confidence shattered—she tries to come to terms with herself in the
mirror, and her difficulties are reflected in a destabilised subject position:
Example 5.6: Destabilising the subject position
I cannot say who this is.Your eyes attract and resist. She is avoiding
my look. I turn my head, look over my shoulder. If you move I will
shift too. She drifts past the mirror, hesitates, pauses. You want to
know more, part the waves and dart through. She backs away, needs
to find words for what she has dreamed.Obviously there is an ambiguity here about whether there are two people
or one. But the fact that a mirror is involved makes us suspect that there is
one person, and that we are exploring her divided subjectivity. This can be
seen as another ‘take’ on the mirror exercise in Chapter 1; one which
brings the idea of doubles and reflections into the writing not only the-
matically, but also at a technical and grammatical level.
What is the point of changing the subject position in this way? Most sig-
nificantly it explodes, at a fundamental and grammatical level, the idea of
an unproblematic, unified self. It emphasises that we all consist of split, or
even splintered, selves. A good example of writing which moves between
the first and third person, and creates this sense of a split self, is The Amer-
ican Woman in the Chinese Hat by American writer Carole Maso (1995).
In the following passage the narrator both expresses herself in the first
person, but also looks at herself in the third person:
Example 5.7: Destabilising the subject position
The next day in Vence I go to the municipal pool. La piscine
municipale.
She hears the sound of water over rocks.
She watches the French swim. Notes their preference for the
breaststroke. She watches a woman in a black bathing suit light a
cigarette. She feels the pervasive and strange eroticism in these days.
The slight breeze presses her toward men she doesn’t know. Men
whose language she can’t speak.
She is wearing her Chinese hat. She is holding her open notebook.
Often these days she finds she refers to herself in the third
person as if she were someone else.Watching from afar.From The American Woman in the Chinese Hat (Maso 1995, p. 21)Subtle changes of subject position are mainly found in experimental
fictions. They are a fascinating feature of the novel Waste by Australian
Narrative, narratology, power 93