‘The Other of the Other’: Angela Carter’s ‘New-Fangled’ Orientalism

Abstract

In 1969 Angela Carter used the proceeds of her Somerset Maugham Award to travel to Japan where, she claims, she ‘learnt what it is to be a woman and became radicalised’ (Nothing Sacred 28). Carter states that she chose Japan because she ‘wanted to live for a while in a culture that is not now nor has ever been a Judaeo-Christian one, to see what it was like’ (ibid.).¹ In “Notes from the Front Line” (1983) she discusses how her encounter with Japanese culture also troubled and denaturalized her racial identity (72). Given Carter’s self-professed interest in ‘decolonialising’ existing hegemonic structures it is surprising that Carter scholarship has not engaged more extensively with postcolonial theory.² Whilst there has been a great deal of exploration of Carter’s ‘decolonialising’ project in terms of her demythologizing of gender, there has been less extensive exploration of the racial dynamics in Carter’s work.³ Drawing on her journalism, radio plays and short fiction, this chapter explores the impact of Carter’s formative experiences in Japan on her feminist and political consciousness as a writer. However, whilst Japan can be glossed as the source of Carter’s feminist and political enlightenment, it is important to examine both the risks of eliding sexual and racial difference, and the dangers of straightforwardly situating Japan as an intellectual playground for the development of Carter’s Western aesthetic. Thus, this chapter considers both the strengths and the limitations of Carter’s political strategies in relation to her engagement with Japan.