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    Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://nccur.lib.nccu.edu.tw/handle/140.119/100687


    Title: (Im) Possibility of Reciprocation: Gift Economy in “Letter from an Unknown Woman＂
    Authors: Kuo, Betty
    Keywords: gift studies;Georges Bataille;expenditure;reciprocity
    Date: 2015-03
    Issue Date: 2016-08-23 17:56:28 (UTC+8)
    Abstract: This paper uses theories of gift economy to examine gift relationship in no gift giving can be wholly disinterested and no gift relationship can be
    sustained without reciprocation.
    the Austrian novelist Stefan Zweig’s novella “Letter from an Unknown
    Woman.” Based upon the gift relationship, this paper further interprets love
    relationship between the hero and the heroine. Marcel Mauss observes that
    gift-giving, dictated by social rules, requires reciprocation. But Georges
    Bataille considers that this reciprocity inherent in gift relationship is not
    different from transaction. Instead, he uses the conception of expenditure to
    explain the behavior of gift-giving. Gift, in Bataille’s view, should not be
    interpreted as exchange but as loss free from calculation. Jacques Derrida, in
    line with Bataille, regards the gift as impossible because the gift, once
    recognized as reciprocal by obligation, is not gift any more. According to
    Mauss’, Bataille’s and Derrida’s theories of gift, reciprocity becomes the key
    factor for analyzing gift relationship.
    Highlighting gift relationship, “Letter from an Unknown Woman”
    dramatizes a first-person female narrator’s deathbed confession, which
    contains her lifelong unrequited love for the addressee. Going against the
    grain with conventional reading, this paper argues that the heroine is not
    totally satisfied with such an unreciprocated relationship. She still demands
    return, even though it is nothing but the hero’s memory of her. The heroine’s
    contradictory attitude indeed reflects the contradiction of Bataille’s theory:
    Relation: 文化越界,2(1),79-106
    Cross-cultural Studies
    Data Type: article
    Appears in Collections:[Cross-cultural Studies] Journal Articles

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