Diasporas’ Identity Anxiety And Reconstruction In Contemporary Britain

Along with the long-lasting development of history and the perpetual flows of population, the contemporary society has become a small global village. The distance among people gets shorter and shorter, and personal relationships turn to be closer and closer. Under the influences of cultural communication and racial integration, many modern people get in trouble of identity crisis, especially those immigrants and their offspring struggling at the bottom of western capitalistic society. Therefore, identity has been a hot concept in literary criticism. It is widely discussed in post-colonial theories and cultural studies. Hence, the research of identity is of realistic importance and theoretical value.Zadie Smith is an outstanding female writer in contemporary British literary circles. Her works always focus on diaspora’s life in London, criticizing social dysfunctions, and reflecting the questions of diasporic identity and multicultural integration. Smith’s comic words and humorous ironies also present her control of language. In her second novel The Autograph Man, Smith characterizes a diasporic image, Alex-Li Tandem, shows his identity anxiety and represents the process of his identity reconstruction. Alex’s case stands for the plights of diasporic identities in contemporary western developed countries, drawing our attention to the issue of diasporas’identity construction. As the marginal group in western metropolis, diasporas’identity reconstruction can not only resolve their own identity anxiety, but also make a contribution to constructing a harmonious society.This thesis takes the protagonist Alex-Li Tandem as the main example to discuss the causes and representations of diasporas’identity anxiety and explore the process of diasporic identity reconstruction in the novel The Autograph Man written by Zadie Smith. There are mainly five parts. At first, the introduction part introduces the background information about Zadie Smith and her novel The Autograph Man, provides foreign and domestic literature review, and explains the theoretical framework of this thesis. Then. Chapter One focuses on the causes of diasporic identity anxiety in three dimensions, including the individual dimension, the social dimension, and the cultural dimension. Correspondingly, Chapter Two discusses the representations of diasporic identity plights based on the protagonist Alex’s growing-up experiences. Then. Chapter Thee analyzes the process of Alex’s identity reconstruction. Finally, a conclusion is reached based on those analyses.