The Savage as Living Ghost is a study about four scholarly failures to dismantle the notion of the savage in Western discourse. These scholarly attempts are, broadly, structuralist,... Show moreThe Savage as Living Ghost is a study about four scholarly failures to dismantle the notion of the savage in Western discourse. These scholarly attempts are, broadly, structuralist, poststructuralist, postcolonial or multiculturalist, and decolonial. This study examines these four scholarly attempts by confronting them with close-readings of literary works or films in which the notion of the savage is attached to or associated with Native Americans. As Native Americans constitute the paradigmatic figuration of the savage since the European conquest of America, I focus particularly on the ways the West has constructed Native Americans as savages in this study. In Western discourse, the terms “savage” and “civilized” appear quite frequently in political speeches, the media, academic works, and daily conversation. This study looks critically at the rhetoric of civilization which designates Native Americans as savages and Europeans as civilized, and traces how the notion of the savage serves as a moral and cultural term to establish a hierarchy between Native Americans and the Europeans. Studying this process of othering reveals the dark side of European modernity. Show less
In literature ghosts have a long history. They manifest themselves in a variety of forms. They are intriguing because of their undecidable nature—their association with death and afterlife, which... Show moreIn literature ghosts have a long history. They manifest themselves in a variety of forms. They are intriguing because of their undecidable nature—their association with death and afterlife, which are irredeemable and inexplicable to the living. Especially in postcolonial literature we encounter the presence of ghosts. Ghostly figures often serve as metaphors of return—the return of repressed history, which continues to haunt the present. Sometimes they mark a present absence of marginalized groups of people. Noting the ineluctable encounters between ghosts, memories, and subjectivities in postcolonial literature, this dissertation tries to reach a deeper and broader understanding of the narrative potential of the ghostly in spatial, cultural and ethical dimensions. By perceiving ghosts as metaphorical concepts, I incorporate a variety of notions of ghosts into my exploration of ‘spectral space,’ ‘ghost language,’ and ‘mediums.’ I also investigate how these ghost-related concepts function to illuminate a new mode of thinking about the realms of knowledge and ethics. I argue that ghosts are ethical subjects rather than objects of social constructions. They provide us a productive way of establishing a new ethics of ghosts, which is reconsidered as the ethics of how to live with and survive as ghosts. Show less
