A: God who has made me in His own likeness.
In His Own Image in His Own Resemblance, in His Own Copy, In His Own Counterfeit Present- Ment, in His Duplicate, in His Own Reproduc- Tion, in His Cast, in His Carbon, His Image and His Mirror. (17)
In the catechism, a subject is made through the image of God, a male who dominates diseuse’s self-perception through his patriarchal standards. The subject should be constructed as a double of God, whose image can be understood as the hegemonic order. Similarly, in WSS, Annette and Antoinette are also influenced by the standards represented in the looking-glass. The mirror trope suggests an unbalanced relation in the process of subject formation. The females in both works are dictated by what is
showing to them as the unquestionable mold for docile subjects. It is a mirror that does not reflect the subjects as they are; it reflects the image that the subjects should be. The side-by-side translations of diseuse work as a metaphorical mirror that could reflect the “errors” produced through the process of translation (subject formation).
There is not an identical reflection in the mirror in Dictée; the mirror image can be read as a trope of subjectivity.
A mirror, in its common sense, is a polished surface that forms an image through light; thus the reflection and the subject should look the same. As a schema of
cofiguration, a subject should be formulated through these norms without fail. The visible errors or discrepancies of the side-by-side translations in Dictée unravel the impossibility to return to the original. Therefore, by presenting incongruous images in the mirror, Cha presents an unequivalent schema which visualizes the incongruous images from both sides of a mirror. The “I” in the catechism does not take after the image of God, and it thus illustrates the fluidity of the boundaries between inside and outside.
Luce Irigaray reconceptualizes the relation between the self and the other; she calls for a displacement of the I-other relationship by examining the historically privileged males. The unitary narrative “I” would inevitably go hand in hand with an
“other,” the female. Therefore, the discrepant mirror images reveal the inaccessibility to the “I” in this I-other relation. The “I” in the catechism would never look exactly the same as God, the male.
In “Erato/Love Poetry,” we see a woman who is limited by her status as a woman and a wife:
She is married to her husband who is unfaithful to her. No reason is given. No reason is necessary except that he is a man. It is a given.
He is the husband, and she us the wife. It is a given. He does as he is the man.
She does as she is the woman, and the wife. Stands the distance between the husband and wife the distance of heaven and hell…You only hear him taunting and humiliating her. She kneels beside him, putting on his clothes for him. She takes her place. It is given. (102)
The woman’s subjectivity is constructed in relation to the husband; her place is given to her. This given place that she takes situates herself in the position of the other. The situation is similar to Antoinette’s reply to Christophine’s proposal to leave Rochester:
“He is my husband after all” (Rhys 66). Antoinette’s taking up the given place is one of the reasons why she fails to be the translator even if she was once the subject in transit. She is entrapped by the image in the mirror and feels uneasy because she knows the image is not her own. She thus internalizes this colonizing drive and exhibits complicity with the order of property and subjectivity.
In Dictée, the diseuse dismantles the dominant structure by presenting different otherness with her patterning of mirror images. She refuses to recognize the mirrored self in the process; she de-subjectifies that imposed subjectivity by refusing to be the supposed “other.” The diseuse becomes the voyeur of her own process of subject formation. She empties herself and becomes a void that allows other to take her place
(Cha 3). It is interesting to note that as a multigenre and multimedia text, there are no photos, letters, or texts that give us the description of the diseuse. She is a vessel, a void, and a membrane waiting to be filled with others’ voices. The voiding of the self is the ritual which prepares her in a state of becoming-other, in order to speak with a language lent to her.
Dictée makes its readers question the missing or deviated parts in the process of subject formation through discrepancies between French and English texts and the void that is produced through the gaps during the process of dictation.
In the near end of Dictée, the diseuse states, “Tenth, a circle within a circle, a series of concentric circles” (175). Through the recitation of prayer and practicing of devotions during a nine-day period of the nine muses (19), the diseuse is able to conclude her ritual in a form of circles of convergence: it is a circuit; a circulation in the form of return to the point of departure. This return is different from Antoinette’s return at the end of WSS; it is a return to the middle, a beginning in medias res.
The diseuse herself becomes the tenth muse in her ritual, along with a cropped picture of nine girls in the back cover of Dictée. She would be the tenth muse that covers the incomplete stories of the others. The idea of the tenth ritual implies a return, but not to the original.
Fig. 3. Back Cover, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Dictée, 1982.
The diseuse applies the notion of “Bagua” (The Eight Diagrams) on pages 154 and 173 to illustrate the tenth diagram, “Chung Wei/ .” It means a circle within a circle; however, there is another term for the tenth diagram, “Shi Fang/ .” Shi Fang means the ten directions (north, south, east, west, northeast, southeast, southwest, northwest, above and below). In Buddhism, the ten directions often appear with three existences, meaning past, present, and future existence, throughout space and time.
Fig. 4. Bagua, “Terpsichore/Choral Dance” Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Dictée, 1982.
That is to say, the diseuse’s retelling of the stories does not form a congealed unity;
she becomes the time’s voyeur and abolishes real time with her writing (140-41). She would be the tenth muse that wraps up the narratives of the other nine people’s utterance and enunciation. She stains the whiteness (132), breaks its transparency (132), casts shadows on the whiteness of screen (95), and finally renders voices to muted colors:
Muted colors appear from the transparency of the white and wash the stone’s periphery, staining the hue-less stone.
wall.
For the next phase. Next to last. Before the last. Be- fore completing. Draw from stains the pigment as it spills from within, with in each repetition, extract even darker, the stain, until it falls in a single stroke of color, crimson, red, as flame caught in air for its sustenance. (162)
The diseuse transforms the whiteness with muted colors, which are colors toned down like gray (it is also a mixture of black and white). The “muted” also implies the unvoiced state during the process. The diseuse also brings her translation practice to the next level: to paint/write/speak from the stains until they can be formed as a stroke
of color that resembles blood, which indicates the pain of oblivion. In this way, she becomes the tenth muse: the muse of oblivion, the muse of the unspeakable things unspoken. The diseuse has to experience the pain again and again in order to speak. A covered wound is unavailable to consciousness; the absorbing stains further
problematize the question of border.
The problematic of bordering takes into account both the presence of border and its inscription. And by conjoining the discussion of translation, filter, and bordering together, a border with various registers might appear as the site for both belonging and non-belonging. Wide Sargasso Sea and Dictée open spaces for discussion of displaced subjectivities. Both works dismantle habitual representations of narrative, textuality, and subjectivity. As the two texts show, the discussion of subjectivity could be further developed into a discussion of various fields. The act of translation in minor literature discloses the problematic of subjectivity, and other related questions (such as borders) could also be approached through a minoritarian perspective. In order to explore other possibilities, I would like to further connect it with a discussion of border, and the issue of trauma that comes from the act of border crossing in Arundhati Roy’s two novels.
Chapter Two: Minor Literature, Traumas, and Borders
The word “translation” comes, etymologically, from the Latin for “bearing across.” Having been borne across the world, we are translated men. It is normally supposed that something always gets lost in translation; I cling, obstinately, to the notion that something can also be gained.
—Salman Rushdie, Imaginary Homelands: Essays and Criticism 1981-1991
Regardless of the normal assumption that “something always gets lost in translation,” the British-Indian writer, Salman Rushdie, claims that something can actually be gained during the process. Rushdie claims that the act of translation makes the language become the target as well as the source. The linguistic fluidity in minor literature properly displays this “bearing across” ability. Applying the trope of translation to look into the reenacted fluidity capacity in minor literature might help understand the problem of border and migration. The “translated” condition of the modern subject seems to be a result of border-crossing—geographical as well as linguistic. The ability of “bearing across” is in line with the notion of the minoritized mode of translation, in a form that is closely related to the original but with a
heterolingual effect. The minoritized mode of translation could thus be considered as the product of how subjects deal with dislocation. Translation that performs the fluid capacity does not assume “the normalcy of reciprocal and transparent communication in a homogeneous medium”; it bears across the homolingual boundary (Sakai,
Translation and Subjectivity 8). In this chapter, a discussion of trauma, history, and border would be explored through Arundhati Roy’s two novels, The God of Small Things and The Ministry of Utmost Happiness. The traumatic events in the two works demans to be heard and told; they undergo a turn from literal to figural. This turn is a conscious return to the origin of trauma in the hope of displaying the positive effect.
In order to display the positive effect of sharing the traumatic events, a translation act is indispensable. Roy’s translation of traumatic events creates a third space for the people with unspeakable pasts to share their stories and build a care community.
Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things (TGST) blurs generic lines and disintegrates literary conventions. The tragic partition of India47 and its following riots have long been the incessant topic of many Indian writers. There is a literary obsession haunted with images of division, and it is materialized by separating lines.
As a fellow Indian writer Rohinton Mistry notes, the obsession and comments that Indian writers keep “repeating the same catalogue of horrors” in their works (151).
For these writers, there is a continual urge to speak, to write, and to remember. Mistry further explains: “What choice was there, except to speak about it again and again, and yet again?” (151). Many contemporary Indian writers follow the
postindependence Indian literary tradition, focusing on the Partition of 1947, and harp on constructing a memory of what can not be gorgotten.
Although Arundhati Roy situates her story in Kerala, a southern state of India,
47 The “Partition” is the division of British India into the two states of Hindu India and Muslim Pakistan in 1947. Partition triggered riots, mass casualties, and a colossal wave of migration. People moved to what they thought to be safe places: Muslims heading to Pakistan, and Hindus and Sikhs towards India. Many people thus became displaced during the migration. The Partition separates the country by religion; however, they not only attach to their religious identity but also attach to the territory. For example, not all Muslims migrated to Pakistan; they remained the largest minority group in independent India. The trauma caused by the partition became the inspiration for many in India and Pakistan to produce literary and cinematic works of this event.
far from the Partition line, her work is still filled with the rhetoric of separation, where borders and boundaries are policed and preserved.
Roy seems to share this obsession of the horror of Partition in her first novel. The God of Small Things, her 1997 Man Booker Prize-winner, is a novel that speaks critically to and against various hegemonic discourses such as gender, class, and border. TGST sets its background in Kerala in 1969 and 1993; it explores Indian history and caste politics within the space of a family.
Although some critics criticize TGST48 for misrepresenting Kerala and India in a bad light, it is still a narrative that illustrates India’s anxiety to struggle against its colonial past and postcolonial identity. TGST does not represent an impoverished India
according to a westernized imaginary of the slum reproduced in films and literature.
Roy’s depiction of India is different from the Slumdog Millionaire-like
representations of India as the third world; her depiction of the underrepresented side of Kerala should not be viewed as a voyeuristic source for western slum tourism.
Kerala in Roy’s narrative is not equally accessible to all, especially for those who blame her for not representing India in a positive light. The narrative perspective in TGST is unbalanced and heterogeneous. The local discourse of Kerala is converged on a broader international context; the regulation of caste that manages Indian social relations is revealed as complicit with class inequality in the global economy.
48 The Marxist Chief Minister of Kerala, E. K. Nayamar, said that Roy provided a “factually incorrect”
depiction of the social condition in Kerala of the 1970s. R. S. Sharma also stated that Roy had failed to write a national allegory. Sharada Iyer too remarked that it is a story about an Indian village with an urban, westernized, and modern sensibility. Elleke Boehmer argued that the story is abstracted from its local context, commoditized for the western readership. See Sharma, “The God of Small Things:
Booker out of/and Booker?” The Fictional World of Arundhati Roy. Ed. R. S. Pathak. New Delhi:
Creative Books, 2001. 29-38. ; Iyer, “Ayemenem: Arundhati Roy’s Literary Stage.” The Fictional World of Arundhati Roy. Ed. R. S. Pathak. New Delhi: Creative Books, 2001. 137-142; and Boehmer,
“East is East and South is South: The Cases of Sarojini Naidu and Arundhati Roy.” Women: a Cultural Review. 11 (2000): 61-70. Print.
TGST tells the story of an upper caste Syrian Christian family in Ayemenem, a village in the Kottayam district of Kerala. The head of the family is Pappachi, who is an Imperial Entomologist living in Ayemenem after retirement. The other family members are: Pappachi’s wife, Mammachi; his unmarried sister, Baby Kochamma;
his Oxford-educated son, Chacko; his divorced daughter, Ammu; Ammu’s dizygotic twins—Estha and Rahel; their cook, Kochu Maria; and Velutha, an untouchable who works for the family. The story is mainly composed of two parts: Rahel and Estha at the age of seven in 1969 and their reunion when they are thirty-one in 1993. At the beginning of the story, readers know that Rahel has returned to Ayemenem owing to the “re-return” of Estha in 1993.
Most of the story is narrated from the perspective of the seven-year-old twins.
TGST begins with Ammu’s return to Ayemenem after her unsuccessful marriage to a Hindu man. Chacko also returns to Ayemenem and takes over the family’s pickle factory, Paradise Pickles & Preserves, after Pappachi’s death and his divorce with his British wife, Margaret. One of the major events is that the family is expecting the arrival of Margaret and Sophie Mol, Chacko’s daughter. Chacko invites them to spend Christmas after Joe’s death (Margaret’s second husband). While Sophie Mol becomes the focus of the family, Rahel and Estha stroll around on the riverbank and find a deserted boat. Velutha helps the twins fix the boat, and then the twins often cross the river in that boat to visit the History House, an abandoned house on the other side of the river.
Velutha is an untouchable and a communist, whom Ammu and Chacko have known since they were young. Ammu is drawn to Velutha during the stay of Sophie
Mol and Margaret; they begin to meet up secretly at the river. Velutha’s father later discovers their relationship, and he reports their affair to Mammachi and Baby Kochamma. In consequence of the illicit affair, Ammu is locked up in her room and blames the twins for being the reason for her confinement. Estha and Rahel, being hurt by their mother, decide to run away and live in the History House. When the twins are about to use the boat to get to the other side of the river, Sophie Mol discovers their plan and asks to tag along. While the three kids are crossing the river, the boat tips over because of the heavy rain; the twins reach the shore safely while the rapids carry Sophie Mol away. Searching in vain for Sophie Mol, the twins later go to the History House and fall asleep on its veranda.
Meanwhile, Velutha is also in the History House, but they do not notice the presence of each other. He is torn and exhausted because he is humiliated by Mammachi for confronting him with his affair with Ammu. The missing of the
children is discovered in the following morning; the adults then know that Sophie Mol is found dead by the river. Baby Kochamma goes to the police and accuses Velutha of attempting to assault Ammu sexually and abducting the children. When the police arrive at the History House and find Velutha sleeping on the veranda, they almost beat him to death while the twins are there the whole time. Later on, Estha is forced to confirm Baby Kochamma’s assertion about Velutha; Velutha dies in jail the following night.
After Sophie Mol’s funeral, Estha is sent to Calcutta to live with his father and Ammu is asked to stay away from the Ayemenem House and lives alone; she dies a few years later in a hotel room. The story ends with a narrative that goes back to the
time when Ammu and Velutha spend nights together—before the tragedy happens.
Translating the Small Things
The God of Small Things deals with the problem of transgressions; it adopts a minor-narrative and minoritarian perspective following the three features of
Deleuzian/Guattarian minor literature. TGST features the deterritorialization of major language, connects the individual to a political immediacy, and presents a collective
Deleuzian/Guattarian minor literature. TGST features the deterritorialization of major language, connects the individual to a political immediacy, and presents a collective