“混杂性”理论下查尔斯•约翰逊《中间航道》

Middle Passage by Charles Johnson under the Guidance of Hybridity

查尔斯•约翰逊于1990年发表《中间航道》,并于同年获得美国国家图书奖。小说主要借主人公鲁特福德的航海旅行经历,以航海日志的形式,创造性地再现了当时黑奴贸易的一段历史。约翰逊通过这部小说想引起黑人和白人对当时历史的重新思考。小说中也关注了主人公鲁特福德对身份的认识的变化。这篇文章将以此为出发点,主要借用霍米•巴巴“混杂性”理论分析鲁特福德的身份认知变化。

Middle Passage was published in 1990, for which Charles Johnson won the National Book Award in the same year. The fiction creatively represents one part of the slavery history through the voyage of the protagonist, Rutherford in the form of ship log. Through this fiction, Charles Johnson is aimed to articulate reconsideration of that part of history among the Whites and the Blacks. At the same time, in Middle Passage, Charles Johnson also pays attention to the identity of the protagonist, Rutherford. Taking the matter of Rutherford’s identity as a point of departure, this essay is principally to analyse his identity changes by adopting Homi K. Bhabha’s hybridity theory.