“…In China, the women forced to have an abortion are not officially regarded as victims:The contemporary interest in victimhood and other forms of vulnerability may be tracked down to the emergence of an ethics of vulnerability that has taken various forms, according to whether it originated in the US or in Europe […] Butler also argues that what characterizes the contemporary is the diversity of conditions for its recognition, implying that the vulnerability of some more privileged citizens is more recognisable than that of less privileged ones. (Onega & Ganteau, , 7)…”
Section: The Vulnerability Of Individualsmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…The vulnerability of unauthorized pregnancy is often wrapped in silence in official and even unofficial discourses. In Dispossession: The Performative in the Political (2013), Judith Butler and Athena Athanasiou argue that the distribution of vulnerability “has to respect norms and may be enforced by government policies” (quoted in Onega & Ganteau, , 8). In Frog , Mo Yan dramatizes the effects of political policies in relation to women's subjectivities and vulnerabilities.…”
Section: The Vulnerability Of Individualsmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…The experiment with hybridizing narrative forms contributes to a better expression of the vulnerability and trauma of individuals. “The analyses showed that such strategies as generic hybridization and/or narrative experimentation are aimed at fighting the unrepresentability of trauma by performing rather than by representing it” (Onega & Ganteau, , 4). The play in Frog not only represents but rather performs the inner experiences of trauma and repentance of Gugu and others.…”
When reflecting on the Chinese one‐child policy, most accounts have focused on its social, political, and economic implications, which are usually explained by means of statistics. As a literary scholar, I think that the Chinese family‐planning policy should also be studied in terms of ethical and moral problems in the larger context of human identity. This more comprehensive perspective has mostly been ignored or hidden on purpose, and it will require the complexity of creative writing to embrace the larger context. Wa (Frog, 2009), a novel by Mo Yan, the Chinese Nobel Prize winner in 2012, is one of the few literary works that deal with the impact of and the responses to the one‐child policy from this point of view. Integrating letter writing, fiction, and drama, the novel experiments with its narrative to confront readers with the vulnerability, trauma, and redemption of those who became victims or survivors of the Chinese family‐planning policy for over 30 years. Supported by theories of trauma and resilience, this article shows how literature, with its multifocal creative complexity, is capable of breaking the silence and giving voice to victims that may bring them beyond victimhood.
“…In China, the women forced to have an abortion are not officially regarded as victims:The contemporary interest in victimhood and other forms of vulnerability may be tracked down to the emergence of an ethics of vulnerability that has taken various forms, according to whether it originated in the US or in Europe […] Butler also argues that what characterizes the contemporary is the diversity of conditions for its recognition, implying that the vulnerability of some more privileged citizens is more recognisable than that of less privileged ones. (Onega & Ganteau, , 7)…”
Section: The Vulnerability Of Individualsmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…The vulnerability of unauthorized pregnancy is often wrapped in silence in official and even unofficial discourses. In Dispossession: The Performative in the Political (2013), Judith Butler and Athena Athanasiou argue that the distribution of vulnerability “has to respect norms and may be enforced by government policies” (quoted in Onega & Ganteau, , 8). In Frog , Mo Yan dramatizes the effects of political policies in relation to women's subjectivities and vulnerabilities.…”
Section: The Vulnerability Of Individualsmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…The experiment with hybridizing narrative forms contributes to a better expression of the vulnerability and trauma of individuals. “The analyses showed that such strategies as generic hybridization and/or narrative experimentation are aimed at fighting the unrepresentability of trauma by performing rather than by representing it” (Onega & Ganteau, , 4). The play in Frog not only represents but rather performs the inner experiences of trauma and repentance of Gugu and others.…”
When reflecting on the Chinese one‐child policy, most accounts have focused on its social, political, and economic implications, which are usually explained by means of statistics. As a literary scholar, I think that the Chinese family‐planning policy should also be studied in terms of ethical and moral problems in the larger context of human identity. This more comprehensive perspective has mostly been ignored or hidden on purpose, and it will require the complexity of creative writing to embrace the larger context. Wa (Frog, 2009), a novel by Mo Yan, the Chinese Nobel Prize winner in 2012, is one of the few literary works that deal with the impact of and the responses to the one‐child policy from this point of view. Integrating letter writing, fiction, and drama, the novel experiments with its narrative to confront readers with the vulnerability, trauma, and redemption of those who became victims or survivors of the Chinese family‐planning policy for over 30 years. Supported by theories of trauma and resilience, this article shows how literature, with its multifocal creative complexity, is capable of breaking the silence and giving voice to victims that may bring them beyond victimhood.
This article explores Haitian American writer Roxane Gay’s An Untamed State (2014) as a novel that represents our intricate and rhizomatic transmodern era. In order to prove this contention, it focuses on the novel’s amalgamation of different literary genres and modes from previous cultural paradigms—namely, the postmodern fairy-tale retelling and the social realist novel—with Euro-American as well as Haitian/Caribbean literary and sociocultural elements. The result of this mélange is a complex narrative of multiple interconnections that offers a nuanced portrait of new millennium Haitian diasporas and locals, and that most especially, recuperates subaltern Haitian voices so as to denounce the “untamed state” of the country. The article concludes by arguing that Gay’s hybrid and relational text effaces an either/or episteme which, although considerably used in Western and postcolonial theories for a while, has now become obsolete and inoperative in such a globalised and entangled world.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
