种族越界与双重意识:解析拉森《流沙》

Ethnic Passing and Double Consciousness: A Review of Nella Larsen’s Quicksand

拉森在《流沙》里通过对黑白混血儿悲剧人生的描写,揭示了美国黑人在种族越界中的双重意识和文化认同窘境。黑白混血儿看似反抗的越界行为实际上加强和巩固了黑白二分的种族界线,屈从了种族主义在黑人双重意识里所设置的无形监狱。她们的种族意识和伦理缺陷加剧了其双重人格的分裂,使其既漂不白自己的"黑色",也染不黑自己的"白色",成为被两个种族都排斥的"他者"。

In Quicksand, Nella Larsen delineates the tragic life of mulattoes and reveals their double consciousness and dilemma in cultural identification in the ethnic passing from black to white. The act of passing appears to be rebellious in fact thickens the color line between blacks and whites,and yields to the invisible prison set in blacks’ double-conscious soul in racist society. The mulattoes can neither whiten their “blackness” nor blacken their “whiteness”,doomed to be the “other” excluded by both ethnic groups.