her publications, while the majority are original language texts, just under half are self-translated. Her works have garnered critical acclaim; she has received numerous honours, examples of which are the Prix Contrepoint and Prix Femina. She was awarded the Governor General's Award in 1993 for Cantique des Plaines; and was nominated for the Governor General's award in 1997 for Tim Goldberg Variations, as well as in 1998 and 1999 for L 'Empriente de l'ange and The Mark of the Angel, respectively. As well, she has recieved Honorary Doctorates from the Universite de Liege and the University of Ottawa. In 2005, Huston was inducted as an Officer of the Order of Canada. Not all of her honours have been uncontested. Her 1993 receipt of the Governor General's Award for Cantique des Plaines, given for French-language fiction, was considered to be controversial in Quebec as Cantique des Plaines was originally published in English as Plainsong (and in the United States as Paddon 's Song); and as Huston is not French-Canadian. Huston was accused of being "une Albertaine defroquee, une Anglaise recalcitrante qui a renie sa langue matemelle pour epouser le francais" (Petrowski D3). While the prize was, in fact, awarded to Huston upon the assertion that Cantique des Plaines constituted an adaptation, and not a translation (Laurin, Klein-Lataud), the controversy surrounding the honour foregrounds the issue of language in Canada, as well use of canonical literary languages. Huston's acceptance of the award has been utilized by Quebecois critics to call for the creation of Quebecois literary prizes (see Yergeau). Critics have cited the subtext of Cantique des Plaines as privileging Quebecois culture over that of anglophone Canada (Sing 751), and 3 examined questions of translation and voice within the text. Furthermore, explorations of vocal expression within the work itself have revealed how the work "[sings] the aridity of the plain, to condemn the destruction of aboriginal culture, to tell how [...] intellectual aspirations are slowly destroyed by repressive religion and the rough culture of [the] land" (Senior 683). It should be noted, additionally, that in assuming French as her language of choice, Huston deliberately situates herself within one of the canonical idioms of literature. The language of Voltaire, Derrida, Proust, and Flaubert has long been constnicted as the language of universal human reason. As Keisuke Kasuya comments, this is an essential component of the myth of 'la clarte francaise', which establishes French as intrinsically superior to other languages and its resultant ability to civilize the speaker, as promoted by Boileau and Rivarol. In choosing to write in French, Huston associates her work with high culture, and a tradition of literary and critical discourse. Unsurprisingly, questions of writing, language, translation, and identity in the works of Nancy Huston have served as rich fields for examination for literary critics. Her works are viewed as promoting "de-centered, trans-national, polyphonic French literature" (Holmes 87) that seek to engage the reader in an active process of creation (Holmes 91). Her writing examines "female experiences which have remained taboo "(307), in which individual stories gain primacy over history (Sardin 311), almost echoing her thesis on the forbidden, profanity and questions of speech. Questions of identity, the relationship of the self to the Other, have been examined by critics such as Claudine Potvin, 4 Katharine Harrington, and David Bond, who have noted situations of division, doubling and hybridity. Employing the metaphor of the cyborg in "A Cyborg Manifesto: Science Technology and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century," Haraway challenges dualisms established between machine and animal, the crafted and the natural. Dealing specifically with women's experience, Haraway utilizes the figure of the cyborg to dismpt constructions of the feminine - it is a creature of "a post-gender world" (150). Representing a fusion of disparate parts, the cyborg emphasises that "there is nothing about being 'female' that naturally binds women. There is not even such a state as 'being female', itself a highly complex category constructed in contested sexual scientific discourses or other practices" (155). Haraway's cyborg is a refusal of a totalising theory of identity production. The cyborg is a liminal figure, a fusion of disparate and often conflicting parts, an outsider, that can renegotiate and regenerate itself and its own identity.

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