Cultural Hybridity In Louise Erdrich's Love Medicine

Nowadays,cultural development has shown a diversified trend,the boundaries between the edge and the center are gradually blurred and erased.Native American literature,which is exposed to the impact of the white mainstream culture,is inevitably involved in the whirlpool of multicultural environment.Therefore,it is necessary and practical to examine Native American literature with a muti-cultural perspective.This thesis tries to analyze Louise Erdrich's Love Medicine from the cultural pluralism perspective.In the eyes of many scholars,the White and the Other are two contending people,antagonistic authorities and tense cultural locations.However,in Bhabha's theory,hybridity is a way to mediate this two competing elements.Since the 1980 s,Native American literature has become more and more accordant with the characteristics of “hybridity” described by Homi Bhabha in his The Location of Culture.In Love Medicine,Erdrich is prone to accept and in favor of the “hybrid identity” defined by Bhabha.Instead of emphasizing the binary opposition of the edge and the center,the colonizer and the colonized,Erdrich presents Indian culture and White culture in a dynamic way and readers find themselves at the temporal crossroad of the two cultures.She has opened her own literary space in the intersection of the Indian culture and the White culture.With Homi Bhabha's theory of “hybridity” and “the Third Space” as the theoretical basis,this thesis distinguishes itself by analyzing the reasons,strategies and significance of cultural hybridity in Erdrich's Love Medicine.First of all,this thesis analyzes the reasons of cultural hybridity in the novel from three aspects,including Erdrich's growth background,social environment and literary trend at that time.Secondly,this thesis holds that the author constructed the Third Space in the novel.In the Third Space,the White mainstream culture and the Indian traditional culture are likely to appear at the same time,which provides a possibility for cultural hybridity.This thesis analyzes the strategies of construction of the Third Space from the following three aspects: language,the expression of body concept and the concept of time.Thirdly,this thesis argues that the cultural hybridity in the novel actually embodies the power of reviving the native culture and resisting against colonial assimilation.By using the strategy of cultural hybridity,Erdrich breaks the binary opposition between the White culture and the Indian culture,and helps Indians to construct their cultural subjectivity and cultural identity.