Salt Fish Girl. By Larissa Lai

Transcription

1 Salt Fish Girl By Larissa Lai

2 Time Lines & Sites Ancient China 1) The Bifurcation Shang Dynasty [origins] 3) The Salt Fish Girl 1800 s [Traditional Chinese Village and Families] [origins] 5) The Island of Mist and Forgetfulness 1900 s [Modernity: Canton North America] 2) First Symptoms; Serendipity ) The Memory Disease; Serendipity The Unregulated Zone 6) A Song for Clara Cruise The Unregulated Zone & Serendipity 2062 Early Modernity Postmoder nity

3 Location Unregulated Zone (Vancouver s harbor front mentioned) 14, 111 Painted Horse(a Next Corp town) 62; Greenwood, British Columbia 71 (richer areas?) Serendipity A Saturna city, a walled city which is falling apart The use of currency, mostly from the corporations such as Saturna, Soni, Monsanta or Nextcorp Monsanta Monsanto

4 Plot Summary: Chaps 4-8 Future [Miranda s growth & rebellion] 1. Business Suit 2. Miranda Unregulated Zone 3. Ruby Flowers (meeting Evie 105 being inserted a wafer) 1. Meeting Evie again 2. Evie s origins 3. Miranda s ambiguities Past 1. Crossroads factories in Canton (SFG, a laborer, NW, pickpocket Edwina) 2. The City of Hope (crimes and murder) visiting the opium den 1. NW going back with a foreign tongue 2. Married to a tobacco merchant 3. Drowning [origins] originating Miranda

5 Chap 8 The New Kubla Khan 2062 Nuwa myth re-created Party at NKK a girl fragmented, a child prodigy a bird girl in bubble bath Miranda singing her mother s song, ends up selling it. To finish the experiment, Miranda is put in a cage in an ocean room, with an ocean outside. Chap 9: Seed (Impregnation) Chap 10: Water on Rock

6 Trauma & Biopolitics Biopolitical society, also statistical society and posthumanism: a society for traumas (diseases) spread and get controlled The Memory Disease presented in the novel: First symptoms Miranda s durian smell Ian s mother s smell 64 Letters about Miranda (not yet serious) M s growth and rebellion The Janitors as carriers of Contagion At the Grocery, p. 85, circulated more widely At the lab p. 100 (cases numbered)

7 Memory Disease & Trauma? A collective trauma that leads to drowning Issues related to Community and Immunity Possible Reasons: 1. Collective hysteria 2. Virus (transmitted through the soles) 3. Return of the repressed 4. Manufactured 5. Resulted from GM foods 6. The transhuman tendencies

8 Outline Power Control & Laborers Positions 1. Past 2. Future Hybrid Identities in Power Structure 1. Past: Ambiguous and Contradictory 2. Future: Manipulated Evie 3. Reflecting the Present Society a. Jane on the Bus b. Drug trade and deception Betrayal Nu Wa s Betrayal of Salt Fish Girl Nu Wa s being Betrayed by Edwina, etc. Turning Points

9 Laborers & Women in Social Hierarchy -- Past Nu Wa and SFG in poverty, different responses, while both get accosted by men; SFG fights back , only to be reduced to a laborer Nu Wa s view of the factories ; factory hysteria Nu Wa s and SFG s conflicting views of stealing vs. labor , Betrays SFG, follows Edwina What does Edwina represent? And the City of Hope?

10 Laborers in Social Hierarchy -- Future: The Painted Horse over Serendipity over the Unregulated Zone, but at the Painted House is where the disease started, and religion is dominant. (e.g. Ian p. 61) Clones as laborers Janitor The Father s work: virtual heroism and actual exploitation 60, 66, 78 Evie as a clone p (reproductions of visible minorities)

11 Hybrid Identities in Different Power Structures Past Nu Wa compared with SFG -- relatively freer NW can choose not to marry; SFG experience of violence 116 Different positions as laborer and pickpocket Nu Wa social climbing? Going for something more beautiful Nu Wa s degradation in the Land of Mist and Forgetfulness Laborer in a hotel Fortune telling at a gambling house and telemarketing Drug smuggling Killing Edwina Nu Wa as a foreigner back home being forced to marry Hap

12 Hybrid Identities in Power Structure Future Asian women on the bus p. 164 harassed by some white boys Miranda and Evie vs. the bus driver Miranda at Kubla Khan: in-between Dr. Flowers, Evie and Withers coerced to work for the latter struggles in-between 155; thinks Flowers benigh 168; [later] fears Evie 228; producing the mermaid ad ; 242-

13 Betrayal, Guilt & Rebellion Nu Wa s sense of guilt (dream about SFG) , Trying to explain, but with no language 172 Miranda s betrayal of her father (and mother) of Evie Miranda s rebellion Wearing the Business Suit to return tax pp , 79 Drawing and re-configuring the Nu Wa and Mermaid myth (187)

14 Summary: Turning Points & Ambiguities In Miranda -- Her views of Evie It s you. recognition Evie alien and dirty worried about her job and Flowers love-making (when the child takes root?) 5. thinks Flowers benigh 168; love-making and re-generation 7. fears Evie (More betrayals in her selling of the mother s song and making the ad)