The Third Space Exploration Of Marginal Ethnic Groups From The Perspective Of Space Structure

In the 1980 s,the culture of American was embodied in the form of multiple development and Chicano research has entered into a period of overall prosperity.The classic novel The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros,who was an American Hispanic writer in this period reflects the marginalization status of Mexican Hispanics in the United States and how do these groups struggle in the state of loss of voice.This novel differs in its space construction by stylistic influences from other novels of the same genre,which shows the desire of the author’s original nation to open up the third space in depth but not obviously.Based on the research of The House on Mango Street,this thesis attempts to interpret the third space exploration of Mexican Americans represented by Cisneros from the perspective of space structure,and to help other marginalized ethnic groups excluded from the mainstream American culture realize the advantages and disadvantages of being marginalized,so as to get rid of the passive situation,realize identity and become a member of the pluralistic American society eventually.In terms of the novel itself,the author tells the story of the heroine in Mango Street through memory from the perspective of children.It illustrates the desire of marginal ethnic women to break through the shackles of race,class and gender during the growth of a little girl.The author herself grows up in a dual cultural environment and makes full use of her marginal advantages and multicultural backgrounds through unique genre and expression techniques to build a new living space.The experience and thoughts shown in the novel all make marginal ethnic groups out of the embarrassing situation from the perspective of space construction from different levels and provide a reference for opening up the third space--how to find the way to real freedom in the process of remodeling self-identity and space exploration.The thesis is divided into five chapters in order to fully explore and analyze the living state of Mexican ethnic groups as marginal ethnic groups in the novel,and it takes this novel as an example to expand the exploration of the third space by marginal ethnic groups.The first chapter mainly introduces the writing background and national thoughts of the novel,clarifies the research problems and significance of this thesis,combs the relevant researches at home and abroad,and introduces the relevant theories mainly adopted in this thesis,which provides necessary theoretical basis for the later writing.The main body of the thesis includes the following three chapters:The second chapter analyzes the resistance power of the Mexican ethnic groups represented by the author or Chicano literature against the mainstream culture in literature from the aspects of genre,writing perspective and metaphor techniques.From her unique Chicano female perspective,novel genre and profound depiction of the characters’ spiritual world,Cisneros creates the image of marginal ethnic women with distinct Latin American characteristics and alienated from the mainstream American culture successfully.The ubiquitous metaphors greatly enriches the literary space of the novel.This thesis thinks that this kind of creation,which is different from the mainstream literature in Europe and America,has distinct characteristics but is different from the mainstream.It has made an exploration of cultural diversity from another level,which is the embodiment of the spirit of resistance.Of course,the novel also covers the re-cognitive consciousness of ethnic culture in content from the perspective of reshaping national identity,which help the author break away from the status of identity struggle.This chapter not only interprets the demands of marginal ethnic groups to get out of embarrassing situation from the shallow level of expression skills,but also paves the way for the analysis of spatial structure in the following text.The third chapter focuses on the analysis of subversive thoughts embodied in the space construction of Mango Street in the novel.The construction of the two central images of Mango Street and House highlights the author’s strong sense of space.The current literary space has already possessed the sociality and accommodates people’s life and social relations.The narrative space on Mango Street in this novel has already formed an inseparable connection with her self-identity.Therefore,although the social space and psychological space in the novel are not as direct as the description of narrative space,they are also indispensable parts of the whole space construction of the novel.These spaces,intentionally or unintentionally,show the mentality of marginal ethnic groups that they expect to subvert the current binary space and the willing to own their space.But why has subversion not actually been realized? Why do Mexican ethnic groups have been wandering on the edge of mainstream American society and cannot really get close to the center? This is the focus of this thesis.The fourth chapter interprets the exploration of marginal ethnic groups to open the third space step by step.At present,many writers and scholars have done a lot of researches on the idea of opening up the third space for the immigrant groups who are on the edge of the mainstream society.However,in the current research materials,the main focus is on the necessity of opening up the third space,while there are too few researches or discussions on the ways and methods of opening the ideal space in detail.This chapter will analyze the internal and external causes of the self-awakening of the marginal ethnic groups from the root,then discuss the possibility and opportunity of their liberation of the third space,and finally discuss the space reconstruction of the marginal ethnic groups from the perspective of giving full play to the advantages of the marginal ethnic groups to realize “decentralization”,and finally find the possible way to open up the third space.The fifth chapter is the summary and self-examination of this thesis.According to the research contents of this thesis,The House on Mango Street presents readers a marginal space oppressed by the center for a long time from the perspective of narrative space,social space and psychological space while the minorities living in this space have not given up realizing their dreams and demands.The little heroine herself makes an adventurous and relatively successful attempt to open up the third space for the nation between escape and return through the reinvention of her identity.With regard to the historical issues about the ethnic oppression and class conflict left over in America,the change of spatial structure is an effective way to help marginal ethnic groups to improve the situation.The exploration in the novel provides the specific ways and the verification of methods with a reference.Combining the current relevant space theories,this thesis,after analyzing the possibility and opportunity of the breakthrough of the third space,taking the subversive power accumulated by marginal ethnic groups as the foundation and the dialectical relationship between the center and the edge in the space construction as the breakthrough point,takes advantage of the diversified and mature background and concretizes the measures to the reconstruction of concrete space and representational space,and boldly makes an exploration for marginal ethnic groups to obtain a broader living space and more discourse power.