“One that Returns”: Home, Hantu, and Spectre in Simone Lazaroo’s The Australian Fiancé (2000)

Abstract

The Eurasian writer, Simone Lazaroo, has lived most of her life in Australia. Her fiction seeks to reconnect with a cultural heritage to re-establish a sense of home and belonging, a move that is both a return – in that Lazaroo situates her narratives in the Asian contexts of her birth in Singapore and her paternal connection with Malaysia – and an origin because it “begins” by “coming back” (Derrida 1994: 10). In Spectres of Marx, Derrida writes that just “as Marx had his ghosts, we [too] have ours, but memories no longer recognise such borders; by definition, they pass through walls, these revenants, day and night, they trick consciousness and skip generations” (1994: 36). I explore this site of penetrable boundaries, between the “ghost” that haunts in the West – accountable in philosophical and psychoanalytical terms – and the seemingly unaccountable “hantu” in the Singaporean context. Instead, I work with Derrida’s idea of the “absent presence” or the “visible invisible” to raise questions about the female body, both spectral and Eurasian. I also explore spectrality in the motif of the photograph.

Opsomming

Die Eurasiese skrywer Simone Lazaroo het vir die grootste deel van haar lewe in Australië gewoon. Haar fiksie is bedoel om weer 'n kulturele erfenis op te roep, om opnuut 'n gevoel van tuis wees en behoort te bewerkstellig, 'n handeling wat enersyds 'n terugkering is – in dié sin dat Lazaroo haar vertellings in die Asiatiese kontekste van haar geboorte in Singapoer en haar vadersverbintenis met Maleisië plaas, en ’n oorsprong omdat dit “begin” deur “terug te kom” (Derrida 1994: 10). In Spectres of Marx skryf Derrida dat net “soos Marx sy spoke gehad het, ons [ook] ons s'n het, maar herinneringe herken nie meer sodanige grense nie; uiteraard kan hulle deur mure beweeg, hierdie spoke wat uit die dode teruggekeer het; dag en nag mislei hulle ons bewussyn en hulle slaan generasies oor” [vry vertaal] (1994: 36). Ek verken hierdie terrein van deurdringbare grense, tussen die “spook” wat in die Weste ronddwaal – toerekenbaar in filosofiese en psigoanalitiese terme – en die oënskynlik ontoerekenbare “hantu” in die Singapoer-konteks. Ek werk met Derrida se idee van die “afwesige teenwoordigheid” of die “onsigbare sigbare” – om vrae te opper oor die vroulike liggaam, spektraal sowel as Eurasies. Ek ondersoek ook spektraliteit in die motief van die foto.