Discourse,Discipline And Resistance

Celeste Ng(1981-)is a well-known Chinese American novelist in America.Since the publication of her first novel Everything I Never Told You,she has won numbers of laurels.In the novel,Ng mainly focuses on female consciousness of freedom,identity anxiety and mix-raced family issues with vivid themes and original ideas.In Everything I Never Told You,the words “silent” and “silence” have appeared up to 50 times;and simultaneously,the title of the novel “Everything I Never Told You”,in a sense,also implies silence.In consequence,this thesis makes a detailed analysis on silence under the operations of disciplinary power and discourse,which is feasible.In light of Foucault’s disciplinary power and discourse theory,this thesis probes into Everything I Never Told You from three aspects: the performances of characters’ silence,the operations of power behind silence,and the articulations of silence.The thesis is divided into five chapters.The first chapter is the introduction.It briefly introduces Celeste Ng and her novel Everything I Never Told You,summarizes the current researches of the writer and her novel at home and abroad,then outlines the theoretical framework—the theory of silence and Foucault’s disciplinary power and discourse theory,and at last presents the thesis statement.Chapter Two to Chapter Four are the body parts.Chapter Two discusses the aphasia of main characters under the oppression of American mainstream society,thus displays different performances of silence.Chapter Three analyzes the operations of disciplinary power and dominated discourses behind silence.Asian Americans are disciplined under the oppression of American society;they are not only restricted due to unspeakable historical factors,but also confused of disparities between heterogeneous cultures.Chapter Four elaborates that Asian Americans gradually have become aware of the limitations of silence.In consequence,they communicate positively with each other,speak out of their voice,manage to reconcile after tragedy,and finally establish their discourse rights,so as to better integrate into American society.Chapter Five is the conclusion.It points out the marginalized Asian Americans’ existence in Everything I Never Told You through silence.In the meanwhile,Asian Americans consider silence as the measure of resistance,establishing their own discourse rights and fulfilling self-actualization between silence and articulations,which reflects Celeste Ng’s ultimate concerns for the existence of Asian American groups and the integration of races.This study has the positive meanings in understanding current Asian Americans.In the white-dominated American society,Asian Americans groups are short of discourse rights or lose voices collectively.In the novel,through displaying the real existence of Asian American family life and their inter-racial marriage,Celeste Ng expresses her thorough preoccupations with Asian American group.Only by sparing no efforts to break the silence and establishing the discourse rights,can they realize the equal coexistence of ethnic minorities and the mainstream.