论《郊区佛爷》中人物的身份表演

Identity Performance in The Buddha of Suburbia

英国当代亚裔作家哈尼夫·库雷西的处女作《郊区佛爷》中处处弥漫着身份的表演。身份表演成为一种策略,小说主人公借以建构新的身份,从而消解遭遇到的种族歧视和身份危机:叙事者克里姆从一个内心空虚、困惑的无业二代移民变为伦敦演艺界成功的演员,他的父亲哈龙被郊区白人尊为精神导师"佛爷",跻身上流社会,而白人查理从郊区到城市、从伦敦到纽约也依靠身份表演成功转型为摇滚英雄,名利双收。通过对身份表演成功故事的叙述,库雷西暗合巴特勒的"表演"理论,反讽了本质的种族身份观,强调种族身份是一种流动的、表演的文化和政治建构。

In The Buddha of Suburbia, Asian British writer Hanif Kureishi＇ s debut novel published in 1990, the main characters resort to identity performance to construct new identities for themselves and to combat ethnic prejudices and identity crises. Through identity performance, the first-person narrator Karim morphs from an emotionally perplexed second-generation immigrant to a successful actor in London, and his father Haroon is now respected by local suburban whites as the ＂Buddha＂ ; and white man Charlie transforms from a lesser-known suburban singer to a successful rock-and-roll hero in New York. By narrating these success stories of identity performance, Kureishi seems to endorse Judith Butler＇ s theory of performativity in his ironical opposition to the essentialist conception of ethnic identity and in his insistence that ethnic identity, is a cultural and political construct.