Hybrid Identity Construction

Gerald Vizenor,one of the outstanding American Indian writers,and an innovative and influential critic.Under the influence of his controversial identity and his childhood experience,his works are mostly voiced by ethnic minorities and marginalized groups.Griever:an American monkey king in China is about Griever,an American Indian mixed-blood person,losing and regaining the cultural identity after he comes to China.Under the description of Griever and the Chinese people's reaction,Vizenor builds the image of Griever,from a foreign teacher to a order-breaker to an American Monkey King.Hybridity theory and third space theory from Homi Bhabha's postcolonial theory are as the theoretical frameworks of this thesis,which has analyzing the hybridity of different cultural spaces and urban spaces in Griever: an American monkey king in China,and interpreting the loss and regain of Griever's cultural identity on the theoretical basis.In chapter three,Griever shows three aspects of hybridity in spirit,physiology and linguistic features in cultural spaces.First of all,he shows the ambivalence of both dependence and evasion,which further produces his identification crisis and anxiety.Secondly,his physiological hybridity prompts him to reject the binary opposition and he thinks that all things are equal.Finally,Vizenor establishes a cultural space that needs to be explained and negotiated,so as to give readers different perspectives of culture.In urban space,different urban spaces are hybrid.First of all,this hybridity can remind people of the cruel history of colonialism,such as the Indian White Earth Reservation and Tianjin concession's western style gardens and architectures.Secondly,Vizenor brings the American Indian trick spirit into China,establishing a connection with Chinese Monkey King,it realizes the leap of hybridity in urban space.Finally,in the context of global cultural diversity,religions,totems and myths are generated in different urban spaces,they are also hybrid.In chapter four,in terms of the loss and regain of cultural identity,Griever has gone through the following stages in the process of seeking cultural identity: from being marginalized to raise self-awareness,then to seek public recognition,and finally find a third space for self-survival in the cultural gap.In this process,he falls into the crisis of marginal culture and cultural identity,resulting in the loss of hiscultural identity,but through the way of imitating Monkey King,he constructs a new hybrid space—the third space,in order to regain his cultural identity.This thesis uses Homi Bhabha's Hybridity theory and Third Space theory to interpret Griever: an American monkey king in China.As a strategy to resist the binary opposition between cultures,these two theories bring a lot of enlightenment to the research of cultural identity.Readers should treat national cultural identity dialectically,negotiate a third space for people living in marginal culture,and at the same time abandon the binary opposition and centralism,establishing a community of human cultural destiny.