University of Nebraska - Lincoln DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research: Department of English English, Department of Summer 6-27-2012 Trans-spatiality as the Horizon of the Coming Community: Ethico- ontology and Aesthetics in Asian Immigrant Literature Dae-Joong Kim University of Nebraska-Lincoln Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/englishdiss Part of the Literature in English, North America, Ethnic and Cultural Minority Commons Kim, Dae-Joong, "Trans-spatiality as the Horizon of the Coming Community: Ethico-ontology and Aesthetics in Asian Immigrant Literature" (2012). Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research: Department of English. 62. https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/englishdiss/62 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the English, Department of at DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research: Department of English by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. TRANS-SPATIALITY AS THE HORIZON OF THE COMING COMMUNITY: ETHICO-ONTOLOGY AND AESTHETICS IN ASIAN IMMIGRANT LITERATURE By Dae-Joong Kim A DISSERTATION Presented to the Faculty of The Graduate College at the University of Nebraska In Partial Fulfillment of Requirements For the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Major: English Under the Supervision of Professor Seanna Sumalee Oakley Lincoln, Nebraska June, 2012 Trans-spatiality as the horizon of the coming community: ethico-ontology and aesthetics in Asian Immigrant literature Dae-Joong Kim, Ph.D. University of Nebraska, 2012 Advisor: Seanna Sumalee Oakley This study centers on the potential scope and significance of trans-spatiality as a new literary concept. I employ the concept of trans-spatiality as a means of understanding Asian immigrants’ transnational experiences as represented by Asian immigrant writers in the Anglophone world. Trans-spatiality is a grounding term and methodological orientation, and its scope is relational and appositional. Thus, previous studies such as postcolonialism, cosmopolitanism, transnationalism, diaspora studies, and globalization are related to trans-spatiality, but, in this dissertation, I strictly limit its use to an ethico- ontological and aesthetic understanding of Asian immigrant writers’ literary works. For this methodology, I explore and analyze various Western philosophers’ theories, especially Giorgio Agamben’s ethico-ontology. Also, I employ Édouard Glissant’s poetics of relation and commonplace (lieux communs) as well as Walter Benjamin’s constellation to transit this theoretical exploration to literary studies. In chapter one of my study, which follows a brief preface, I address Asian immigrants’ negative (animalized or Otherized) humanities by analyzing two Asian American poets’ poems and Glissant’s poem alongside a theoretical critique of Heidegger’s Western-oriented ontology and ethics. In chapters two and three, I analyze Chang Rae Lee’s Native Speaker and Joy Kogawa’s Obasan to discuss Lee’s trans-spatial beings in terms of coming community and form-of-life, and Kogawa’s aesthetic testimony of Japanese Canadians’ internment during WWII via artistic signs. The fourth chapter shifts away from trans-spatiality in America-centered and anthropocentric narratives to a clone-centered science fiction and the critical space created by Kazuo Ishiguro, an Asian English novelist. This chapter ends with aesthetic and ethical inquiries into the clone as artist as a cornerstone of the relations between life and art. In the last chapter, I take on the topic of the relations between life and art via an overarching image of a bowl with the void in the center as a form of constellation in Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s Dictée. I conclude this dissertation with a brief analysis of my own trans-spatial teaching experience. Table of Contents Acknowledgements ii Preface 1 Chapter 1 Theoretical Introduction: 18 Heidegger’s Asian Animal That Therefore I Am and the Poetics of Commons Chapter 2 Trans-spatial Metamorphosis: 79 From a Korean Bartleby to a Trans-spatial Bard in Native Speaker Chapter 3 An Ethical Testimony of Animal-Humans 132 As the Voice from the Dead in Obasan Chapter 4 Can the Truth Free You? 181 A Clone Artist’s Post-Human Questions in Never Let Me Go Chapter 5 Bowl of Origins: Naming the Void 233 And the Coming Community: Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s DICTÉE Conclusion My Teaching Story 281 And the Trans-spatial Dream of a Happiness Bibliography 296 ii Acknowledgements I wish to thank my lifelong mentor, advisor, and friend, Dr. Seanna Sumalee Oakley, whose inspiration has been a guiding light and has played a key role in my trans- Pacific odyssey. Dr. Oakley has patiently enhanced my ability as a scholar and a teacher. This dissertation is a result of happy and glorious memories of the years with her as my advisor. I also thank Dr. Frances Condon who gave me a chance to work at the writing center as a consultant which led to two years of teaching experience. I will not forget her brave and truthful teaching and exemplary leadership. The theoretical ground of this dissertation and my scholarship are enormously indebted to two great theorists: the late Dr. Nicholas Spenser and Dr. Roland Vegso. Dr. Spencer’s insightful classes complicated and refined my understanding of theory and literature; I commemorate his clear and incisive intellectuality and warm humanity. I also could not have built the theoretical frame of this dissertation without Dr. Vegso’s wonderful classes and his introduction to theoretical ideas (especially Giorgio Agamben’s) which I had not been familiar with before. My dissertation is also indebted to Dr. Guy Reynolds’ classes where I learned how to understand contemporary American and English novels. With these committee members, I am grateful to the faculty of the English Department at UNL and the department’s generous fellowship program and various funds. I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my parents, Kim, Yong Won (김용원) and Lee, Gum Ja (이금자) and parents-in-law, Hwang, Seon Moon (황선문) and Kim, Im Sil (김임실) whose wisdom and timely support helped me complete this dissertation. My father’s insatiable zeal for literature and my mother’s invaluable humanity and truthfulness are deeply embedded in this dissertation. I also want to thank other family members and relatives, especially my sister, Kim, Ja Won (김자원) and sister-in-law, Hwang, Soon Mi (황순미), who have supported me in various ways. I am thankful to my UNL friends, Bobbi Olson, Sabrina Sergeant, and Kate Kostelnik, whose editing, peer review, and friendship helped me produce a much better dissertation than I could have alone. Many thanks to my MA advisor, Kim, Ae Ju (김애주) and other professors at Dongguk University, as well as my friends, Sung, Chang Kyu, Im Kyung Kyu, etc., and colleagues in Korea for helping me go through a long tunnel. Last but not least, my greatest debt is to my beloved wife, Hwang, Soon Ye (황순예), whose presence and love have shined through my dissertation and my entire life. Soon Ye joined me in this wonderful journey as my academic partner braving our future together; she has stood by me and taught me how to love, care, and learn. I firmly believe that she will produce a better dissertation than mine. 1 PREFACE Happy are those ages when the starry sky is the map of all possible paths —ages whose paths are illuminated by the light of the stars. Everything in such ages is new and yet familiar, full of adventure and yet their own. The world is wide and yet it is like a home, for the fire that burns in the soul is of the same essential nature as the stars; the world and the self, the light and the fire, are sharply distinct, yet they never become permanent strangers to one another, for fire is the soul of all light and all fire clothes itself in light. (Georg Lukács, The Theory of the Novel 29) Tell me, enigmatical man, whom do you love best, your father, your mother, your sister, or your brother? I have neither father, nor mother, nor sister, nor brother. Your friends? Now you use a word whose meaning I have never known. Your country? I do not know in what latitude it lies. Beauty? I could indeed love her, Goddess and Immortal. Gold? I hate it as you hate God. Then, what do you love, extraordinary stranger? I love the clouds…the clouds that pass…up there…up there…the wonderful clouds! (Jean Baudelaire, “The Stranger,” Paris Spleen 1) During my honeymoon in New York, I stayed a day at an inn owned by an old Korean man. In our conversation, he told me that he had immigrated in the 80s, and I asked how he felt about the immigration. His tone was melancholic as he answered that he had been “a renter” in this nation; disconcertingly, his melancholic voice resonated with that of another Korean American, Cho-Seung Hui, who notoriously killed thirty-two fellow students at Virginia Tech in 2007. It is perplexing that despite 2 Cho‟s rampage and the subsequent media onslaught, his racial and national identity has been erased from both the media and the general American population‟s memory. If you ask non-Asian people who Cho was, most of them would be unable to identify him as a Korean American or know his name. His racial identity was so easily forgotten even though teratology ordinarily leaves behind traces of similar violent social outcasts in people‟s minds (Song 21). Why is Cho erased from Americans‟ minds? This question leads to another question about media‟s reproduction of unidentifiable Asian images. For example, Cho‟s performances in the video clips posted on YouTube consist of corny pastiches of the poses of white loners seen on screen many times; in the videos, he acts like the disturbed hero full of moral angst frequently represented in various Hollywood movies.