On Cultural Identity In Brian Castro’s Shanghai Dancing

Brian Castro(1950—) was born in a typhoon in Hong Kong. He is one of the mostinnovative and challenging Australian novelists writing in English today. He can speakCantonese, English, French and Portuguese fluently. Brian Castro began writing in the late1970s. He is a prolific writer and has published nine novels successively as well as aneloquent book of essays, Looking for Estrellita. Among them, one of the most importantnovels is Shanghai Dancing which is published in2003. In this novel, by using thefragment non-linear structure and employing a variety of sounds and many languages,Brian Castro has broken the traditional genre boundaries, mixed autobiography and novel,woven facts, fictions, myths as well as memories together. At the same time, he hasthreaded the literary theories and the representative figures into the story and presented thehero Antonio Castro’s identity puzzlement and his seeking for a cultural identity. Through adetailed analysis of the novel, the thesis attempts to explore the author’s challenges of thetraditional cultural identity and his writing intentions of establishing the character’s as wellas the author’s own discourse power.The thesis consists of an introduction, four chapters and a conclusion.Introduction gives a brief introduction of Brian Castro’s life experience, works and thepost-colonial theory as well as the current literature review on it.Chapter One discusses the writing background, genre, theme and the writing purpose.It also analyzes the character’s as well as the author’s uncertain and lost cultural identity inthe novel.Chapter Two analyzes the hero Antonio Castro’s disorientation and identity seekingfrom the aspects of labeled name, lost passport and uncertain marriage. Antonio Castro isrejected and dispersed in Australia and lives in a marginal state. This chapter also discussesthe primary reasons for his disorientation, dislocation and uncertainty of identity. It is thatthe east is irrational, degraded and naive and that the west is a rational, ethical, mature,which is pointed out by the postcolonial theorist Edward Said in his book Orientalism.Chapter Three focuses on the relationship between fragments of nonlinear structure and cultural identity. The author interweaves narration, characters and images together,interchanges between time and space. In the end, he presents the drifting surviving state aswell as the uncertainty of cultural identity of immigrants.Chapter Four analyzes the use of multiple languages. Language can’t live withoutculture. The alternate use of different languages in the novel strengthens the conflicts ofmultiple cultures represented by immigrants. Different languages also play a prominent rolein leading to Antonio Castro’s disorientation and confusion about his identity.The conclusion is based on the former parts which summarized the main ideas thathave been discussed. It reveals the author’s writing purpose of challenging the traditionalcultural identity and establishing his own discourse power as well as that of the protagonistin the novel. It also inspires us that we should understand and respect different cultureswith tolerance, treat them equally, especially the minority cultures.