扎克斯·穆达小说中的仪式意象

Ritual Imagery in Zakes Mda’s Novels

南非黑人作家穆达创造性地在小说中将仪式意象化,以仪式为载体,表现人类中心主义压制下物种他者的权利主张、父权制下性别他者的主体建构,以及殖民统治下族裔他者对民族形象的维护。通过对作为民俗文化表征之一的仪式意象的书写,穆达将非洲传统民俗文化的内在精神生命化、具体化,展示了民俗文化的丰富内涵和艺术魅力,凸显了作家强烈的民族自豪感和文化自觉意识。穆达对仪式意象的创造性运用,挑战了旧的文学表达形式,表现出与南非文坛占主导地位的白人精英文学传统相抗衡的“形式意义”,在某种程度上消解了白人文学文本带来的“影响焦虑”,为后辈作家提供了重要的创作经验。

Zakes Mda,a black writer in South Africa,creatively symbolized rituals in his novels,taking rituals as carriers to express the claims of Other species under the suppression of anthropocentrism,the subjectivity construction of gender Others under patriarchy,and the maintenance of national image by Other ethnic groups under the colonial ruling.Through the writing of rituals,one of the representations of folk culture,Mda animated and embodied the inner spirit of traditional African folk culture,showed the rich connotation and artistic charm of folk culture,and highlighted his strong sense of national pride and cultural awareness.Mda’s creative use of ritual image challenged the old literary forms,and freed the texts from the traditional language,structure,and style.As a result,his works demonstrated a kind of“formal signifying”opposed to the white elite literary tradition in South Africa,which,to some extent,dispelled the“anxiety of influence”brought by the white literary text,and provided a kind of creative experience worthy of reference for the later writers.