The Diseuse's Performativity

Subjectification & Metaphysics in Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s Dictee

Abstract

Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s postmodern autobiographical text Dictee follows the profoundly displaced narrating diseuse – a student of dictation and daughter of a Korean exile. Her unfaithful and often disrupted re-narration – through dictation – of the multiple subjectifications faced by herself, her mother, and Korea, emerges as Dictee’s master-motif, marshaling the motifs of resistance to subjectification and motherhood. By situating the text in theoretical conversations on subjectification, the metaphysics of presence, and performativity, I argue that in her dictation, the diseuse performatively animates memories of – and reunites her mother with – a multiply transformed and divided Korea.