"The Insertion of the Self into the Space of Borderless Possibility": Eva Hoffman's Exiled Body

Abstract

For the European, even today, America represents something akin to exile, phantasy of emigration and, therefore, form of interiorization of his or her own culture. - Jean Baudrillard, America Our present age is one of exile. - Julia Kristeva, New Type of Intellectual The demand to recognize an irreducible presence of the in literary history has brought about qualifications or the substitution of American with ethnic-specific adjectives, leading to distinctions between, for instance, African American, Indian, Asian American, Chicano, Hispanic, and Puerto Rican literature. Redefining Literary History, edited by A. La Vonne Brown Ruoff and Jerry W. Ward, Jr. (1990), may serve as typical example of recent critical anthologies of literature. And, although in the critical/theoretical debate on the meaning of ethnic, broad spectrum of positions could be mapped, in anthologies and histories of literature ethnics are almost never mentioned (The Heath Anthology of Literature, 1990, edited by Paul Lauter being an exception). From the perspective of European academic interested in literature, this predominant absence of the category of European literature is quite baffling. Even if the ideological motives behind this recoil from Eurocentrism may be understandable and even desirable, some of the unspoken assumptions behind it strike me as problematic. What bothers me most is the implied homogenization of Euro-American literature. I think that the assumptions informing this unitary perception of Euro-American literature need careful reexamination. In what follows, however, I will only very briefly outline few general and very tentative queries, hoping to open debate on the principles of present-day constructions of ethnic literature. My initial remarks on the problematic neglect of Central European literature will serve as pre-text for more detailed discussion of Eva Hoffman's Lost in Translation: A Life in New Language (1989). I will approach Hoffman's book as an example of postmodern autobiography written by Central European etrangere. What I would like to argue for is an insertion of what may (awkwardly) be called Central European literature in the Other canon of literature.(1) The first assumption encouraging homogenizing view on Euro-American literature seems to be the persistent myth of the so-called model of voluntary immigration, acculturation and assimilation that leads directly to if not quite painless absorption. From this vantage point, the melting pot is an apt metaphor in the case of Euro-Americans who, once acculturated, merge into the mainstream (read: oppressive) culture. And although the idea of the melting pot has been challenged since its very birth (the production of Israel Zangwill's play of that name in 1908), the concept seems to have reasserted its grip on the public awareness in recent years, as Rudolf Vecoli points out in his Return to the Melting Pot: Ethnicity in the United States in the Eighties.(2) The classic success tale often quoted as embodying this belief is of course Mary Antin's The Promised Land (1912). In criticism, Antin's narrative has been interpreted as a prime example of smooth, one-way assimilation. Her autobiography is singular celebration of her successful transformation from an Old World shtetl girl into New England Woman.(3) Few critics seem to have noticed the ambiguities and deep contradictions in Antin's autobiography; William A. Proefriedt's illuminating reading of The Promised Land is an exception rather than the rule.(4) It is indeed surprising that deconstruction-inspired suspicion of any seamless reading has not as yet led to radical re-examination of The Promised Land and of the straight line theory of assimilation. My feeling is that the deconstructive critical gaze has been averted from Antin's text because the writer is Caucasian immigrant. …