Han Suyin and error: Decolonization, knowledge, and literary subjectivity

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article examines Han Suyin’s fictionalized autobiographies from the 1950s as meditations on the relationship between cognitive error and the global politics of decolonization. Drawing on anti-colonial theories of knowledge, especially those proposed by Mao Zedong, this article develops an account of error as a rhetorical and theoretical problematic in the context of global decolonization. The author argues that error is a recurrent theme in Han Suyin’s work as she navigated the tensions between her subject position and her political commitments during the period when she moved from Hong Kong to Southeast Asia. In A Many-Splendoured Thing, Han reveals the tension between her political commitments and the fragmented nature of geopolitical knowledge. In And the Rain My Drink, she depicts the operations and consequences of error by adopting a more experimental narrative form that registers the psychological damage inflicted by colonial rule during the Malayan Emergency (1948–60).