The Negotiation Of Hybrid Identity In Allegra Goodman’s Fiction

Allegra Goodman(1967—)is a leading figure of the new wave Jewish American writers.Since the publication of her debut book,Goodman has garnered highly favorable critical acclaim.Like the new wave Jewish American writing,her fiction shows a tendency to return to Jewish tradition,religion and identity.This dissertation investigates the negotiation of identities in Goodman’s three works,The Family Markowitz(1997),Kaaterskill Falls(1998)and Paradise Park(2001).Although the three works address different aspects of American Jewry — assimilation,Orthodoxy and the returnee phenomenon—they all explore identity negotiation of the Jews who grapple with an interstitial existence.Homi K.Bhabha’s theory of hybridity provides a theoretical framework for the analysis of identity negotiation in Goodman’s works.Drawing on the theoretical concepts such as “hybridity,” “third space” and “in-between space” formulated by Bhabha,this dissertation examines Jewish Americans’ in-between status in Goodman’s works,explores how the Jewish characters negotiate their identities in terms of race,religion and gender,and concludes that Goodman envisions a hybrid identity as a possibility to resolve identity crisis and reconstruct Jewish American identity.Stuart Hall’s identity theory also sheds considerable interpretative light on my analysis of Sharon Spiegelman’s identity disorientation and identity negotiation during the process of her return to Jewish roots in Paradise Park.Hybridity finds different expressions in Goodman’s fiction as her Jewish characters,who span a wide religious spectrum of American Jewry,define their Jewishness in different ways.Chapter One analyzes how the three generations of Jewish American immigrants in The Family Markowitz negotiate identity,belonging and heritage in different ways.Chapter Two explores how the Orthodox Jewish characters struggle to negotiate contesting identities in terms of ethnicity,religion and gender in Kaatersikill Falls.Chapter Three examines the tortuous process of Sharon’s quest for self-identity: floating on the peripheries of multiple cultures,vacillating between Jewish identity and American identity,and finally reconstructing a hybrid idenity.Analysis of the three works reveals Goodman’s evolving views on hybridity.In The Family Markowitz,hybridity is characterized by a profound sense of loss,rootlessness,dislocation and identity crisis.Most characters have difficulty coming to terms with their hyphenated identities: while both the first and the second generation Jewish Americans strive,to some extent,to reinvent their own identity so as to integrate into the mainstream culture,the third generation reclaim Orthodoxy and insist on rigid adherence to tradition.Kaaterskill Falls explores the possibility of negotiating a third space of Jewishness within the framework of Orthodoxy.The novel foregrounds Elizabeth Shulman’s struggle to negotiate a hybrid identity in the interstitial space between sacredness and secularism,Orthodoxy and feminism,Jewish identity and American identity.Although Elizabeth’s effort fails,Goodman places hope on the younger generation by envisioning a more tolerant,revitalized Orthodox Judaism.Paradise Park goes even further in exploring the third space of Jewishness in Judaism.After a lot of twists and turns,Sharon’s quest for self-identity finally leads her to a third space where she can reconcile her Jewish identity with American identity.Goodman’s works expose Jewish Americans’ identity confusion and crisis,and invite the reader to re-examine the “in-between” space they inhabit and to explore more possibilities of being Jewish.On one hand,by delineating the Jewish characters’ struggle to reconstruct their identity,Goodman interrogates the notion of a unitary,fixed,essentialist Jewish identity and presents Jewish identification as a fluid process of constant negotiation and translation between multiple identities.One the other hand,Goodman rejects the notion of rootless,postmodern Jewish subjectivity,which in her view,causes identity crisis and threatens to disrupt Jewish continuity and survival.Goodman holds the view that Jewish Americans should not seek total assimilation and extricate themselves from their roots;nor should they resist mainstream culture by retreating into cultural ghettos.Rather,they should eschew binary thinking and substitute negotiation for negation,as so to explore a third space of Jewishness where identities are hybridized and integrated.By systematically studying identity negotiation in Goodman’s fiction through the lens of hybridity,the dissertation not only expands the scope of Goodman studies,but also provides a new perspective for Jewish literature studies.But for the sake of structural and thematic unity,this dissertation focuses on identity hybridity,leaving the linguistic aspect unexplored.It would be worthwhile to investigate linguist hybridity in Goodman’s works,since she integrates different languages and cultures to produce hybrid texts.