Island Consciousness: The Writing Situation Of Imperial Diaspora Intellectuals

The Post-colonialism theory of the Cultural Criticism has realized theoretical transformation on the critic discourse all over the world. The question consciousness makes the theory inspect the times of turbulence and confusion from a multidimensional approach, which presents several dimensional formulation of the modern post-colonial theoretical system. The early post-colonialism theory criticizes on the African colonialism and literary writing about the blacks, Frantz Fanon is one of the representatives of this kind theory. After the publish of Orientalism by Edward Said, the focus of the theory has turned to the East. The development by Spivak and Homi Bhabha makes the theory form a system of special attention on the communities of the pre-colonies and the post colonies in the Indian subcontinent and other oriental regions. Hereby, the theoretical discourse of post-colonialism constructed by the Light-wing intellectuals (Banana men) trends to maturity. As a female, Spivak has turned her attention of studies and researches on the female colony and subaltern of the colonial regions by conjuncting feminism criticism and Marxism criticism, which transforms the post-colonialism theory into the coexisting of researches on the classes-study, gender-study and different colonies-study as well as the racial conflicts.The colonial culture not only affects the colonized but also colonizers and descendant settlers, who are both involved in a dilemma of cultural value selecting. The approach of racial conflict "white and non-white" is not adoptable any longer in the new situation of the recent development. Thus there leaves a theoretical blank space of study, that is the living and writing situation of the imperial diasporas descendants who are still living in the former colonies. The field of this space are practically becoming a new "margin" of modernity criticism.Coetzee, is both a critic and a writer, whose theoretical research, literary writing and criticism are among this field. He shows his special attention of literature on the situation of their living condition and spirit life, and as well, he also concentrates his study on the similar Right-wing intellectuals' writing by analyzing, representing, appreciating, criticizing, encouraging and supporting. He researches on the discourses of anti-colonialism from them and gives them a rational analysis, thus he is becoming a theorist of the post-colonialism. In order to illustrate Coetzee's theoretical system, by comparing to the other theorists of post-colonialism on their research fields and study attentions, the dissertation has found out that the key to solve the difficulties of differences and distinguishing from some other left-wing theorists is the cultural identity as "a person living in-between".The conscientious imperial diasporas intellectuals, living in the hostile condition between the colonial social constitution and the colonized natives on the colony society of their predecessors' exploring, developing, and westernizing, receives both local and western education, are pushed aside by the suzerain supremacy culture and hated by the aboriginals. They succeed hardly and obtain the equal right of speaking in the stage to the suzerain intellectuals. Coetzee, as a member of this colony, realizes the essential of colonialism, utters a hooting cry from inner consciousness of the empery, criticize the imperialism settlement policy and "cultural globalization", and construct his post-colonialism theory of right-wing camp with many differences from the left-wing theorists on the respects of standpoint, viewpoint and strategy.The dissertation coagulates Coetzee's literary thoughts and his right-wing post-colonialism theory as "the Island Consciousness" of writing situation. "The Island Consciousness" are the representing ideas of facing a dilemma while selecting writing position, viewpoint and culture value in literary criticism and fiction composing; of pondering western centralism and modernity and criticizing colonialism and imperial power politics with the image of "diasporas intellectuals plunged in the island"; and the ideas of the Hobson's choice from the isolate intellectuals under the capitalistic globalization context. With this island consciousness, the imperial diasporas intellectuals are facing chaos of colonialism criticizing. Their writing cannot inherit European literature tradition, nor convert to the local and indigene formation, and their thoughts and presentation are becoming solitary. Their spirits retreat into the island because of their embarrassed cultural identity, which leads to the plight in culture receiving, value selecting and position confirming. The island consciousness of writing digs out the roots substance of colonialism and internal imperial ideology, oppugns the western centralism binary of "civilization and barbarism" from enlightenment, disposes the historical pseudo truth by the colonizers and their labeled racial identities, and advocates harmonious nature and independent intentional life.Chapter One, Preface, discusses the origin and development of the post-colonialism briefly under the context of modernity criticizing, introduces the historical phases and blank space of the theory and illustrates Coetzee's literary thought concisely.In Chapter Two, the dissertation attempts to explode the academic affects from the modernism canon by an analysis on its textual criticism and novel composition. The Island Consciousness consists of three cores: "theory of civilization and barbarism", "theory of fictional history" and "theory of island survival". The sort of island-writing deconstructs the historical binary of "civilization and barbarism" with Derrida's approach from imperial ideology, subverts the historical truth of colonial writing with Foucault's fictional text approach, and demonstrates the solitary life of imperial diasporas intellectuals with the method of experimental composing.Chapter Three discusses Coetzee's five writing strategies of the Island Consciousness: the objective of island writing focuses on humanity and historical constructing; the tactics of island writing is avoiding political censorship; the language selecting of island writing is to break the colonial authorities by the language itself; the textual style of island writing concentrates hybrids of fiction and non-fiction under the feature of post-modernism illegibility; the highest principle of island writing is to follow the natural harmonious humanity which adjusts any kinds of conflicts.Chapter Four discusses the reasons, processes and ascription of the right-wing post- colonialism theory formed by "the Island Consciousness" relevant to theorists' cultural identities, which makes Coetzee convert his theoretical construction and study to the field of post colonialism theory after the former orientation to Huntington's civilization conflicts theory.Chapter Five, on the basis of above discussions and interpretation from the four chapters, gives an analysis on the reason why it is called the right-wing post-colonialism and the shortage of the theory, which Coetzee makes use of criticize the capitalism instrumentalism and rationalism. The theory differs from traditional post-colonialism and is profounder to strive against the western centralism and Anglo-European literature canons, imperial mythology and ideology concept, by an approach of deconstruction and self-exposure and anatomy from internal empery ideology. Meanwhile, there is no certain and legible class position in his fiction and non-fiction texts, which is advocating interlocution, humanity and nonsectarian writing with non-exclusionist value to people, animals and other creature. The theory also shows its feature for the position of right-wing with the benignancy and not exhaustively criticizing on colonialism, which is similar to the racial assimilation.It is then concluded that, as a representative of the imperial diasporas intellectuals, Coetzee, criticizes and strives against the colonialism and capitalism modernity with his special "Island Consciousness" and the right-wing post-colonialism theory by his creations including his fictions and non-fictions. This theory constructed tightly and closed to the literary criticism focuses on the isolate colonies who are also persecuted by the colonialism policies during and after the colonial periods and supplies a complementarity to the left-wing post-colonialism theory, thus it has formed a mutual coordination of theoretical construction. The post-colonialism cannot criticize western centralism according to the label identity "white-nonwhite", since it has been proved that the ethnogeny itself is one part of western centralism by the theory, which contributes the development of the theoretical system on the methodology in the modern age. As a theorist and a novelist as well, Coetzee's success brings us two inspirations: the third world theorists have to combine their researches to their territorial culture when liquidating the infections of colonialism; As a theorist and novelist, he has also set a good example to us that the literary creations and theoretical studies can be simultaneously getting along well in the academic literature field.