Myth emerges from historic collage in Kabuki, the text itself a de-historicized palimpsest that ultimately evades consolidation. The multiplicity of texts and art forms generates historical conflicts that feed into the fracture of character, conceiving a liminal space within which Kabuki resides, both as a figure in the text and as a character in her drama. In his essay ìLiminality and Communitas,î Victor Turner articulates the rite of passage as a liminal space, an area following societal detachment, characterized by the thrust towards aggregation. The graphic novel seems to push toward an analogous textual and psychological culmination, the movement from the nebulous threshold space into wholeness. However, this trajectory frustrates itself; the book, like the folding and unfolding of its origami animals, constantly recycles and reiterates mythic markers. Kabuki is trapped within Lacanís pre-oedipal imaginary stage of being, conceiving of herself as a re-enactment of her mother. The mirror stage dramatized at the end of the book leads nowhere, refuting the patriarchal identity one assumes under the symbolic. Death, however transient or metaphorical, becomes a mode of reconfiguring the self, yet the self is then always a fiction.
     Kabukiís moment of conception occurs in rape, a foundational myth that engenders problems of silence and defacement that plague the book. Kabukiís mother, Tsukiko, is brutally raped on her wedding day by Kai, the Generalís son. He also carves the word ìKabukiî across her back, forever inscribing her with her

role as a ghost in the Kabuki plays she performed as a comfort woman. Kai performs a double act of defacement, the rape operating as an inscription of his body over hers; and the inscription on her back doubling as rhetorical rape. The violence he does to Tsukiko is both twofold and singular, a device allying rape and inscription: ìdisfiguration both in its rhetorical and physical senses, as both textual and corporeal deformation or mutilation.î(1) The inscription here is a process of erasure, silence, and reinscription. Like Tereus cuts out Philomelaís tongue after raping her, the rape act does not only do violence to the body, but to the voice. Tsukiko dies in childbirth, and so Kabuki cannot find any relation to her mother but to enact her. When Kai discovers Kabukiís existence, he performs the same violence on her, carving ìKabukiî into her face and leaving her for dead. When asked what happened to the little girl, Kabuki says: ìShe died.î Kabukiís first death complicates the process of silencing that Kai perpetuates on her body, for she is reborn, but into her motherís image. Having flat-lined for nine minutes, Kabukiís body revives but the General signs the death certificate anyway. Kabuki exists as a ghost, silent yet speaking, embodying the image of her mother in her status as ghost, as a ìtabula rasa, a blank slate.î (2)

        Kabukiís condition as tabula rasa describes her entrapment within the pre-oedipal imaginary stage of development. Lacan believes that the pre-oedipal imaginary stage exists until about 6 months old, or until the point when a child is as yet unable to outdo a chimpanzee at instrumental intelligence but can still recognize himself in the mirror. The mirror stage would then occur, when, ìhe nevertheless overcomes, in a flutter of jubilant activity, the obstructions of his support and, fixing his attitude in a slightly leaning-forward position, in order to hold it in his gaze, brings back an instantaneous aspect of the image.î(3) Prior to the mirror stage, the child marks no difference between inside and outside, between self and m(other). Kabuki seems to remain within a repetition of the pre-oedipal imaginary stage for most of Metamorphosis, at least figuratively since she does have enough of a sense of self and other to basically function as an adult. Since her mother dies in childbirth she cannot delineate between their bodies. The General derives her name, Ukiko, directly from her motherís, Tsukiko. Moreover, their double inscription (rape both physical and rhetorical) and their shared status as ghosts further advance the idea that Kabuki performs her motherís violently discontinued self. The rape stultifies Kabuki, the male practice of violent erasure and inscription stalling female development within the imaginary. Ironically enough, that stalling has enabled Kabuki to envision a separate

space and definition of development, a different kind of aesthetic liminal space that attempts the reconfiguration of a patriarchal semiotic system. When Kai disfigures Kabuki, he also fractures the jade stature of her mother she wears around her neck, splitting it in half. In this text, Kabuki and her mother are the same splintered body, seeking unity: ìI see the jade statue of my mother. Both halves are joined.î In this way, the imaginary stage may serve not as a trap, but as an impetus for self-conception.

     Kabuki may be read as an attempt to escape this foundational myth, for if rape operates as a model of male inscription in this text, resisting its consequent smothering through multiplicities of representation offers a character the ability to speak. Kabuki's position as a ghost literalizes her position as a liminal figure: "Miraculously, the medics brought me back. But part of me felt like it did not belong in this world. Either part of me was left on the other side, or I brought a part of my mother back with me." Her first death as a girl conjures an image of her young body strewn across her mother's grave, her right hand

clutching a jade statue of her mother. Turner's description of liminal symbols coincides both with her repeated deaths and with her suspension in the pre-oedipal: "Thus, liminality is frequently likened to death, to being in the womb, to invisibility, to darkness..." (4) Mutilated, Kabuki can no longer play the piano or dance ballet ("sing, "dance" or "act"), so the General sends her to a private academy to train as an operative. Her first rebirth is a birth into violence and gendered order - while the assassins of the mask of the Noh are all female, two male figures ultimately control female agency. Her first death delivers her into a failed self-reconfiguration, though she now becomes an agent and not a victim of aggression, she must still define herself through violence and patriarchy. She cannot, in this mode, address her silenced body. Kabuki dies again at the end of the Circle of Blood, after she murders Kai and the Nohís board of directors. Badly injured and dying, she destroys the globe containing her motherís remains, once more temporarily dying astride her grave.

     In Metamorphosis, Mack reiterates this image on opposite pages, unifying both her deaths: the second precipitates her movement into the narrative and artistic space of the Control Corps asylum, a venue where silence and order may be defied through transformation. Unlike the previous graphic novels, Metamorphosis is a society of women, even those purportedly holding the reigns of power, like the psychologist, are female. In this way, Mack designs the only space where the primal rape moment can be openly disputed; except for his own male presence.
However, the asylum is also a cirmcumscribed space from which abuki seeks to escape, far too ordered to complete any refutation. In his essay ìLiminality and Communitas,î Turner notes: ìProphets and artists tend to be liminal and marginal people, ìedgemen,î who strive with a passionate sincerity to rid themselves of the clichÈs associated with status incumbency and role-playing and to enter into vital relations with other men in fact or imagination.î(5) Yet, Turnerís language here betrays his assumption of patriarchal primacy: he speaks with reference to a male rite of passage. The same problem seems to apply to Lacanís resolution of the
oedipal crisis, the world must finally be broken down into binaries determined by the father. Kabukiís potential absorption into the symbolic would, in this case, be more alienating than her entrapment in the pre-oedipal stage of development. Perhaps both models do not reach fruition within a female experience, Kabuki necessarily pursuing ìvital relationsî with her own fractured body. The art in Circle of Blood has remarkably distinct lines in black and white, a mode of representation that suggests a certain accuracy and clarity of vision, determined by the omnipresent male narrator. The presence of multiple texts and art forms in Metamorphosis offers alternative models for speaking and representing myth, but the conflicts they produce interfere with any holistic interpretation.

     The encounter between East and West in Metamorphosis concentrates attention on the formation of a cultural liminality. This cultural clash serves as a backdrop for staging Kabukiís psychological liminality. Akemiís origami notes are rife with Western references, to music, philosophers and artists. Hisashi Tenmouya, an artist from Tokyo, attempts to construct a similar dichotomy in his works, which faithfully reproduce stylistic features of otoko-e, ukiyo-e and other styles, yet infuse them with wry contemporary twists that recall Western influence. A statue of Buddha may be covered with graffiti, a samurai may be holding a taser, or a yakuza tattoo may adorn the exposed arm of a geisha(6). His pieces portray an inconsistency between style and subject, offering no resolution. The presence of Japanese influence in Mackís work operates in much the same way, style invoking
Hisashi Tenmyouya

a link to Japanese history, yet plumbing it no further. Mack seems to know this, as when he has Akemi construct a self-analysis in order to divert her psychologistís attention: ìÖher bio reveals she is fond of quoting writers, musicians, poets, and films of Western pop culture.î However, Japan is not merely a veneer in this text, and allows Mack the opportunity to create the sense of Kabukiís metaphorical migrant status. In ìAn Impossible Homecoming,î Iain Chambers discusses border crossings between Mexico and America, making a distinction between travel and migrancy:

For to travel implies movement between fixed positions, a site of departure, a point of arrival, the knowledge of an itinerary. It also intimates an eventual return, a potential homecoming. Migrancy, on the contrary, involves a movement in which neither points of departure not those of arrival are immutable or certain. It calls for a dwelling in language, in histories, in identities that are constantly subject to mutationÖHistory gives way to histories, as the West gives way to the world. (7)

 

Kabuki resides in transition, the unfixed space between cultures and art necessary to the scrutiny of character. Mack represents migrancy through the substitution of style for history, logging the impossibility of singular depiction. In part five, seventeen square portraits of Akemi pepper the page in a Warhol-esque configuration, one cubist, one surreal, one iconic, one in Japanese paper art and so on. These particular artistic allusions reference a chronology of both Western and Eastern art, their presence on the same page conflating the history and evolution of each.

     A manifold of art forms, text and philosophy constitute this text, from fuzzy-edged watercolor to childrenís books to Japanese anime, each invoking different models of history and representation that overlap but do not cohere. Mackís acknowledgments are a cross-cultural, cross-historical artistic catalogue, ranging in mention from Dr. Seuss and Stephen Hawking to Sun Tzu and Buddha. His scattered thanks alone serve as instruction to read the novel as a cultural and philosophical pastiche, a body that de-historicizes and de-individualizes cultural and artistic sources. Mack creates an ahistorical space where he is free to perpetuate his own myth; Kabuki is a palimpsest that constantly deflects meaning and interpretation. Akemi writes: ìI practice literature

as magic. All words and all works are alchemy, the great science/art of transformation.î She articulates the formation of an artistic liminal space, conceived through the textís myriad modes of representation, that attempts to refigure a patriarchal mode of representation. However, the formulation of this space asserts a purported thrust towards aesthetic unity that does not find fulfillment.

     The multiplicity of cultural reference, while driving the production and evaluation of this myth, then also becomes a vocal quagmire where the ability of individual texts or bodies to speak falls short. The specter of Kabukiís mythic past haunts her through Metamorphosis, reappearing through the psychiatristís Rorscharch cards literally hunting her down in the Noh agents who seek to kill
her. However, despite the recurrence of images or kanji that operate as mythical markers in Metamorphosis, her history is open to evaluation. Represented in pastiche form, it becomes a history without history. When Kabuki and Akemi (her ìinvisible friendî) discuss the English books they read as children, Kabuki recalls a book she read as a child ìby some obscure writer who eventually went mad and became a recluse.î This book, entitled My Invisible Friend, is by David Mack himself, and within Metamorphosis, he unfolds this childrenís book in comic bookesque panels. In the opening pages of My Invisible Friend, Mack writes that he created this book in a college childrenís literature class. The panels constituting the childrenís book overlay images of the young Ukiko (Kabuki) reading and drawing, a juxtaposition that complicates Mackís position as author in this text, practically inserting himself into the acknowledgment list. He places himself within the artistic pastiche, even describing his relative historical position (as an artist in a college class in 1997, and as an artist now), yet he stands over the entire work as an author does. These few pages capture a conjunction between myth and history, Mack lending himself to the multivocal textual space in a manner which insinuates his own culpability as historic source. As the ultimate creator of the entire graphic novel, Mackís position within the text furnishes the palimpsestic array of textual bodies with the capacity to speak. Nonetheless, though this

metafictional effort against silence conceivably boosts Kabukiís vocality, anything she has to say may be inaudible over the cacophony. Moreover, Mackís entry into the text implies a continuing patriarchal imposition, his contribution to a female vocality unusable.

     Despite the attempts to reread and rewrite history in Metamorphosis, any direct assertion against myth fails. As the book comes to a crisis and the Noh agents track

Kabuki down, history and narrative continuity becomes entirely jumbled. In Part eight (as the title of the chapter becomes a variety of quotes), the misleading conclusion of Kabukiís fight arrives before the fight itself: ìWe have found Kabuki and she is dead.î A typed caption instruction to ìCut. Stop. Rewind.î appears and a single vertical panel conflates the mythic images from Kabukiís past: her motherís vandalized body, the Generalís face, her own young figure on her motherís grave. A scribbled caption ìNOT THAT FAR BACK!î generates a panic over this lack of historic control. The final part of Metamorphosis attempts to use the alphabet as an organizing principle, yet the words that emerge from the alphabetical order are born out of the fabric and mythology of the book itself. When the agency that controls the Noh tries to piece together a chronology of the events leading to Kabukiís apparent death, they view the videotape that Siamese retrieved from the asylum. In trying to ìfast forward to the important stuff,î they miss the part they are looking for: ìOops. I passed the action. This is the body.î By this point, Kabuki has attempted tp refute myth through violence. she both frees her voice and precipitates the gradual disintegration of that patriarchal myth, interfacing with the primal historic moment of her mother's rape and her own defacement. The Noh then cannot reinstall mythic order into the deliberately disordered history of the text, history requiring its own logic.

     Myth is finally inescapable in Metamorphosis. After Kabuki escapes from Control Corps, she encounters her reflection, Kageko, an operative she met in Skin Deep who imitates and replaces her in the Masks of the Noh. This meeting dramatizes Lacanís mirror stage: Mack depicts the two facing each

other in different panels separated by a panel containing their opposing silhouettes. However, Kageko wears the mask Kabuki has, until this point, used as her own face. This graphic construction articulates both difference and similarity, forcing the mirror stage to operate in a very different way. Though Kabuki does not see her own flesh face as a reflection, she can now conceive of her whole self. Lacan suggests the mirror stage is both a totalizing and alienating experience:

The mirror stage is a drama whose internal thrust is precipitated from insufficiency to anticipation ‚ and who manufactures for the subject, caught up in the lure of spatial identification, the succession of phantasies that extends from a fragmented body-image to a form of its totality that I shall call orthopaedic ‚ and lastly, to the assumption of the armour of an alienating identity, which will mark with its rigid structure the subjectís entire mental development. (8)

The experience of self-alienation between one and oneís reflection affords Kabuki the capacity to perhaps escape her past. However, in Lacanís mind, the whole self is also a fictional substitute, a myth of the individual. Turner's concept of liminality and Lacan's psychoanalytical progression (from the pre-oedipal to the mirror stage to the oedipal crisis and resolution)both map the perpetuation of the patriarchal myth. Lacan suggests an
oedipal crisis and resolution as subsequent to the mirror stage, yet in Kabuki, the world cannot be set up in a series of oppositions; and she becomes this new indefinite fiction. As Kageko lets her walk away, Kabuki metaphorically dies (for the third time) and is released by her reflection. Since myth and history cannot be controlled or organized, it must be discarded.

(1)Higgins, Lynn A. And Brenda R. Silver. "Introduction: Rereading Rape." Rape and Representation. New York: Columbia University Press, 1991. p. 4.

(2)Turner, Victor W. "Liminality and Communitas." The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure. Chicago: Aldine Publishing Co., 1969. p. 103.

(3)Lacan, Jacques: "The mirror stage as formative of the function of the I as revealed in psychoanalytic experience." Écrits: A Selection. Tr. Alan Sheridan. New York: Norton, 1977. pp. 1-2.

(4)Turner, Victor W. "Liminality and Communitas." p. 95. Italics mine.

(5)Ibid. p. 128.

(6)"Hisashi Tenmyouya." The Fader Magazine. Summer 2002. pp. 58-59.

(7)Chamber, Iain. "An Impossible Homecoming." Migrancy, Culture, Identity. New York: Routledge, 1994. p. 5.

(8)Lacan, Jacques. "The mirror stage as formative of the function of the I as revealed in psychoanalytic experience." p. 4.