ABSTRACT
The trope of the ghost often invokes loss and trauma and presents itself as a symbol of ancestral roots returning to haunt the living. This article proposes this trope is reimagined in contemporary Southeast Asian writings as nurturing and generative so that it establishes human–ghost bonds for the transnational subject. In adopting the framework of reparative reading introduced by queer theorist Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, this article reads ghosts as recuperative in two narratives of disaporic return: the speculative fictions entitled “起獅, 行礼 (Rising Lion – The Lion Bows)” and Black Water Sister by the Malaysian writer Zen Cho. Through interrogating the ghost figure and its fraught associations with roots/rootedness, and attending to ghostly hauntings in Cho’s texts, this article theorizes a condition of “weak rootedness” experienced by (queer) transnational subjects, where shared affective and psychic experiences facilitate unexpected relationalities across races and cultures beyond the presumed connection of roots.
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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1. Section 377 of the Malaysian Penal Code Act 574, first introduced in 1871 under British colonial rule and formally enacted by Malaysian states in 1936, criminalizes individuals who engage in “carnal intercourse against the order of nature” as well as “any act of gross indecency”. This section against homosexuality remains effective today: https://www.sprm.gov.my/admin/files/sprm/assets/pdf/penguatkuasaan/Akta_574_(31.5.2023)_BI.pdf.
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Kam Tou Pang
Kam Tou Pang is a PhD student in literary studies (English) at the University of Macau. His research interests include contemporary Asian American literatures, Asian anglophone literatures, affect theory, and queer studies.
