The Tourist Gaze And Hegemony In Amy Tan's Saving Fish From Drowning

Amy Tan published her latest novel Saving Fish from Drowning in 2005. Some critics argue that Tan has gone beyond her earlier novels about Chinese American in this novel while others state that the style of this novel is the most un-Tanlike. Saving Fish from Drowning shares some similarities with Tan's earlier novels. Like her earlier novels, the novel also depicts Chinese American characters, takes modern China as its physical setting and explores the theme of maternal love. However, the novel differs from Tan's other novels in that it centers around tourism and the gaze of American tourists on local landscape, cultures and people and is set in tourists sites in China and Burma. This thesis analyzes the American tourists in this novel from the perspective of the tourist gaze and tries to uncover the power relationship behind the gaze and their hegemonic mentality.The tourist gaze, proposed by John Urry, is influenced by many factors such as tourist's thoughts and local tourism department's construction. The tourist gaze implicates a relationship of seeing and being seen and a power relationship of dominating and being dominated. Touring around China and Burma, the American tourists in Saving Fish from Drowning unconsciously reflect this power relationship and expose their hegemonic mentality through gaze.This thesis tries to analyze how the American tourists gaze on local landscape, cultures and people, how they involve in or interfere in local affairs and how they expose their hegemonic mentality. Those tourists, having ethnic backgrounds in America, oppose the discriminatory white male gaze from the mainstream society but they still perform such gaze and intervene in local affairs with hegemony when they visit local areas. The American tourists gaze on local landscape, cultures and people to satisfy their curiosity about the mysterious and ancient Orient, yet their good wishes to "save" others do not always bring good results. Gazing on local landscape, they reveal their power over local residents by their professional knowledge and destroy local ecological environment. They are curious about distinctive local cultures but local cultures in their eyes are inferior to those of their own on account of their hegemonic mentality and sense of cultural superiority. In developing tourism, local communities face a challenge in how to keep a balance between meeting the tourist gaze and preserving cultural heritage. The American tourists in the novel with hegemonic mentality and sense of superiority assume that they have the responsibility to save Karen people, a minority in Burma. With the help of the American tourists, Karen people live a brief period of wealthy life but are finally killed by the Myanmar government; to a certain extent, the gaze of American tourists speeds up the genocide of Karen people.