| The scope of my project identifies and critiques the fractured subjectivities of fictional characters through a transnational and transcultural lens. I focus my argument around characters who live in or originate from East and Southeast Asia. Critically, I build upon Edward Said's well-known binarist separation of latent and manifest Orientalism in order to argue that such a separation is unnecessary and in fact unproductive. I also engage with Homi Bhabha's work on stereotypes and that work's roots in Said's Orientalism (1978) in order to argue for a similar complication of Bhabha. What Bhabha applies to a post-/colonial model I wish to apply to a transnational, transcultural one in order to examine which stereotypes still have great force and influence, perhaps disproportionate, over how we relate to our fellow human beings. I approach both of these theorists through a series of close readings of drama, film, and fiction. Ultimately, I posit that those who can successfully create narratives of identity can capably manipulate stereotypes to their own advantage and then subvert them, or else re-shape that discursive framework and define themselves in different terms. However, the dissertation is particularly concerned with characters who have a harder time subverting or escaping stereotypes. These characters who struggle and fail to define themselves inevitably meet one of two fates: exile or suicide. |
