Chronotope of Congregation in Joy Kogawa’s Obasan

초록

In this paper, analyzing Obasan written by Joy Kogawa, a Japanese Canadian, I, as an endeavor to get over the binary system of articulation and silence, argue that Obasan dialectically goes beyond contradiction between silence and articulation. Methodologically, I use Walter Benjamin’s explanation of storyteller and storytelling as well as Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s philosophical idea of inter-subjectivity. Meanwhile, I discover that death, reminiscence, mourning and healing are central themes of the novel that constitutes a totality of the novel, the chronotope of congregation. There are four narratives in Obasan: aunt Obasan’s silence, Aunt Emily’s political articulation, Naomi’s contradictory narrative, and narrative of Naomi’s mother. In Obasan, chronotope of congregation embedding storytelling connotes complex poetic relations within the totality of commonplaces which include dialogic, heteroglossic, and intersubjective relations as well as eco-imagery and the healing ritual form. Besides, the narratives in Obasan reveal four aspects: corporeality of narratives; death as the center of the chronotope; the spider web structure within chronotope that interweaves stories (narratives) not in a harmonious but dialectical way; and discovering truth via Naomi’s active listening to her mother’s truthful stories.

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