In-Person Panel PS3.1

Literary Reflections on Trauma, Identity, and Ethical Cohabitation

Fleeing the Future: The Overlap of Autobiography and Cultural Analysis in the Writings of Donald Richie 

Evan Milner 

Not long before his death in 2013, Donald Richie—film scholar, essayist, travel writer, and sensualist—described Japan as having a "penchant for identity through the past". But four decades earlier in his classic travel-memoir The Inland Sea, Richie wrote that the reason he is in Japan is to escape 'the future': “In Japan, for the moment, the past still lives”. To what extent was Richie, who was one of the foremost mediators of Japanese culture in the English-speaking world, projecting his own private fears and fantasies on the Japan he was describing to his readers? 

This paper explores how the 'Japan' of Richie's literary imagination, and the Japan in which he lived and worked, merge in his writings, leaving the distinction between poetic metaphor and cultural analysis open to question. I trace how this feature of Richie's writing has found its way into the works of subsequent authors who he influenced. The paper concludes with a consideration of the broader ethical implications that arise when the line between autobiography and cultural representation is blurred or erased.

Toward a Future of Ethical Cohabitation: The Precariousness of Life and Ethics in Arundhati Roy’s The Ministry of Utmost Happiness 

Chiou-Rung Deng 

This research paper seeks to engage with Judith Butler’s discourse on precarity, vulnerability, precariousness, and the ethics of cohabitation in reading the novel The Ministry of Utmost Happiness (2017), written by the contemporary Indian woman writer Arundhati Roy. In her novel, Roy presents various precarious conditions in which minority groups are rendered subject to vulnerability, including the homeless, the poor, the Muslim minority, transgender people, the lowest caste, etc.; meanwhile, a community of cohabitation is imagined on the basis of the shared precariousness in Roy’s narrative. Since the September 11 attacks, Butler has been working on the idea of precarious life and the ethics of cohabitation, arguing that violence should lead to the recognition of human beings’ shared precariousness and further to living together with others on the basis of ethics and justice. This research project intends to investigate the dialogue between Butler’s discourse and Roy’s The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, both focusing on precarious conditions caused by gender, class, religion, and politics. By applying Butler’s notions to my reading of Roy’s novel, this paper argues that in face of precariousness, a future trajectory toward the ethics of cohabitation with otherness could be imagined.

Narcissism, Trauma, and Female Selfhood in Lin Bai and Chen Ran’s Novels 

Yushan Zhao 

In modern Chinese women’s literature, writings about gendered and personal experiences often face criticism for displaying narcissism. This presentation aims to explore the significance of narcissism within Lin Bai’s A War of One’s Own and Chen Ran’s Private Life as a key element in understanding the construction of female selfhood. In these novels, gendered narcissism emerges as a conscious response to the societal expectation of self-effacement for women. The examination of narcissism necessitates the inclusion of the traumatic lens, as beneath the veneer of self-centeredness and self-importance, there often lies wounded fin de siècle selfhood contemplating questions of self-worth.

Negotiating Queer Narratives in Contemporary China: A Study of the Chinese Dan’gai Drama Winter Begonia 

Zi Wang 

In recent years, the People’s Republic of China has enforced increasingly stringent control over the portrayal of LGBTQ+ images in public media, social media platforms, and cultural products. Paradoxically, works derived from danmei (耽美) novels, which depict romantic relationships between men are adapted into various media formats, and continue to gain prominence as popular culture products. This paper takes the dan’gai drama (耽改剧) Winter Begonia released in 2020 as an object, to examine how this drama integrates into mainstream ideology by the light of promoting Chinese xiqu (戏曲) culture. It aims to explore the coexistence of mainstream culture’s incorporation of danmei culture and the dan’gai drama’s construction of a queer narrative within the LGBTQ backlash.