Displaced desires : the dislocated self and melancholic desire in Chuang Hua's Crossings and Fae Myenne Ng's Steer toward rock
Pehkoranta, A. (2015). Displaced desires : the dislocated self and melancholic desire in Chuang Hua's Crossings and Fae Myenne Ng's Steer toward rock. Amerikastudien / American studies, 60(2/3), 255-273.
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Amerikastudien / American studiesAuthors
Date
2015Copyright
© Pehkoranta & Universitaetsverlag Winter GmbH, 2015. Published in this repository with the kind permission of the publisher.
This essay investigates two aesthetically innovative Chinese American prose narratives,
Crossings (1968) by Chuang Hua and Steer Toward Rock (2008) by Fae Myenne Ng, which have
so far inspired relatively few scholarly readings. Although published forty years apart, both texts
convey a melancholic image of displaced desires—loved ones who are lost, beyond reach, or
unresponsive—that is echoed by their complex narrative structure and rich stylistic repertoire.
Drawing from the psychoanalytically informed notion of racial melancholia, this essay argues
that in Chuang’s Crossings and in Ng’s Steer Toward Rock the dynamics of melancholia manifest
most prominently in the ways their dislocated characters negotiate between a melancholic desire
to preserve a lost object of love, on one hand, and a persistent quest for an integrated sense of
self, on the other. By examining their dislocated Asian American subjects, transnational love
affairs, and melancholic desire, this essay suggests that both writers contribute to a particular
aesthetics and ethics of melancholia, in which identificatory and narrative boundaries alike are
contested and transgressed. It further argues that melancholia is present in these two narratives
not only as an ethical or political construct but equally as an aesthetic element that significantly
adds to the ethical import of Chuang’s and Ng’s fiction.
...
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Universitaetsverlag Winter GmbH; Deutsche Gesellschaft fuer AmerikastudienISSN Search the Publication Forum
0340-2827
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https://www.winter-verlag.de/en/programm/zeitschriften/amerikastudien/Publication in research information system
https://converis.jyu.fi/converis/portal/detail/Publication/26082641
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