| African Americans are a special group,forced to leave Africa and enter the western world because of the slave trade.After centuries of diaspora and hybridity,they are gradually marginalized as otherness in the mainstream society.The interpenetration and hybridization of western culture and black culture makes black identity not pure any longer.Black intellectuals,in particular,recognize white culture but they can't give in to it completely on account of racial discrimination.They want to use western thought model as a weapon to fight for their rights,and they are doubtful about it.The ambivalent psychology makes them unaware where to turn.The mixed psychology of this contradiction made them not know where to turn.They are perplexed by their cultural identity and urgently need to locate a cultural identity to adapt to the new cultural environment.Therefore,the issue of black cultural identity is also as a principal social and cultural proposition,which constantly attracts the attention of theoretical criticism.In this paper,the author of the thesis uses the post-colonialism theory of Bhabha to interpret the construction of black cultural identity in Carson McCullers' The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter.By using hybridity,the third space and identity construction theory proposed by Bhabha,the thesis analyzes self—pursuit to ideal status of black Dr.Copeland,a main character of the work.For African Americans,identity is not immutable,but a process of shifting,rewriting and hybridizing.In the novel,Dr.Copeland also experiences the construction process.At first,he wants to inherit the traditional black culture and preserves the black characteristics,but he is assimilated gradually in the process of hybridization with white culture,forming a new concept of cultural identity.Wandering in between black and white culture,Dr.Copeland struggles for equal rights and status constantly and explores the effective method of cultural identity construction for black people,stubbornly questing for survival value and space in white society.This is the exploration of the cultural third space which is a promiscuous space and incompletely belongs to any given cultural entity.This open,negotiable third space provides a way for African Americans to rebuild and rewrite their cultural identity.The first part of this paper is the introduction of the author and her works and then the research status at home and abroad.The second part explains the cultural identity,the hybridity and the third space theory.The third part is the main body of the thesis.Based on the text,the author of the thesis applies Bhabha' s post-colonial theory to analyze the origin of Copeland's cultural identity crisis and the process of cultural identity construction.In the dual culture environment,experiencing the process of hybridity and mimicry,Copeland has formed a new concept of cultural identity and his subjective identity consciousness has awakened,recognizing the urgency of establishing equal American citizenship.However,it is impossible for black Americans,who have always been the otherness set by the white subject,to break the identity framework for a short time.The construction of the cultural identity of Copeland must be full of thorns.At the end of this chapter,the author discusses the root of the failure of American citizenship construction and how to reposition the cultural identity in the third space.The fourth part is the conclusion.If black Americans want to get independent cultural identity,they must find the root of the native culture,regain the lost self,agree with the nation's cultural traditions and absorb the essence of white mainstream culture.What's more,they should coordinate constantly with the differences between the black and the white cultures,believing that differences are temporary which can finally achieve a harmonious state through cultural hybridity and negotiation.Only by this way can they reposition and reconstruct the ethnic cultural identity in the mixed third space unlike any existing culture. |
PDF Full Text Request