High Tension: Reconceptualizing interiority in the works of Qiu Miaojin and Wu Ming-yi

Abstract

This project examines the concept of “interiority”, the thoughts and feelings of other individuals, as a kind of literary device in the works of Qiu Miaojin and Wu Ming-yi. Rather than reinforce binaristic thinking, this considers interiority as a tension between public and private, between self and other, it allows for a line of analysis that can interact with multiple subfields of literary studies and genres. The novels examined in this project act as cases for examining this tension: Wu Ming-Yi’s The Man with the Compound Eyes forms an extreme “public” or external example, as the novel intersects with ecocriticism and environmental studies; Qiu Miaojin’s Notes of a Crodile and Last Words From Montmartre acts as the “private” or internal counterballast, as it intersects with gender and sexuality studies. This project attempts to read across these sub-fields and to read across genres present in the novels, in order to find points of resonance and commonality in depictions of interiority despite many differences. While examing each of these cases results in their own unique conclusions, more generally they point to possible strategies and modes of being that revise binaristic thinking: an avowal of linear time, the importance of labour in knowledge-formation, and of connection and relationships dispersed amongst many individuals and agents.