"THE BRIGHT BONE OF A DREAM": DRAMA, PERFORMATIVITY, RITUAL, AND COMMUNITY IN MICHAEL ONDAATJE'S "RUNNING IN THE FAMILY"

• Published in: Biography (Honolulu) Vol. 23; no. 2; pp. 352 - 371
• Main Author: MATTHEWS, S. LEIGH
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Honolulu University of Hawai'i Press for the Biographical Research Center 01.04.2000; University of Hawai'i Press; University of Hawaii Press; University Press of Hawaii for the Biographical Research Center
• Subjects: Ambiguity; Asian literature; Autobiographies; Biographies; Biography; Bones; Canadian literature; Communities; Criticism; Criticism and interpretation; Culture; Drama; Families & family life; Family; Fathers; Funerary rituals; Historiography; History; Literary criticism; Literature; Memoirs; Methods; Modern society; Ondaatje, Michael; Ondaatje, Michael (1943- ); Performativity; Performing arts; Portrayals; Primitive society; Psychological aspects; Ritual; Rituals; Self; Self (Psychology); Social isolation; South Asian culture; Theater; Canada
• ISSN: 0162-4962; 1529-1456; 1529-1456
• DOI: 10.1353/bio.2000.0015

In a reading of Michael Ondaatje's Running in the Family (1982) which stresses the communal identity of the autobiographical subject, this essay makes a connection between the function of life writing in modern society and that of ritual in primitive societies. The memoir form in particular is thus viewed as a tool used by marginalized individuals to achieve a public performance—a public rite of passage—as a means to reintegrate the self within communal origins and to provide critical reflection on limited Western concepts of subjectivity and historiography.