Crip‐Diasporic Cartographies

Non‐Normative Geographies in Theresa Hak Kyung Cha's Dictée (1982)

Bibliographic Data

ID12880960
AuthorsJiaying Chen (0009-0003-5701-8770, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, corresponding author)
Year2026
Volume23
Issue1
Publication date2026-01-01
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueLiterature Compass (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1741-4113 • E-ISSN: 1741-4113
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/lic3.70044
OpenAlexW7125656813
LanguageEN
References cited14

Moving beyond the critical binary between formalism and sociohistoricism that has polarized readings of Theresa Hak Kyung Cha's Dictée , this article specifies how Cha forges avant‐garde formalism into a political instrument for diasporic expression. Synthesizing crip theory, new materialism, and affect theory, this article argues that Dictée functions as a performative cartography, mapping the diasporic condition as a specific mode of structural and somatic disablement. Integrating Asian American disability studies, this study analyzes this practice less as a representation of trauma and more as a mode of knowing grounded in the experience of being socially and linguistically disabled by normative national structures. It traces three interlocking layers: the unsettled temporalities of crip time, the material geography of the book as an archival body, and the affective terrains generated within the reader. In so doing, this reading offers Asian American literary studies a critical vocabulary for reframing formal difficulty as an embodied political strategy and expands postmodern geography by positioning the body as a primary site of historical inscription

Dialectic · Embodied cognition · Materiality (auditing · Performative utterance · Politics · Postmodernism · Subjectivity · Temporalities · Vocabulary · Asian American and Pacific Histories · Latin American and Latino Studies · Spatial and Cultural Studies

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Open DOI