A Study On The Cultural Identity Dilemma In The Writing Of Andre Brink

As a famous writer,critics and social activist,Andre Brink,J.M.Coetzee and Nadine Gordimer are known as the three masters of South African Literature.As a descendant of the Boer in South Africa and an imperial diasporic intellectual,Brink,whose cultural identity is involved in the dilemma,could neither inherit the European literary tradition in his writing,nor convert to the localization and indigenization of post-colonial areas in South Africa.Being unable to find where he should belong,Brink is caught in the double diaspora of identity and mind.So in his writing and social activities,Brink doesn’t only show his sympathy for the oppressed black people and his criticism of apartheid,but also his attitudes towards the black and the white sway from respect,distrust to the total irony.This paper will analyze Brink’s novels Devil’s Valley and The First Life of Adamastor with the cultural identity theory in the post-colonial theory.It will explore his dilemma in the religion belief,racial perception and history reconstruction of the white characters and the black characters under the influences of his sticky African white diasporic identity.This thesis is discussed from the following five parts.The first part gives an introduction of Brink’s personal experiences and his academic achievements,explains the reasons why this thesis selects these two novels Devil’s Valley and The First Life of Adamastor as the research text and their creation background and story outline,analyzes and summarizes the abroad and domestic literature review on Andre Brink and his works,and makes an interpretation about the theoretical framework of cultural identity.Chapter Two clarifies how Brink’s wavering religious belief in the dilemma of cultural identity is reflected in these two novels and how they makes contradictions.Chapter Three explores the reasons of Brink’s transformation from a beneficiary under apartheid to a champion of the anti-apartheid system,and analyzes the contradictory cultural identity of the white man with black blood in Devil’s Valley and the indigenous black leader who was reincarnated by a white mythical giant in The First Life of Adamastor.The forth chapter mainly discusses how and why Andre Brink reconstructs history under the dilemma of cultural identity,which is not only the continuous exploration of his own cultural identity,but also thelonging of the imperial diasporic intellectuals in the dilemma of “the person living in-between” cultural identity.Chapter Five,Conclusion,summarizes the analysis of the first four chapters.The whole thesis analyzes the cultural identity of white writers in South Africa like Andre Brink from the perspective of post-colonialism,not only discussing human beings,but also the special social and cultural environment of South Africa.