改写还是新生?——析汤亭亭论证北美华裔文化独立性的努力

Rewriting or New Birth?An Analysis of Maxine Hong Kingston's Efforts at Expounding on the Independence of Chinese-American Culture in North America

汤亭亭有关族裔、文化的言论一直引人注目。美国读者有武断的"中国性"判定,中国研究则从东方主义共谋的主观解读逐渐转为文化改写的客观分析。从历史叙事解构和符号延异的角度重新分析汤亭亭对中美文化及文学的改写可见,整个北美华裔对独立、平等的文化身份的诉求在其作品中得到了充分的阐释。文化观的讨论比女性主义视角、后殖民批评都更适合,也可以更准确地联结她所有的作品。她在明确文化主体、编撰华人移民历史、重新赋予某些语言文学以意义的努力中论证了北美大陆上华裔文化的独立性。

Remarks made by Maxine Hong Kingston race and culture have been catching attention all along. Despite American readers’ arbitrary judgments about ’Chineseness’, Chinese research is gradually turning from a subjective reading of Orientalist conspiracy to an objective analysis of cultural rewriting. A re-analysis of the rewriting of Chinese-American culture and literature by Maxine Hong Kingston, from the angle of deconstructed historical narrative and différance of signs, shows that appeals by Chinese-Americans across North America for cultural identity of independence and equality have been fully explicated in her work. A discussion of cultural views is more fitting than that of feminist perspectives and post-colonial criticism and can also more accurately link up all her works. She expounds the independence of Chinese-American culture on the North-American mainland in her efforts at defining cultural subjectivity, compiling a history of Chinese migration and re-endowing certain languages and literatures with meaning.