Exploring Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s Dictee Through Trauma Theory And Postmemory

Abstract

This paper examines Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s Dictee through Cathy Caruth’s trauma theory and Marianne Hirsch’s concept of postmemory. It argues that Caruth’s notion of trauma - as an event not fully experienced in the moment but reemerging through involuntary repetitions and disruptions - explains Dictee’s non-linear, fractured narrative. The text’s frequent silences, gaps, and linguistic ruptures reveal how colonial, and war trauma remain unspoken, and resurface through fragmented testimonies and archival materials. Similarly, Hirsch’s concept of postmemory demonstrates how Cha, born after Korea’s colonial period, reconstructs a past she never directly experienced. Through multilingual experimentation, shifting narrative perspectives, and the integration of historical figures into personal and national memory, Dictee reflects postmemory by reinterpreting and embodying inherited trauma instead of merely narrating it. By engaging with both belated trauma and postmemory, Dictee deconstructs a linear historical narrative and instead presents a fragmented, multi-voiced testimony to the ongoing impact of colonial violence and displacement.