A Lacanian Reading Of Cora’s Subject Formation In Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad

In 2016 Colson Whitehead won the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize for The Underground Railroad,which immediately caused a sensation and acclaim from the literary scene in the United States.With his thematic exploration of the legacy of slavery,his creative imagination and unique narrative skill,Whitehead has sparked attention and deep thinking among scholars at home and abroad about the racism,black survival issues,and slave history reflected in his works.Since The Underground Railroad was only published in recent years,due to the lack of critical distance,there is almost a dearth of studies on this novel and recent researches that do appear seem to focus primarily on the novel’s narrative strategies and the thematic concerns of slavery and its historical implications,to the neglect of the growth and subject construction of the novel’s main character,Cora.Therefore,this paper will use the imaginary and symbolic order in Lacan’s subject theory to analyze the subject formation of Cora,a black slave woman portrayed by Whitehead,and then explore how Cora gradually completes subject formation.This study focuses on two questions: 1)what are the factors that lead to Cora’s the formation of an alienated subject in the imaginary order? 2)How does Cora enter the symbolic order and complete her subject formation in the symbolic order? The results of the study show that under the influence of the slave owner,other black slaves,and her mother and grandmother as little other,Cora forms an alienated subject in the imaginary order of submissiveness,indifference,and extreme hatred of her mother.Secondly,on the way to escape,Cora takes the underground railroad from Georgia to South Carolina,North Carolina,Tennessee,and Indiana.By capturing the signifier symbols of the five states she experiences on the way to escape,Cora has acquired an initial mastery of signifiers.Thirdly,under the guidance of characters such as Caesar and Royal as the big Other,Cora gradually awakens from the alienated subject and constructs the subject in the symbolic order.Cora’s progress in language is the key to her step into the symbolic order.Through continuous language learning and extensive reading,Cora eventually identifies with the central signifier in the game of signifiers,the Name-of-the-Father,and changes her attitude toward men,officially entering the symbolic order.In the symbolic order,Cora completes the formation of her subject,transforming from a slave woman who only speaks a broken language and is unable to communicate with others,always fearful of man,into a speaking subject with a mature language system,independent thinking mind and an independent personality.This study applies Lacan’s psychoanalysis to analyze Cora,the heroine of Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad,which would hopefully help readers understand the image of black women in Whitehead and other African American writers as these characters are represented in the novels.It is also hoped that this study will provide some inspiration for scholars and readers to read the novel from the perspective of the female subject formation under slavery.