赫斯顿自传的“症候式”阅读

A Symptomatic Reading of Zora Neale Hurston's Autobiography

佐拉·尼尔·赫斯顿是非裔美国文学之母,作为哈莱姆文艺复兴的一面旗帜,她在美国文学史上占有重要的一席。在她的人生和创作生涯中,自传《一路风尘》是一个转折点。此后她几乎放弃了小说创作,在文坛的声誉也每况愈下,并逐渐从历史的舞台上消失。在这部自传中,存在着各种各样的"症候",如谎言、省略、自相矛盾、不连贯叙事等,它们是文本背后各种力量博弈的产物,反映出赫斯顿的各种隐秘意识和矛盾心态。

As a mother figure in African American literature, Zora Neale Hurston is a leading writer in Harlem Renaissance, and she has won her place in American literary arena. Her autobiography Dust Tracks on a Road is a perfunctory book written for the occasion;however, it becomes the turning point of her whole life. After finishing this autobiography, Hurston nearly gives up writing fiction;her reputation has gone steadily downhill and is later discarded on the ash heap of history. By using French scholar Louis Althusser's symptomatic reading, the present paper attempts to uncover various "symptoms" in Hurston's autobiography, such as lies, omissions, self-contradictions, and incoherent narrative. It also examines the conflicts of different forces within the text, and presents Hurston's hidden consciousness and ambivalence.