犹太污名与身份重构——读亨利·罗思的《任凭狂涛摆布》

Jewish Stigma and Identity Reconstruction: On Henry Roth's Mercy of a Rude Stream

亨利·罗思在其自传体小说《任凭狂涛摆布》中,探讨了犹太人在异质文化中的污名境遇和身份危机。罗思通过聚焦于犹太人遭遇的污名化及其祛污名化努力,建构了污名个体的身份形态,展现了他们在社会、政治和文化强权共谋下的艰难处境。为消除污名,他们积极同化主流文化,依照主流群体的身份特征进行自我的重构。然而,在这个过程中他们不自觉地陷入了身份认同的镜像仿拟模式,其诉求也未能获得被认真倾听的机会,因此也必将导致其自我的异化而使其陷入新的身份危机。

Henry Roth explores in Mercy of a Rude Stream, an autobiographical novel, the stigma and identity crisis of Jews in a heterogeneous culture. By focusing on how Jewish people are stigmatized and their de-stigmatizing efforts, Roth constructs the identity paradigm of the stigmatized and illustrates their tough existence under the social, political and cultural hegemony. To eliminate stigma, they resort to assimilation and reconstruct their identity in accordance with the characteristics of people in the mainstream. However, they unconsciously fall into the imitation model of mirror images in the process and their appeal can never be heard. They will thus inevitably be alienated and encounter new identity crisis.