Becoming Matter: Transmutations in Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s "Dictee" and Toni Cade Bambara’s "The Salt Eaters"

Author

• Kelly Cheng-Chieh Liu, CUNY City CollegeFollow

Date of Award

2025

Document Type

Thesis

Department

English

First Advisor

Robert Higney

Second Advisor

Elizabeth Mazzola

Third Advisor

András Kiséry

Keywords

Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Dictee, Toni Cade Bambara, The Salt Eaters, posthumanism, biopolitics

Abstract

In Theresa Hak Kyung Cha's Dictee and Toni Cade Bambara's The Salt Eaters, the human body transmutes variously into a column of stone, sand inside an hourglass, and other materialities. Considered as meaningful fleshy practices, these alternative embodiments emerge both as a repudiation of existing sociopolitical configurations of the human and as an attempt to envision new ontologies altogether. In this way, Dictee and The Salt Eaters can be read alongside recent developments in posthumanist theory. Invoking the esoteric matter of Western alchemy and a kind of vital materiality, respectively, Cha and Bambara locate the potentiality of the briefly unhuman in rather surreal ways.

Recommended Citation

Liu, Kelly Cheng-Chieh, "Becoming Matter: Transmutations in Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s "Dictee" and Toni Cade Bambara’s "The Salt Eaters"" (2025). CUNY Academic Works.
https://academicworks.cuny.edu/cc_etds_theses/1338