| Postcolonialism is one of the most concerned and rapidly-expanding field of literary and cultural theory at the turn of the century. Beginning to thrive at the end of the 1970s', it has so far exercised enormous impact upon literary criticism and literary history studies, especially of European and American canons. In 1995, the initiators and also the most vocal expounders of postcolonial theories桬dward W. Said, Gayatri C. Spivak, and Homi K. Bhabha梙ave been called the "Holy Trinity" by Robert J. C. Young, Professor of English and Critical Theory at Oxford University. These three "persons," with largely independent approaches to the postcolonial heritage, have all been intending to deconstruct and demystify the classical canon of the Western imperial colonialism, to diminish the Euro-American centrism and the various ensuing binary oppositions, to unmask the "progressiveness" and "universalism" of western modernity, and to reconstruct the subjectivity of the Subaltern and the "minorities" with the aspiration to help the latter to find their own voices, to enunciate their desires, and to have the "right to narrate."Nation and Narration, the first book projected and edited by Bhabha, was published in 1990, and the first collection of his own essays, The Location of Culture, was also brought out by Routledge in 1993. The birth of the two books has aroused world-wide interests, including bitter criticism, cleared up a vast space for the students in postcolonial studies and criticism, and provided them with original theoretical tools. Chinese academia seems more concerned and knowledgeable about Said and Spivak: huge volumes of criticism on them and various readers find their ways to libraries and bookstores, and "Orientalism" and "cultural imperialism" once became the buzz word of the cultural circle. In surprising contrast, people's interest in and knowledge about Bhabha seem too insufficient. There is no Chinese translation of Bhabha's books, except a few articles; there are only sparse introductory comments, while lacking systematic and careful studies. This disappointment, which has also been the regret of the whole academy, is the most important motivation for me to select this research subject.Chapters One, Two and Three of this thesis macroscopically depict the backgrounds of postcolonial theories and probe into such importantly relevant concepts as colonialism, neocolonialism, the third world, postmodernism, globalization, and nationalism with the purpose to illuminate the connotation of postcolonialism in its evolutionary context. Bhabha's life and education, as well as the significant figures such as Frantz Fanon and Edward Said, and influential theories such as psychoanalysis and Marxism, are also briefly introduced in this part, in order to help the readers understand Bhabha's theoretical development and its origins better. Chapters Four through Eleven can be considered as the central part, which elaborates on Bhabha's most essential theories of postcolonialism, including his "nation as narration" and "the location of culture." Also included in this part is the rather meticulous examination of Bhabha's most thought- and argument-provoking concepts such as ambivalence, mimicry, hybridity, minoritization, cosmopolitanism, the third space and cultural translation. Chapters Ten and Elevenconcentrate on various problems (linguistic, methodological, logical, conceptual, and of the inclination to overlook the grim reality of postcolonial countries and to be obsessed with mere text) that confront Bhabha in the process of theorizing his creative thoughts. Keeping the various difficulties with postcolonialism in general in mind, the last chapter analyzes how postcolonialism could step out of the present dilemma and call itself into full play in the field of literary and cultural criticism, with brief reference to the "dissemination," transformation, and innumerous problems of postcolonialism in the Chinese context.In short, this thesis is trying to position Bhabha's theory in the wide background of gl... |
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