An Ethico-ontological Testimony and Ontological Signs in Obasan

Abstract

This paper on Joy Kogawa’s Obasan analyzes three different ethico-ontological series of signs—animal signs, dream/memory signs, and ontological sign of death. Kogawa’s Obasan denies the conventional realistic representation of testimonial literature about concentration camps where Japanese Canadians were interned during WWII and rather presents figurative images of animal, dream, and memory that poetically illustrate universal violence and trauma. In this paper, it is argued that true testimony is not a realistic representation of historical atrocity but a poetic representation of the truth of violence and its images (signs). Influenced mostly from Deleuzian idea of art sign, this analysis focuses on the animal cry from the female protagonist’s mother, and its ethico-ontological meaning in an aesthetic context. The paper begins with exploration of animal signs that converge into an allegory of victims and predators which in turn reflects power structures and their political hierarchies. Then, after delving into memory signs envisioning future, it is maintained that in Obasan the reiteration of dream signs leads to the collective memory of history, expanding personal trauma into the historical trauma of war and international violence. The animal cry and the animal signs in conjunction with the signs of the dead and the dream/memory signs in Obasan testify to the ontological truth of humanity in aesthetic, artistic ways to amplify the novel’s contemporaneity, urgency, and universality. Plus, ontological signs illuminate ontological mood of shame and love with which Obasan avoids mere representation of historical atrocity but help maximize readers’ sensitivities to art signs emerging from the thin line between humanity and inhumanity. This is true force of aesthetic testimony in Obasan.