"Subversion" And "Containment"

As one of the pathfinders of Harlem Renaissance,American black writer Richard Wright is well-known for his realist “protest literature” in American literature.His work has been a force in the social and intellectual American history in the last half of last century.And his masterpiece Native Son,a canon of thought depth and artistic expression,has a far-reaching impact on the development of black American literature.Since the 1970 s,critics has stayed much interested in him and Native Son in particular,with the recent critical emphasis laid on the novel from the perspectives of naturalism,post-colonialism and existentialism.But although such literary studies show great concern over Wright's philosophical project,the rich ideological connotations in the novel have not yet been explored.This thesis tries to make a New Historicist text analysis of the novel Native Son based on Althusser's ideology and Foucault's power discourse.It holds that a New Historicist interpretation of the character Bigger's dilemma in identity construction in relation to subversion and containment can relieve properly the text meanings suppressed by power,reveal further the true “social being” of African Americans in literature and history,and bring out the fact that American mainstream ideology as “unconsciousness” and power discourse brings the resistance of black subjects to end up as a tool to strengthen the power of the Other.The thesis is divided into six chapters.With the establishment of New Historicism as the theoretical basis of the argumentation,and with the formulation of mainly Foucault's power discourse and mutual transformation between subversion and containment,and between the subject and the Other,an analysis is made of the failure of Bigger's identity construction on three levels—Bigger as a black subject deeply involved in the ideology of black people(Chapter 3);Bigger as a black subject steeped in the power discourse of the white people(Chapter 4);and Bigger as a black subject contained by the power relations of the white mainstream society(Chapter 5).And in the Conclusion chapter,the thesis stresses that Wright's brilliant portrayal of the Black Americans fully demonstrates that Bigger,who finds himself in the ideology and power discourse,is “contained” by the act of “subverting”,thus making himself an eternal “other” for the black community,the white society and his selfhood.This is what happens after the white myth of the patient,humorous,subservient black man has been broken.