Style

of writing
Contribution TO Greek poet
• In Western literary tradition, one of the first
women writers who put women into the text,
world, and history was Sappho. As such, the
Greek poet has served as the godmother and
major classical model for women writers hav
e sought for and relied on for example, guida
nce, inspiration, and self-empowerment in th
e Western feminist tradition.
 Feminist Position
• Cha also manifests her feminist position by id
entifying with Sappho: she writes the epigrap
h herself and attributes it to the Greek poet.
 Cha lists the names
• and functions of the Muses right after the epi
graph in Dictee. She goes on to mimic Hesiod'
s invocation of the Muses twice . Moreover, t
he nine parts of her narrative proper are title
d the names of the Muses. However, Cha's im
itation of Hesiod is rather off the beat. Her ca
talogue of the names and functions of the M
uses is "unfaithful to the original”.
 Theogony by Hesoid
• Hesiod and the Muse, by Gustave Moreau
• "Theogony," a poem which uses the same epic verse-for
m as the "Works and Days", is also attributed to Hesiod.
• The Theogony concerns the origins of the world (
cosmogony) and of the gods (theogony), beginning with
Gaia, Chaos and Eros, and shows a special interest in
genealogy. Embedded in Greek myth
, there remain fragments of quite variant tales, hinting at
the rich variety of myth that once existed, city by city.
• Contrast to Hesiod's Muses who sin
g the glory of the gods and "soothe
men's troubles and make them forg
et their sorrows, Cha’s Muses narrat
e the troubles and sorrows of wome
n and make us remember the histor
y of women throughout the world, i
n striking .
• the Hesiodic Catalogue of Women is a song on m
ortal women who lay with gods and bore demigo
ds and heroes, and includes in its celebration Alk
mene, Atalante, Demodike, Europe, Io, Kallisto, K
oronis, Kyrene, Mestra, Niobe, Pyrrha, Semele, T
yro, and other famous women of antiquity. Signi
ficantly enough, Dictee is also a latter-day Catalo
gue of Women: a diseuse, Yu Guan Soon, Queen
Min, Jeanne d'Arc, St. Thérèse of Lisieux, Hyung S
oon [Huo] Cha, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Gertrud,
Sibyl, Demeter, Persephone, Laura Claxton's siste
r, and Princess Pari.6
• there is a crucial difference in the representa
tion of women between the Hesiodic Catalog
ue of Women and Dictee. The women in the H
esiodic Catalogue of Women are remembered
and celebrated precisely because they are bea
rers of divine seed and mothers of heroic sons
. These women helped consolidate patriarchy
and no more than the instruments of reproduc
tion for the preservation of prestigious stemm
ata in the classical period of Greece.
• In contrast, Cha's women vary wi
dely from Greek goddesses to a K
orean shamanistic matriarch and
from historical figures to fictional
ones. Most of them are unmarrie
d and unable to fulfill their femal
e potential as dictated by patriar
chy.
 Even those few married women are remem
bered as the mothers not of sons but of daug
hters. Victims of patriarchy of one kind or an
other, Cha's women reject their roles prescrib
ed by patriarchy and ultimately transcend the
limitations of their lives by asserting their voi
ces and/or through female bonding.
• Likewise, Hesiod ultimately celebrates the ris
e of Zeus as the supreme god and the establis
hment of the Olympian patriarchy, but Cha re
calls only Demeter from the Olympian panth
eon and reenacts the goddess's resistance ag
ainst Zeus's patriarchal tyranny and transcen
dence of her suffering with the establishment
of the Eleusinian Mysteries.
• Furthermore, Cha deletes "Muse," "Goddess,
" and "daughter of Zeus" in her second invoc
ation . Her reworking of Hesiod's Theogony a
s "satire re-uttering" of Hesiod's invocation of
the Muses liberated the Muses from their bo
ndage dictated by Western and Korean patria
rchal genealogies"
• True to the Hesiodic tradition, Dictee begins
with a proem, "Diseuse," (the French for spea
ker or storyteller) in which the speaker invoke
s Muse for inspiration and addresses the maj
or themes of her narrative. Whereas Hesiod i
s a supreme diseur in the proem of the Theog
ony, Cha's diseuse struggles even to articulat
e herself in "Diseuse."
• The diseuse is an immigrant girl who "mimicks
the speaking" of native speakers (1995, 3). She
hesitates, stammers, stops, and starts again wi
thout success. Caught "in the weight of their u
tterance," she waits for a chance to speak "[w
hen the amplification stops" (4). At the pause
of their utterance, she makes her own voice: "
Uttering. Hers now. Hers bare. The utter"
 You may wonder…
Why fragmented?????
• Theresa Hak Kyung Cha begins Dictee with an
epigraph: "May I write words more naked tha
n flesh, / stronger than bone, more resilient t
han / sinew, sensitive than nerve" Cha's com
parison of words to the flesh, bone, sinew, an
d nerve curiously reminds Hélène Cixous, fre
nch feminst, calling to write woman's body:
• "Write yourself. Your body must be heard". Ind
eed, the writing style of Dictee-nonlinear, cycli
cal, nonprogressive, multilayered, multivocal,
experimental, fluid, open, fragmented, and sur
real-is strikingly similar to that of l'écriture fé
minine formulated and practised by Cixous an
d other French feminist writers.
 Collage-like pattern
• "CLIO HISTORY" concludes with a page of Cha'
s notes. These notes say "I am here writing thi
s history." It becomes even more clear through
this page that Cha's attention to history is not
to deny it, but rather to bear witness to it thro
ugh crossing out, revising, and rewriting.
 Erasing the borderlines
• Cha erases the distinct categories of public an
d private life, political and domestic economie
s. Her rewriting of the history of women's poss
ibilities for response brings forward marginal a
nd major histories with the same attention to r
evision.
• While Jeanne d'Arc is a major historical figure
, Hyung Soon Huo teaching in a section of Chi
na filled with Korean exiles is equally major i
n Dictee. While St. Therese of Liseaux discon
nects from society, Yu Guan Soon organizes a
massive resistance movement. These differen
t points of view retell the history of female re
sistance as various and multiple.
• Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s only full-length book
utilises a wide variety of experimental techniq
ues in order to break down traditional narrativ
e models and liberate the individual subject fr
om oppressive master narratives. Dictee is divi
ded up into a prologue and nine chapters nam
ed after the nine Greek Muses. The prologue i
ntroduces many of the themes and artistic for
ms that Cha uses in the body of the work.
• The subject of Dictee, a diseuse (the French for
speaker or storyteller) resurrects the voices of
women from different nations and eras so that
history may be reinterpreted. However, this rei
nterpretation follows none of the traditional ru
les. Cha writes in various languages, using ungr
ammatical sentences, puns and neologisms int
erspersed with official documents and caption-
free photographs. The mode of writing indicat
es that a new form is needed to unearth untol
d histories.