| 摘要: | 研究期間：10108~10207;The “Quaint Orientals” and their Literary Market: Re-Worlding Minor Literature through Asian/American Archive, 1912-19821 The canonization of minor/minority literature in the last few decades is conspicuous; it is also an intriguing phenomenon because, strictly speaking, “minority canon” is an oxymoron.2 In this project, I choose the most exemplary Asian American and Asian Pacific women writers from 1912 to 1982 to investigate the relationship between their works and the power of the marketplace embodied and arbitrated by their publishers, editors, and reviewers. The period is chosen strategically to chart the identifiable shifts since the publication of the book by the “first Asian American woman writer,” Sui Sin Far’s Mrs. Spring Fragrance and Other Stories, to the death of (arguably) the first canonized modern/ist Asian American writer, Teresa Hak-Kyung Cha. The historical period also sees the evolution of minor literature from the early ghetto-ized ethnic literature to the burgeoning of world literature. In this project, I argue that the critical attention to representation, (in)visibility, or stereotyping in minority discourses neglects to see the imperative to adaptation even for the texts which survive and become canonized. My title, “Quaint Orientals,” speaks not only about the Orientalist representation but also, and more importantly, the doubleness of success and failure, or of quaint and shame of minor literature, as both words have a curious etymological connection to (female) genitalia. I propose that we expand the Asian/American archive in order to analyze the dictation of the publishers, the subjects they published, and the elusive “reader” of minor literature. I choose three groups of writers and use them and their personal archives as guides to this larger “cultural archive” of the literary market: the Eaton sisters, the Chinese expatriates Ling Shuhua and Eileen Chang, and the post-war canonical writers Maxine Hong Kingston and Teresa Hak-Kyung Cha. My aim is to use their references to the editors as indexes and begin to take seriously such tongue-in-cheek, passing mentions of rejection or editorial advice by examining the archives of the small and popular presses, such as Charles Scribner’s Sons (NY), Howard University Press (Washington DC), Knopf (New York), the Grove (New York), Cassell & Company, Ltd. (London), Harcourt, Bruce (New York), H. Holt and Company (New York), and World Book Company (Manila and the Philippines, later New York), etc. In addition to the personal correspondence, I want to examine the involved publishers’ catalogues to sort out the “ethnographical unevenness” in the subjects they produce (or reject) in the market. The results that this project yields will help to reconceptualize the category of “minor literature” in a new geopolitical framework of transculturation, translation, and transnationalism. During the first year of the project, I will focus on the early twentieth century to the end of the First World War when we see the publication of the works of the Eaton sisters. Both of the Eaton sisters write autobiographical accounts in which the figure of the editor appears repeatedly. I will track down these involved publishers to present a picture of what it is like to publish as a minor writer at that time. In the second year I will turn to the World War II period and examine the cases of the Chinese expatriates Eileen Chang and Ling Shuhua. Examining their circle of friends and their professional relationships to major British and American presses, I will also consider the imperialism of English literature in the print culture after World War II. In the third year, I will move to the late 70s to the early 80s, i.e., the advent of institutional multiculturalism, and examine the publication of the two banner texts: Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior and Teresa Hak-Kyung Cha’s Dictée. Besides the publishers’ archives, I will also analyze the copious reviews since Jane Kramer’s New York Times piece that raises Kingston’s “novel” to the level of national attention. By analyzing and 1The year 1912 marks the publication of Sui Sin Far’s Mrs. Spring Fragrance and Other Writings; 1982 is the year of Teresa Ha-Kyung Cha’s death. I will explain the strategic periodization in the following sections. 2 I intentionally blur the distinction between minor and minority literature. The “minor” in Deleuze and Guattari’s “minor literature” (in Kafka) is not bout ethnicity or identity; given Deleuze andGuattari’s politics, it is even against identity. But in practice, teaching “minor literature” often means literature of non-mainstream texts. This tendency to slide between these terms-- from minor literature to minority literature to world literature—is one that I want to bring under examination. comparing their earlier reviews, I will demonstrate that a new paradigm of minor literature has arrived. It nevertheless reminds us to continue to engage, intervene, and re-world such an ongoing strain of minor literature. |
