Theresa Hak Kyung Cha's "Dictee" Favorite Myths

Exorcisms from Demons: A Reunification with the Korean Spirit

This book remains my favorite book of all time. The author writes about how women are abused, raped and murdered around the world. Ironically, after it was published, she was herself, raped and murdered. Rest in peace. Rest in peace. Rest in peace.

Women as Goddesses

"I am hungry. I want to go home." On opening the book "Dictee," a picture of Korean calligraphy (hangul) presents these words and introduces the overall theme of the book. "Dictee" by Theresa Hak Kyung Cha is a Korean Odyssey, and the journey home is full of danger, confusion, and finally hope. The heroes who find their way home are shamans, saints, and martyrs.

However, the main character is not the normal hero; instead, the main character is the Korean spirit, trapped, exiled and detained from returning home by various demons: the tyranny of Japanese colonialism, the desolation of the Korean War, the betrayal of political corruption, and the cultural gaps between a mother and a daughter. Dictee is no ordinary book; instead, it can be viewed as an elaborate Korean ritual of exorcisms, a "kut."

"Dictee" as an elaborate kut is performed by various shamans, mystics, and martyrs. These exorcisms unfold before the reader who experiences the liberation of the Korean spirit from these demons.

To understand how Dictee functions as a kut, it becomes important to review how Korean shamans use exorcisms to free people from various physical, psychological, and spiritual limitations or ailments. Basically, a kut is the most elaborate of the theatrical rituals that are used to exorcise the demons to leave the possessed.

Ethnographer Laurel Kendall explains that fire songs, masks, and drum beats are all part of the ritual where the mansim (shaman) performs a drama of exorcism for an audience of either family members or neighbors. Thus, in one sense, the mansim is a performance artist, and this parallels Theresa Hak Kyung Cha's own artistic achievements. She was a talented performance artist who combined elements of film, dance, sound and poetry together in her productions. "Dictee" became another of Cha's performances.

A crucial element of Cha's performance is its use of language, especially the nuances of learning language. The title of "Dictee" means dictation in French. Dictation is one of the oldest methods for learning a language. One simply writes what one hears or thinks one hears, thus, trying to improve one's language abilities. Sections of "Dicte"e are like dictation exercises for learning French:

Ecivez en francais:

1. If you like this better, tell me so at once.

2. The general remained only a little while in this place.

3. If you did not speak so quickly, they would understand you better.

Only a skilled listener who has a good grasp of the language can do well in dictation. In a sense, the mansim, skilled in divine dictation, is a talented enough listener who understands the voice of the heavenly and translates it so that others can understand the message. Competence in understanding the languages of the divine and earthly are important for the mansim. The main message of the divine dictation concerns understanding Korea's changing role in modern history in times of high skepticism and dire mistrust.

"Dictee," as L. Hyun Yi Kang states, is "a site of resistance, where the readers are made to reevaluate our conceptions of language and of reading." In an exorcism, the audience is always made to reevaluate many cultural conceptions and preconceptions with language being a catalyst for doing so.

In a performance of an exorcism, language is a vital source of empowerment for a mansim and her clients because a mansim understands the power of words. Indeed, in an ancient context, language had a meaning and a power altogether lost today.

In an exorcism, one of the most ancient oral rhetorical traditions involving the use of language, a mansim talks to gods, demons and spirits and becomes an incarnate of these spiritual entities. She is in touch with the deepest mysteries of life and can persuade demons to quit haunting or possessing a person.

Speaking is not only using sounds to communicate with; it is the act of being possessed by and of becoming, at least momentarily, transformed into the mystical other. Thus, words have the power to initiate one into the mysteries.

"Dictee" is an initiation exploring the powers of language while uncovering the lost spiritual powers Koreans once had.

Part 2 is coming