| Early literary studies on the location of identity and relationship between the colonizer and the colonized with the perspective of post-colonialism theory usually tend to take a stance. Yet recently the scholars have realized that both self-perception of the individual and the cultural identity of a group of people are constantly changing and can be rediscovered with a new location in a diagram. And Stuart Hall’s study confirms it by claiming that identity is not something that has been settled, on the contrary, it is always in the process of production. In that sense, the historical impacts of colonialism should not be approached with the Hegelian dialectic of lords and slaves but with other senses such as "aporia", "coordination", or "ambivalence". Even though people have learned to adapt their way of seeing the post-colonial phenomena, in most cases they like to attach their attention to the colonized, who are supposedly weak and marginalized, to illustrate the difficult situations they are faced with after the independence of their nation. It is rarely noticed that the flexibility of identity in the situation of diaspora can happen to the colonizer as well. This does not mean that hegemony stops existing, and the power of the West still sheds light on the colonized through cognitive violence in invisible ways of various kinds. However, the people in the colonized regions had started their resistance against the Western hegemony through nationalistic activities, especially after the decolonization movements.The four stories written by Lawrence on Mexico as their setting are about the conflicts and intercourse between the white people and the cultural others. These stories depict the antagonists’ psychological changes, therefore, there are plenty of inner struggles, and the narrative clues are complicated, which reflects the evolution of subjectivity resulted from the interruption of the Other on the trans-cultural border. These are the most important values of the four Mexican stories, but they have long been ignored. As the trans-cultural and trans-racial situations on the border are immediate and relative, and both sides can influence each on a great deal, there are plenty of possibilities in the open field. This dissertation tends to discuss these situations in light of space and body on the individual scale and the religious and political issues on the collective scale, trying to explain the complexity of the liminal and hybrid situations in the post-colonial society which are demonstrated in Lawrence’s four Mexican stories. This study finds that while the colonial subjects and the Other are fighting against each other for power, they are making conversation and coordinating as well, and this, in return, would affects the colonial subjects’ sense of identity. As a result, the colonial discourse is not static, and instead, it is in the process of location and relocation in a diagram.The colonial activities are concerned primarily with the occupation and expansion of space. Therefore, the issues about space will be discussed in Chapter 1. Firstly, the theme of "riding away" in the four stories implies the pioneers’ will to conquer, which proves that they are constructed within the frame of colonial ideology. And the empirical background of the protagonists gives them much privilege in space both in the sense of geography and psychology, which enables the limitless expansion of the boundaries. Once they step on the foreign land, the colonizers are in face of the conflicts and intercourse with the Other, which is embodied in nature at first. This study analyses the landscapes in these Mexican stories and finds that Lawrence’s depiction of landscapes are in line with the narrative norm of travel writings in the early period of colonial history, including esthetic insight and pragmatic survey which suggest the sense of power and confirms the cognitive violence of colonial discourse. In the mean time, the exotic nature in Lawrence’s Mexican stories has a particular "spirit of place", which gives the nature its subjectivity, and the conflicts between men and nature is not subject-to-object but subject-to-subject. After the colonizers settle in the strange country, the Other is mostly represented by the people that they would fight with to occupy the space, so the interpretation of struggle for space supremacy in everyday life in the four Mexican stories, especially in The Plumed Serpent, would reveal the evolution of space activities from segregation to sharing in the hybrid situations of a post-colonial society. Based on the study of the spatial experiences of the protagonists, chapter one will illustrate that the empirical will would not give rise to the limitless expansion of space and the interaction with the Other will lead to the revision of the subjectivity, and in the result, the colonizer’s identity will be relocated in accordance with the new occasions.Body is the key element in people’s construction of self-consciousness and their communications with the external world. In the colonial society, body is regarded as a determinate criterion to the discrimination of different communities, so Chapter 2 will focus on the confrontation and integration of these communities with regard to body issues. First, this chapter will present the principles of differentiation based on the color of skin and clothes, and this will uncover the fact that the division between the colonizer and the colonized is so severe that it is impossible for the dark people to break through the lines between them and the white people, and therefore the only way out is to resort to violence. To make it clear this chapter examines the revolutionary power within body violence, and it demonstrates the stereotypical views the white people holds against the dark people, especially about their violent behaviors. Secondly, miscegenation is inevitable in colonial society which will lead to the hybridity of blood and thus the evolution of racial identity. On the one hand, the dark people intend to marry or be married to the white people to promote their social status; the white people, on the other hand, have some sexual fantasies about the dark people as well, yet they are against miscegenation for the concerns of the purity of blood and the quality of their race. With the investigation of these body issues in the four Mexican stories, this study reveals the white people’s ambivalence about the Other, which is due to the challenges from the dark races.Lawrence’s Mexican stories also explore the intercourse and convergence of different civilizations besides the conflicts and communication of the individuals. Among the four stories, The Plumed Serpent is the most insightful one on this theme, for in this novel Lawrence explores the new form of civilization. Chapter 3 will discuss about the convergence of Western and traditional Mexican cultures (the Indian culture in particular), and it will mainly focus on the religious and political issues narrated in The Plumed Serpent with reference to the Mexican historical background. In his narration of the religious revolution Lawrence is inspired by the religious movements in Mexican at that time, in which he integrates the Christian elements with the traditional Mexican myths. And Lawrence’s narration about the little community the protagonists build in this novel also indicates his political ideal with reference to Mexican historical background, which foretells the direction the new society will take in the future. This chapter traces the communication between two different cultures in the field of religion and politics, trying to show that this kind of communication confirms the hybridity of the culture of the white and that of the Other. Regardless of the stance Lawrence may take, his concerns about the Mexican social events have proved that "Mexican" is the shared identity for all the people living in there.The last chapter gets to a conclusion based on the detailed analysis of the spatial, physical and social issues in Lawrence’s four Mexican stories. And it shows that the protagonists experiences are about both the conflicts and the intercourse between the self and the Other on the borders, which suggests that the subjectivity on the border is not a kind of essentialist being, and, on the contrary, it is temporal and constantly in change. Therefore, an analysis of colonial discourse is not to define but to locate. And different identities in the border society are not exclusive to each other. New identities will be produced because of the interaction of different cultures.The traditional Lawrencian criticism mainly focuses on his world-known novels like The Rainbow, Women in Love and Mrs. Chatterley’s Lover, while less attention is given to the stories he wrote during his traveling in Mexico. Even people do notice these stories, they will take a stance either to criticize the colonial ideology implied in them or to approve Lawrence’s sympathy with the Indians’ misfortune in the course of colonization. These ambiguous points of views lead to the deepened misunderstanding of Lawrence’s Mexican stories. This study sets out to investigate the colonial subjectivity on the border with its temporal and flexible characteristics, trying to explain that the self-consciousness of the colonial subjects is not self-confirming in his confrontation with the Other but is always in the state of self-denial. It give a new way to know Lawrence’s Mexican stories and will be a great help to look into the evolution of colonial ideology in the Western world after World War I. Besides, this study juxtaposes the social and cultural status quo of the West with Mexico, which will help us to know the more complicated pluralistic society we are living in the process of globalization.
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