Mapping Carnivalistic Discourse in Japanese-American Writing

Abstract

Mikhail Bakhtin's theory of literary carnival, which has constantly been refined in recent developments of literary and cultural studies, presents a vision of literature as comprising various carnivalizing forces in a process of constant shifts and movement that confront a totalizing center. Shifts and movement, as Stephen Sumida observes, have been historically and are currently occurring between margins and centers in Asian American Literature (807). concept of literary carnivalization, in opposition to canonization and totalization, suggests an interaction among various literary manifestations without polarity of high/low or central/marginal: The low thus no longer mirror-image subject of high, waiting in wings to substitute ... but another related but figure (Hall 9). carnivalistic discourse, moving beyond simplistic binary structure, informs and enacts the interstices and overlaps of literary practices and their shared differences. The carnivalized text, as Iris Zavala points out, according to Bakhtin's model, meeting ground of a complex semiotic system within a cultural sphere which incorporates linguistic structures and social (59). this sense, concept of carnivalization embodies Bakhtin's most democratic vision of culture and literature as non-hierarchical plural systems. other words, logosphere of multi-ethnic literatures provides a carnivalistic space for performing various cultural differences and opens up an area of `interfection' (to use Fredric Jameson's term) where newness of cultural practices and historical narratives are registered in `generic discordance' [and] `unexpected juxtaposition' (Bhabha, Location of Culture 217). What carnivalization subverts hegemonic power of totalization--the capability of certain formations to position everything else in a negative relationship to it (Armstrong and Tennenhouse 15). notion of carnival, therefore, one of most important concepts by which we can think, or rather unthink, workings of cultural totalization and literary canonization. What we need badly in today's literary and cultural criticism a carnivalistic mode of (un)thinking that accommodates rather than reduces variety of literary and cultural manifestations from a monologic position. This mode of (un)thinking will help us hear polyphonic voices, perceive heterogeneous performances, and recognize a variety of ways in which cultural systems come to know themselves by playing at being different (Holquist 230). If a means by which whole societies can represent to themselves (can collectively see) of their own pretensions (Holquist 230), then, carnivalistic mode of (un)thinking can reveal folly of cultural and literary hegemony by providing a perspective enabling one to view cultural totalization from non-monologic positions. As Stuart Hall observes, Bakhtin uses `carnival' to signal all those forms, tropes, and effects in which symbolic categories of hierarchy and value are inverted (7); however, carnival is not simply a metaphor of inversion, Hall hastens to add; In Bakhtin's `carnival,' precisely purity of this binary distinction which transgressed. low invades high, blurring hierarchical imposition of order; creating, not simply triumph of one aesthetic over another, but those impure and hybrid forms of `grotesque' (8). re-conceptualization of Bakhtin's theory of carnivalization can serve as a new agent of perception, a new way of reading and thinking that will enable us to discern some previously unnoticed or unnoticeable features of Japanese-American literature. By re-locating carnivalistic discourse in Japanese-American literature, we might be able to view or re-view better how literary and cultural theory can refine our thinking about what Japanese-American literature really is--a question that has been challenging critics for a long time. …