Relationality and Identity: A Performativist Perspective on the Displaced Subject in Andrew Kwong’s One Bright Moon

Abstract

Employing Paul John Eakin’s notion of relationality and identity, and Homi K. Bhabha’s concept of displacement, this research paper investigates the performativist role of the displaced subject of Chinese partcultural memoir. A partcultural memoir implies the composition of author’s life- narrative during his stay in several flexible cultures as sojourner. In Andrew Kwong’s One Bright Moon, the displaced subject constructs his identity narrative by experiencing displacement in various flexible cultures via somatic and social relationality. Eakin’s idea of relationality is a combination of bodily sources (somatic) and social scenarios to establish identity of the narrating ‘I’ in the text. A performativist perspective of the displaced subject, in One Bright Moon, explores a daring venture of writing against oppressive social relationality. Andrew Kwong abrogates the concept of concealment of identity and demonstrates his somatic relationality. Mary Evans’ autobiography as a research method helps invoke Eakin’s idea of relationality and identity with Bhabha’s notion of displacement. The displaced subject experiences Chinese, Macau, Hong Kong, Australian, and American cultures to document the real story of his life. A performativist role of the displaced subject recreates the lost self as narrated ‘I’ in the text. Autobiography/memoir does not present merely the record of incidents but rather determines the sleight of hand of the conceptual self. The displaced autobiographical subject reciprocates identity narrative with exorable geographical contiguity in hereness and thereness. Thus, somatic and social relationality simultaneously develop the conceptual self, equipped with a multiplicity of experiences in displacement.