跨文化种族焦虑——《德西蕾的孩子》的空间表征

Transcultural Racial Anxiety:Spatial Representation of Désirée’s Baby

《德西蕾的孩子》是一部以异族通婚为主题的地域小说,再现了跨文化、跨地域和跨种族的空间冲突。在20世纪之交的文学场中,为了迎合通俗杂志对战前南方的文化臆想,文本把混血儿建构为白人克里奥尔人特权的威胁者和侵占者,在家庭、社会与历史的后殖民空间中表征了白人克里奥尔人社群的权力失落。德西蕾的悲剧被归咎为混血儿跨越种族的边界,影射了在北方意识形态挤压下,南方传统社会秩序解体所造成的心理、种族和政治焦虑,反映了肖邦的地域书写策略和价值选择。

Désirée?s Baby, a local color fiction of miscegenation, represents the spatial conflicts in transcultural, transregional and transracial contexts. To cater the Northerners’ cultural imagination over the prewar southern society at the turn of 20th century, mulattoes are constructed as a threat to the white creoles’ privileges. The text represents the white Creoles’ losing power in domestic, social and historical spaces under post-colonial locality. Désirée’s tragedy is attributed to the mulattoes’ transgression of the racial border, exposing the negative effects of the disintegration of traditional Southern social hierarchy under the imposition of Northern ideology which triggers the psychological, political and racial anxiety hereof, and also reflects Chopin’s creative strategy and preference in the contemporary literary field.