Autobiographical Displacements : The Elusive Subject and the Figure of the Author in Gertrude Stein's The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas and Theresa Hak Kyung Cha's Dictee

Abstract

This thesis explores conceptions of authorship and the representation of the author-figure in Gertrude Stein's The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas (1933) and Theresa Hak Kyung Cha's Dictee (1982). It focuses on the structural complexity of these textual self-figurations that, in distinct yet arguably related ways, fuse fact and fiction and signify the self through the trope of autobiographical displacement. The close-readings aim to uncover how these experimentations with form both allow a certain degree of self-exposure and simultaneously divert attention from the author-figure characteristic of traditional depictions of the writing self. My argument is that these texts engage with canonized autobiography, and that Stein and Cha’s generic subversions in effect problematize the underlying mechanisms of normative autobiographical narration. The contextualized juxtaposition further illustrates certain instrumental theoretical developments within the field of life-writing in general and feminist contributions to autobiography theory in particular.