Writing, rewriting, and miswriting: Eileen chang’s late style against the grain

Abstract

In her article “Writing, Rewriting, and Miswriting: Eileen Chang’s Late Style Against the Grain,” Lina Qu reconstructs Eileen Chang as a Saidian late figure and formulates the poetics and politics of lateness immanent in her late self-writing. Drawing from Said’s theorization, Qu argues that Chang’s late style emerges and matures in rewriting her memories into numerous autobiographical accounts. The exposé of her dysfunctional family and turbulent life metonymically constitutes a counter narrative that disenchants Chinese modernity. In contrast to the dominant modalities of evolution and revolution, her involutionary discourse embodies a Deleuzian paradigm of artistic creativity and historical development. Qu also argues that Chang militates against her time through writing, rewriting, and miswriting against her family, and against her mother in particular. With dramatic externalization of emotional conflicts and blatant exposition of traumatic events, Chang interrogates what is at stake when the radical modernization of traditional familial structures occurs.