Binary Oppositions And Reconstruction: Racial Politics In The Joy Luck Club From A Spatial Perspective

As one of the most eminent Chinese American writers,Amy Tan's first novel The Joy Luck Club is her masterpiece,and a work of attention in contemporary Chinese American literature research.It reveals conflicts between mothers and daughters,racial segregation,cultural conflicts,confusions of identity,and race reality changes two generation Chinese immigrants faced in America.The difficulties they met rooted in their non-mainstream ethnicity.Racial relationships contain important political implications,and are constructed through spatial relationships.This thesis will interpret racial relationships and their changes in the novel from a spatial perspective,and point out that there exists spatial politics of race in the novel,its racial issues are spatial issues in essence.The main body of this thesis is divided into four parts.The first part introduces spatial study and its combination with racial research,reveals the rationality and significance of interpreting racial issues from a spatial perspective.Space is not only a material concept,but also represents many implications: politics,identity,race,gender,class and so on.Race possesses social and political attributes and is closely related to power relationships.Foucault's revelation of the relationships between space and power regulating mechanism,Henry Lefebvre's presentation of the political and social attributes of space both offer important theoretical basis for the study of relationships between race and space.The all-inclusive third space put forward by Edward Soja also offers a third choice for binary oppositions in racial space.The second part explores racial segregation Chinese immigrants faced in America,which was realized through spatial regulating mechanism conceived by the whites.The time span in the novel is around 1940s-1980 s,which was accompanied with dramatic social and political ideology changes.When the mothers arrived in America around the 1940 s,society was just in an important transitional period,they must face serious racial segregation inevitably for the unfinished social transformation.Spatial relationships were in binary oppositions.The mother generation was segregated from the mainstream society in physical and social space.White regulating mechanism also confined Chinese,especially the daughter generation's mental space and made them accept white doctrines.Space was used as tool to maintain the whites' privileges and realize their controlling over Chinese immigrants.The third part introduces political ideology and power mechanism changes and reflections in the novel in America and the world during 1940s-1980 s,reveals new social relationship structure and race reality,paves the way for changes in spatial distribution according to new political ideologies.During this period,promotions in Chinese political,economic status,and Chinese immigrants economic situations,inclusiveness development of society resulted from globalization and multiculturalism,and the development of American civil rights movement all made the mothers and daughters gain more social rights.The fourth part explores changes in spatial code,third space racial relationship reconstruction,and Chinese immigrants' realization of whole selves in third space.With the changes in political ideologies,when time comes to around the 1980 s of the daughter generation,binary oppositions in racial space were deconstructed,new spatial order got reconstruction.The mothers and daughters got more access to mainstream physical and social space,the daughters also broke the white mental space confinement.They finally reconstructed racial relationships and found redefinition of themselves in the third space characterized by diversities and inclusiveness.Interculturalism,double identities without domination,incorporation rather than assimilation are the end of ethnic development in third space relationship and also ethnic relationship developing trend in multi-ethnic societies.Racial relationship structure in The Joy Luck Club is realized through spatial distribution and alters with the changes in political ideologies and power mechanism.Moreover,the end of ethnic relationship development is not to change from one binary opposition to another,but to reconstruct spatial justice in third space.Interpreting literary works from a spatial perspective is of great significance in understanding their social and political implications.