“Survival is the Least of My Desires”: Testimony, Shame, and Desire in Dorothy Allison’s Bastard Out of Carolina
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In her autobiographical novel Bastard Out of Carolina, Dorothy Allison utilizes storytelling to bear witness to the complicated truth of her trauma as a “white trash” incest survivor. While her fiction provides a brutally honest testimony to devastating effects of sexualized violence taking place in a working-class home, Allison feels compelled to speak about the concurrence of erotic desire and violence through the pre-adolescent protagonist Bone’s masochistic fantasies. In response to her stepfather’s sexual and physical abuse, Bone reenacts sexual trauma. In this essay, I closely read these reenactments of violence and argue that the inventive use of real in her fantasies allows her a certain degree of empowerment and consolation; more importantly, fantasies become a locus where Bone constructs and articulates her complex desire. Bone’s fantasy-making, I believe, is analogous to Allison’s fiction writing. By staging the sexual fantasies in Bastard where she reenacts her sexual trauma, Allison explores the areas of conflict in her life. Allison’s use of storytelling rearticulates her childhood trauma in a medium that creates a possibility of witnessing to the connection between violence and desire in her life.
Abstract
In her autobiographical novel Bastard Out of Carolina, Dorothy Allison utilizes storytelling to bear witness to the complicated truth of her trauma as a “white trash” incest survivor. While her fiction provides a brutally honest testimony to devastating effects of sexualized violence taking place in a working-class home, Allison feels compelled to speak about the concurrence of erotic desire and violence through the pre-adolescent protagonist Bone’s masochistic fantasies. In response to her stepfather’s sexual and physical abuse, Bone reenacts sexual trauma. In this essay, I closely read these reenactments of violence and argue that the inventive use of real in her fantasies allows her a certain degree of empowerment and consolation; more importantly, fantasies become a locus where Bone constructs and articulates her complex desire. Bone’s fantasy-making, I believe, is analogous to Allison’s fiction writing. By staging the sexual fantasies in Bastard where she reenacts her sexual trauma, Allison explores the areas of conflict in her life. Allison’s use of storytelling rearticulates her childhood trauma in a medium that creates a possibility of witnessing to the connection between violence and desire in her life.
참고문헌 (24)
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