福克纳小说《八月之光》中乔·克里斯玛的(去)种族化(英文)

Joe Christmas (Un) Raced in William Faulkner’s Light in August

威廉姆·福克纳1932年的小说《八月之光》中的主人公乔·克里斯玛是非"黑"非"白",还是既"黑"也"白"呢?本文从这个复杂的问题得到启示,探讨乔·克里斯玛在黑人无法消减却又自我意识到的心理和文化隔离经历与白人获得心理和文化上自治的幻想双双突出的南方是如何变成一个无法判读的种族符号。作为种族通婚的特例,他的存在不仅拒斥将他归为非此即彼的种族分类,而且展示了一些方式,借助于这些方式,黑人性与白人性根据"非我"内容进行自我认同,同时又因其身份建构中依赖于与对抗性他者的关系而受到潜在的自我破坏。从这一角度看,当所有种族焦虑和南方歇斯底里投射于乔·克里斯玛身上时,他被"种族化"。但是,通过变成"虚空"这一将所有对稳定不变的种族身份的言论诉诸质疑的转义时,他又被"去种族化"。

Is Joe Christmas,protagonist of William Faulkner’s 1932 Light in August,neither ＂black＂ nor ＂white,＂ or both ＂black＂ and ＂white＂？ Taking its cue from such a tricky question,this article examines how Joe Christmas becomes an undecipherable sign of race in the South that lays bare both the black self-conscious experience of irreducible psychological,cultural division and the white’s delusion of psychological,cultural autonomy.His presence as a particular reference to miscegenation not only refuses a racial categorization that flattens him into a presence of one or the other color but also illustrates the ways in which blackness and whiteness identify themselves in terms of what they are not while potentially undermining themselves insofar as their identities depend on a relationship with the potentially confrontational other for their constitution.Viewed in this light,Joe Christmas is ＂raced＂ as all the racial anxieties and hysteria of the South are projected onto his body.Yet,he is also ＂unraced＂ by becoming a haunting trope of nothing that calls into questioning all the claims to a fixed and stable racial identity.