Identity Construction Of The Subalterns In Austin Clarke’s The Polished Hoe

Born and raised in Barbados of Caribbean areas, Austin Ardinel Chesterfield Clarke as a Canadian writer holds the multiple-cultural identity. Dominant themes of his writing include marginalization of black people, emasculation of male blacks and black identities. The Polished Hoe setting Barbados in the1940s or1950s as its background, tells the story of a black woman’s confession to the police that she has murdered the Plantation manager Bellfeels. The black woman., that is the protagonist, waves her personal story vividly with the Plantation’s history, thus revealing the facts of subalterns’history and experience concealed by the hegemonic discourses."Subaltern" as a political term, which was firstly used by Antonio Gramsci, an Italian Communist, and the signification of which was expanded by the Indian Subaltern Studies Group with Ranajit Guha as its leader and was further expanded by one of its members Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, means those who are deprived of the discourse power and suppressed by the hegemonic political power. Subalterns have different statuses and experiences in different social stratums, and the extent to which female subalterns are marginalized is different from male subalterns within the same marginalized group. Faced with identity crisis caused by hegemony, subalterns need to reconstruct their identities. In the novel, Clarke leaves the right of narrating subalterns’ experiences to its characters that are marginalized by the hegemonic discourses and creates a textual space for subalterns to give out their "voices." This thesis has endeavored to analyze the marginalized situation of subalterns in The Polished Hoe and subalterns’different strategies of identity construction.Introduction part presents Austin Clarke’s writing career, his achievements, literature reviews on his works. The Polished Hoe in particular, the concept of subaltern and the layout of the thesis.Chapter One has explored the marginalized status of subalterns through analyzing the impacts of naming and writing of the imperialist epistemic violence as well as subalterns’self assimilation. Both the black subalterns and the white Creole subalterns have been cut off from the historical facts and memories which constitute their subjective identities. To establish their own subjective identities the European metropolitan names and writes the subalterns as the homogeneous group with the European language. Actually the subalterns themselves also participate in this process consciously or unconsciously. Therefore, with the effects of epistemic violence and subalterns’self assimilation, the black subalterns and the white Creole subalterns are faced with identity crisis.Chapter Two has explored male subalterns’identity construction strategies through analyzing male subalterns’European dream and the conspiracy of male subalterns’ patriarchal ideology with the Imperialism. On the Barbados Island, the Plantation manager Bellfeels, Wilberforce and Sargeant represent the Creole ruling class, the native elites and the oppressed blacks respectively. Preoccupied with the Eurocentric and Phallocentric ideologies, on the one hand, they attempt to approach the "European Center" to reconstruct their subjective identities in the European culture. On the other hand, they try to elevate their social status by segregating themselves with the subalterns in lower social stratum. In this way, they become appendages to European culture, replicating the oppressive system of Colonialism and gradually losing their own "voices.’Chapter Three has explored female subalterns’refusing to give up their original and native culture and attempting to gain subjective identities through fragmented strategies existing in their daily life. The statement of conversations and the mixed language have allowed subalterns chances to narrate their own experiences. The past historical facts are told in the simple past tense and the simple present tense, linking the present with the past. Mathila, as a mid woman, owns a mixed and heterogeneous voice which combines her own history with the island’s collective history, enabling subalterns to challenge the center of hegemonic culture. As female black subalterns, through the utilization of silence, the mixed language and body strategies, Mathilda, Mathilda’s mother and grandmother in this novel exclaim gainsaying to Colonialism and Patriarchy. In this way, they endeavor to obtain subjective identities and voice not only for female subalterns but also for subalterns in the whole Barbados and even the Caribbean subalterns.Through The Polished Hoe Clarke has created a textual space for the Caribbean subalterns. Clarke’criticism about the conspiracy of Patriarchy and Colonialism is revealed from male subalterns’identity construction strategies; identity construction strategies of female subalterns show the author’s concern about female subalterns in the marginalized lower social stratum. Femal subalterns’resistance to the conspiracy of Imperialism and Patriarchy, with the implication of the trial of native culture with the metropolitan culture, displays Clarke’s meditation on conflicts and fusion of multi-cultures and the multicultural identities.