Marc's Reviews > Dictee

“To name it now so as not to repeat history in oblivion. To extract each fragment by each fragment from the word from the image another word another image the reply that will not repeat history in oblivion.”

Cha was a writer who worked in many art forms, mining, it would seem, their various strengths to push boundaries and try to express/capture the inexpressible. A favorite professor recommended this book to me in the late '90s and it took a Pandemic-inspired buying spree for me to finally pick up a copy. I no longer remembered why it was recommended to me, nor what it was about, so I came to it with no history and no real expectations.

Cha uses the nine Greek muses as a structural divide for the parts of this book and, like most of her art as I'm given to understand, it defies easy categorization. She blends poetry, language (English with a scattering of French), prose, biography, photography, hand-written letters, illustrations, and memoir. Loosely, it is the story of several women (Cha, her mother, the Korean revolutionary Yu Guan Soon, Joan of Arc, Demeter, and Persephone), but conceptually feels tied together by tackling marginalization, erasure, colonialism, and feminism. It's a challenging book but its word play is both mesmerizing and powerful. At times, like a prayer uttered as faith wanes; at others, poetic with a wonderfully forceful staccato (achieved as Cha breaks up the rhythm and structure of the writing with frequent use of periods).

I read the book as experimental in a way that felt more raw and honest than conceptual/performative--aware of the limits of language and attempting to move beyond them. Sadly, it would seem Cha's book and her art met with the same sort of marginalization/erasure she grappled with due to her being murdered shortly after its publication. Unbeknownst to me, she seems to be having a bit of a renaissance and has played an influential role in a number of younger/existing writers (see recent, insightful articles about her in The Nation and Hyperallergic, as well as Theresa Hak Kyung Cha: Avant Dictee, a 2018 art exhibit).

“It stays. All chronology lost, indecipherable, the passage of time, until it is forgotten. Forgotten how it stays, how it endures.”

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TWO WORDS I LOOKED UP AFTER READING THIS
diseuse | relume