困境与超越——跨国民族主义视域下《穷乡僻壤》之种族政治探析

Dilemma and Transcendence:An Analysis of the Racial Politics in Down These Mean Streets from the Perspective of Transnationalism

种族政治是美国波多黎各裔作家托马斯在自传体小说《穷乡僻壤》中阐述的关于国家-民族认同的核心问题。作为第二代波多黎各移民,主人公皮瑞试图将自己融入美国社会而不失族裔性,但他与非裔美国人共有的体表特征使他陷入了种族认同的困境。在美国-波多黎各文化语境中重新定位种族身份的过程中,作家描绘了一种跨国民族身份,体现了国家-民族归属感的另类视野,它能够超越单一民族结构之僵化和种族/族裔特殊性之限制,为新型联盟和新型抵抗策略开辟道路,从而拓展了国家-民族认同话语的含义。

Race is the core issue of nation-state identification that Piri Thomas elaborates in his memoir Down These Mean Streets.As a second-generation Puerto Rican immigrant,Piri tries to integrate himself into American society without losing his ethnicity,but his physical features shared with African Americans make him into a predicament of racial identification.While in repositioning Piri’s racial identity in a U.S-Puerto Rican discourse,the writer depicts a transnational identity,an alternative vision of nation-state identification,which is capable of transcending both the rigid structures of nationalism and the constraints of racial particularity.It opens the way for new alliances and new resistant strategies,thus expanding the meaning of national-state identification discourse.