This study examines the meanings of historical sense, focusing on features of the appropriation of history and nostalgia which are founded in Dictee by Hak Kyung Cha, the Korean-American Woman Writer. While nine chapters, associated wish nine muses, i...
This study examines the meanings of historical sense, focusing on features of the appropriation of history and nostalgia which are founded in Dictee by Hak Kyung Cha, the Korean-American Woman Writer. While nine chapters, associated wish nine muses, in Dictee reveal different contents and different types of writings, they are combined by a common historic sense. This study consists of three findings. First, this Dictee tries to recollect the memories of heroins such as Yoo, Kwan Soon, Jeanne d’Arc and Saint Teresa and the residues of history such as martyrs, the oppressed and the others and mourn them. The diseuse in Dictee, a sort of diseuse de bon aventure, supervises ceremony of mourning by which the losses of the martyrs and the residues of history are realized. Second, it is indicated that the perception of dis-identity within home country and of identity as the other and diaspora let the diaspora refuse collective illusion regarding home country. Thus, nostalgia in the work moves toward eternal salvation, not toward illusion of home country. Third, Dictee is intended to deconstruct history of historicism, assuming historical progress, and to reconstruct history of discontinuous memories which contain perpetuity and moment at the same time. Therefore, Dictee represents de-historized history from the viewpoint of diaspora.