Research On Frontier Ideology In Cormac Mccarthy’s Westerns

As one of the most important writers in contemporary American literature,Cormac McCarthy is known for his Westerns at home and abroad. Most Chinese andforeign McCarthy studies have analyzed his representation of the history of theAmerican West, his ecological vision, his demythologizing of American nationalmyths, and his works’ intertextual relationship with other literary works. Scholarshave reached a tacit agreement that McCarthy’s Westerns engage with anti-imperialistwriting. While insightful, these studies have largely ignored the representation offrontier ideology and its relation to McCarthy’s anti-imperialist writing approach.Thus, repositioning McCarthy’s Westerns as sociopolitical commentaries within abroader context of American Western culture, society, politics and history, thisdissertation, based on the previous achievements in McCarthy studies, continues todisclose frontier ideology in his three representative Westerns Blood Meridian (1985),All the Pretty Horses (1992) and Cities of the Plain (1998) and analyze howMcCarthy draws on the frontier motif to replay, criticize and transcend frontierideology to express his dynamic yet nuanced authorial attitude toward Americanimperialism.This dissertation consists of five parts. It begins with an introduction thatpresents a working definition of frontier ideology, a literature review of McCarthy’sWesterns and a layout of this dissertation. Frontier ideology discussed in thisdissertation includes two aspects. Connotatively, frontier ideology refers to anabstraction of the system of beliefs, values and concepts that deemed the AmericanWestern frontier of the nineteenth century as the geographical area where theAmerican national character was formed. Frederick Jackson Turner’s Frontier Thesiswas the comprehensive culmination of frontier ideology in the nineteenth century.Denotatively, frontier ideology, resorting to the frontier rhetoric, consists of theunconscious fantasy that constructs American social reality and instructs Americans todesire for a further frontier where they can live up to the ideals of the Americannational character. Frontier ideology at denotative and connotative level covers up American imperialism, racism, sexism and classism in its historical process.Chapter One focuses on McCarthy’s replaying of frontier ideology by examiningBlood Meridian. It argues that McCarthy, on the one hand, falls into the shackle offrontier ideology in his idealization of American frontier expansion that ran amok inand after the Mexican-American War, and he, on the other hand, interrogates therationale of frontier ideology in his deconstruction of Manifest Destiny and hisdemythologization of the frontier myth. Within the two conflicting forces, McCarthyunwittingly succumbs to the “political unconscious” of racism due to hisreinforcement of American whiteness and glorification of the narrative trope of“regeneration through violence” and moral rebirth inherent in the traditional Westerngenre. Hence, McCarthy’s replaying of frontier ideology reflects a complex andambivalent attitude toward American imperial expansion.Chapter Two examines McCarthy’s criticism of frontier ideology with a casestudy on All the Pretty Horses. It argues that frontier ideology, though not appearingas the dominant ideology in the post-frontier1940s, becomes a kind of psychicresidue harboring in American society. The protagonist, under the “interpellation” ofthe cultural, family, and communications Ideological State Apparatus (ISA),self-arrogantly imagines Mexico as his “New Frontier” to recreate the cowboyparadise there. He rides southward, only to encounter fierce anti-imperialist resistancein his self-conceived “New Frontier.” McCarthy dismantles his protagonist’s imperialdream by making him reversely penetrated by the culture of the colonized. In doing so,McCarthy criticizes the assumptions of frontier ideology that continues to begetAmericans’ desire for a romanticized vision of the frontier life, and questions theunreasonable aspects of American nation’s “structures of feeling.”Chapter Three discusses how McCarthy transcends frontier ideology in Cities of thePlain. This chapter bases its argument on the idea that frontier ideology is the rootcause of frontier nostalgia in the post-frontier1950s as embodied by cowboys’pathological fascination with the obsolete frontier life and their practices ofquasi-cowboy codes which provide material existence for the continued operation offrontier ideology. Under the effective influence of frontier ideology, the protagonist, instead of drawing lesson from his experience in All the Pretty Horses, imagines hispossible possession of the “symbolic frontier” represented by a Mexican woman. Bytaking advantage of American capital, the protagonist initiates commercial negotiationon buying his “symbolic frontier.” By highlighting failed commercial negotiation andexchange, McCarthy makes irony on the concept of America’s new imperialism.Meanwhile, McCarthy, by envisioning the dysfunction of American imperial logic,urges Americans to re-identify with the hybridized frontier, so as to properly face thecultural heterogeneity and diversity in the American West, particularly in theMexican-American borderlands. In doing so, Americans can dismantle thehomogenous discourse of frontier ideology and step out the vicious circle of Americanimperial domination within and beyond American territory.The concluding part summarizes the main points discussed in this dissertationand concludes that McCarthy’s appropriation of the frontier motif inherent in thetraditional Western genre aims at replaying, criticizing and transcending frontierideology which，in the name of Manifest Destiny and nationalism, has justifiedAmerican imperialism. It also reaches the conclusion that the persistence of frontierideology in American society is due to the efficient and effective function of thefamily, cultural and communications ISA which jointly “interpellate” Americans toform an imaginary relationship to the real condition of the existence of the idealizedfrontier life. But frontier ideology unconsciously spurs many Americans’ imperialdesire. Furthermore，McCarthy’s representations of frontier ideology in his differentWesterns enable us to see that his attitude toward American imperialism experiences adynamic yet nuanced process in which his initial ambivalence gives way to criticismand transcendence. The analysis of frontier ideology in McCarthy’s Westerns attemptsto disengage them from the traditional Western genre and speaks to the viability andutility of contemporary American Western as a paradigm of sociopoliticalcommentary.