View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by ELTE Digital Institutional Repository (EDIT) Thesis for the Degree of Doctor Ghosts of Collective Trauma: Magical Realism and Its Cultural Alterations by Eszter Enikő Mohácsi Program of Comparative Literature and Comparative Culture Graduate School Korea University July 2016 권보드래 지도교수 박 사 학 위 논 문 Ghosts of Collective Trauma: Magical Realism and Its Cultural Alterations 이 논문을 문학박사 학위논문으로 제출함. 2016 년 7 월 7 일 고려대학교 대학원 비교문학 비교문화 협동과정학과 Eszter Enikő Mohácsi Approved by the committee of the Graduate School of Korea University, Program of Comparative Literature and Comparative Culture, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Dissertation Committee: Prof. Boduerae Kwon _________________________ _2016.05.31_ Prof. Sang-Kee Song _________________________ _2016.05.31_ Prof. Hyewon Shin _________________________ _2016.05.31_ Prof. Jinil Yoo _________________________ _2016.05.31_ Prof. Woosung Kang _________________________ _2016.05.31_ (name and signature) (date) Program of Comparative Literature and Comparative Culture College of Liberal Arts Korea University Graduate School Table of Contents I. Introduction ......................................................................................... 1 II. Theoretical Background ...................................................................... 10 II.2 Trauma and Its Representation in Literature ......................................... 10 II.2 Magical Realism and Its Politics ............................................................ 29 III. Beloved and the Trauma of Racial Shame ........................................... 50 III.1 The Specter of Rememory .................................................................... 54 III.2 Language as a Communal Resource ...................................................... 72 III.3 Circular Time and the Haunted House Revisited .................................... 90 III.4 Claiming One’s Self: The Reclamation of Lost Identity ......................... 104 III.5 The Novel as an Exorcism ................................................................... 120 IV. The Guest and the Trauma of Violence among Neighbors .................. 135 IV.1 Ghosts of the Victims, Ghosts of the Assaulters ................................... 137 IV.2 The Language of Shamans .................................................................. 154 IV.3 Stuck in Time, in the Land of Division .................................................. 164 IV.4 Identity and Ideology ......................................................................... 180 IV.5 Shamanic Ritual as Narrative Structure ............................................... 196 V. Welcome and the Trauma of Abandonment ...................................... 209 V.1 The Supernatural Signifying Belonging ................................................ 212 V.2 The Language of Anecdotes and Gossip .............................................. 229 V.3 The Magical Space and Time of the Periphery ..................................... 245 V.4 The Identity of the Scapegoat ............................................................. 261 V.5 Personal Exorcism .............................................................................. 278 VI. Conclusion ....................................................................................... 285 Works Cited ............................................................................................. 305 Abstract in English ................................................................................... 323 Abstract in Korean (초록) ......................................................................... 325 i I. Introduction Portraying different kinds of trauma has been undeniably one of the most frequent topics of literary works. Still, only since the end of the nineties has the use of trauma studies in literary criticism gained popularity; especially concerning war trauma, the holocaust, and the literature of post-communist and post-colonial countries. Furthermore, recently trauma as a framework of interpretation has become widely used in gender studies, too, and the trauma of battered women and abused children have become a focus of attention with the strengthening of the women’s movement as well. Alongside this interest of literary studies in trauma, it can be observed that trauma has a central importance in contemporary culture, too: mass media, as well as popular culture, seems obsessed with repeatedly showing traumatic events, and there is also a “preoccupation with family dysfunctions–child abuse, incest, spousal abuse–in the media, most strikingly on the talk show circuit” (Berger 571). Moreover, the history of the twentieth century has been rich in traumatic events. The two World Wars have re-shaped our understanding of warfare, while the invention of the nuclear bomb has completely changed the possible dangers of a new war. The Nazi death camps have traumatized generations to come, and completely changed how humans can think about 1 themselves and humanity as such while also destroying forever the belief in a right, just and logical world. The Cold War, Vietnam, Iraq, the collapse of the twin towers: the Western world seems to live in a constant anticipation of danger since the First World War. The history of Hungary in the twentieth century has also been abundant with traumatic events. After being defeated in both World Wars and losing two- thirds of its territory, Hungary became part of the Soviet Union against its will, and had to struggle for its freedom until 1990. Meanwhile, though Korea has gained independence after the Second World War, the Korean War disunited the country, causing constant tension up until now. As Cumings observes in his introduction to Korean short stories all centering around trauma: “[n]ow that South Koreans are free to write about this war …, we can see that an entire population was traumatized by one of the most violent and intense wars of the twentieth century” (ix). Even after the Korean War, the different military regimes and the so-called Gwangju Massacre in 1980 provide ample material for writings on trauma, still very much present in Korean contemporary fiction. Indeed, as Caruth suggests, our “catastrophic age” is an age in which trauma can “provide the very link between cultures” (“Foreword” 11). One narrative mode or strategy that is employed by several authors while writing about historical trauma is magical realism, which will be dealt 2 with in detail in the second chapter. Although it is a highly debated and overused term, which many writers have refused regarding their works, for the purpose of this paper, that is, in order to illuminate the underlying similarities between the three narratives, it offers a fruitful approach. First of all, in all three texts there are ghosts engendered by historical trauma, whose paradoxical presence is accepted by the communities as natural. These ghosts all embody the repressed (or dissociated) past and their haunting is intertwined with the haunting quality of traumatic memory. Also, by trying to represent the verbally unrepresentable, magical realism has similar aims to that of trauma narratives. Although trauma cannot be completely verbalized nor comprehended, by means of the supernatural elements its evasive nature can be portrayed quite effectively. In addition, several critics1 mention the possibility of a cultural healing (where healing means enabling different alternatives for the future by means of discussing and remembering the silenced and/or repressed past) or rather commemoration, initiated by magical realist texts, which again characterizes trauma narratives as well. Therefore, there are some underlying similarities between works concerning trauma and magical realist texts, and one of the aims of this dissertation is to observe the reason behind these similarities. In addition, it intends to show how these characteristics are applied in all three works, written in highly different cultural and historical contexts. 1 See the works Wendy B. Faris, Taner Can, and Maggie Ann Bowers, among others. 3 Thus, this dissertation plans to analyze and compare an African American, a Korean, and a Hungarian narrative, each concentrating on both individual and collective trauma and each authors using the techniques of magical realism in these works. It is important to note that none of the writers write exclusively magical realist texts; rather, they have made a conscious decision to use the narrative mode in these particular works. As this dissertation suggests, there is a reason why magical realism is especially appropriate for trauma narratives. The three works discussed are Beloved (1987) by Toni Morrison, The Guest (2001) by Hwang Sok-yong and Welcome (2005) by Krisztián Grecsó. In Morrison's case, the trauma pervading all her novels, whether they are set in the seventeenth, nineteenth or the twentieth century, is the collective memory of slavery. In all her works she focuses on “the damaging impact of white racist practices and learned cultural shame on the collective African- American experience”, showing how it takes part “in the construction of African-American identities as racially inferior and stigmatized” (Bouson 4). Her agenda is, as Bouson points out, to “bear witness to the shame and trauma” in the life of African-Americans, while also trying to provide “a cultural cure both through the artistic rendering and narrative