Nostalgia manifests itself in many ways; the art of calligraphy is essentially a nostalgic search of the lost totems. Chinese characters are not immutable. As a matter of fact, behind every Chinese character there is a history of evolution, from the ancient oracle bone scripts to modern simplified Chinese characters. In this way, every generation inherits the tradition of Chinese characters, and then overthrows the tradition. Before a nostalgic Chinese speaker can use the lost totems as transitional objects, s/he has to recognize Chinese characters not as independent external objects, but undefined patterns that are the projection of her/his subjectivity, like the fingerprint of my right thumb, unrecognizable after the loss of the callous,
…show more content…
While a nostalgic speaker of a language is subjected to the symbolic order of language, at the same time s/he also uses language as a transitional object. A nostalgic speaker of a language may not be entitled to the traditional sense of freedom, yet s/he is liberated in the freedom of paradox. As Winnicott notes, “the essential feature in the concept of transitional objects and phenomena … is the paradox, and the acceptance of the paradox” (119). The freedom of paradox defies standard ways to perceive space and time. If the past is a dream, nebulous and enigmatic, history is a nostalgia that attempts to interpret the dream. While we cannot choose to dream a dream, we have the freedom, nonetheless, like Freud, to interpret the dream in the way we want. A nostalgic calligrapher conflates the past and the present in characters on a single sheet of calligraphy paper. In so doing, s/he individualizes the national history and appropriate, rather than simply assume, an identity. Such identity is not just the ordinary national identity, but an subjectively internalized national identity. Therefore, although the Chinese language does impart a national identity to Chinese people, a nostalgic Chinese speaker can also use the Chinese language to transcend space, time, and ultimately embrace the identity as her/his own. Such individualization of national identity echoes Walter Benjamin’s observation about “the bourgeois home in nineteenth-century Paris as a miniature theater and museum that privatizes nostalgia while at the same time replicating its public structure, the national and private homes thus becoming intertwined” (Boym, 15). Similarly, in Chinese and Japanese languages, the characters for the word country are 国家 (guo jia in Chinese, kokka in Japanese). While the first character, 国, means nation, the second character, 家, means family or home. This word suggests that although the national
While a nostalgic speaker of a language is subjected to the symbolic order of language, at the same time s/he also uses language as a transitional object. A nostalgic speaker of a language may not be entitled to the traditional sense of freedom, yet s/he is liberated in the freedom of paradox. As Winnicott notes, “the essential feature in the concept of transitional objects and phenomena … is the paradox, and the acceptance of the paradox” (119). The freedom of paradox defies standard ways to perceive space and time. If the past is a dream, nebulous and enigmatic, history is a nostalgia that attempts to interpret the dream. While we cannot choose to dream a dream, we have the freedom, nonetheless, like Freud, to interpret the dream in the way we want. A nostalgic calligrapher conflates the past and the present in characters on a single sheet of calligraphy paper. In so doing, s/he individualizes the national history and appropriate, rather than simply assume, an identity. Such identity is not just the ordinary national identity, but an subjectively internalized national identity. Therefore, although the Chinese language does impart a national identity to Chinese people, a nostalgic Chinese speaker can also use the Chinese language to transcend space, time, and ultimately embrace the identity as her/his own. Such individualization of national identity echoes Walter Benjamin’s observation about “the bourgeois home in nineteenth-century Paris as a miniature theater and museum that privatizes nostalgia while at the same time replicating its public structure, the national and private homes thus becoming intertwined” (Boym, 15). Similarly, in Chinese and Japanese languages, the characters for the word country are 国家 (guo jia in Chinese, kokka in Japanese). While the first character, 国, means nation, the second character, 家, means family or home. This word suggests that although the national