Naming And Identity Construction:A Study Of Jamaica Kincaid's Works

This dissertation demonstrates how Jamaica Kincaid(1949-)manipulates her ideas of “to name is to possess”,from three aspects,namely identity crisis,identification and identity reconstruction.The literary thoughts of “to name is to possess” run through Kincaid's opus,including her five novels,several of her short stories,her memoirs and some essays.As a renowned contemporary African American writer with a strong sense of community,Kincaid uses life writing,autobiographical writing and national allegory to construct individual and collective identities.Her sense of naming is the inheritance of Greek and Hebrew civilization,the tradition of Western philosophy,Caribbean women's oral culture and emotional language of the black,presenting her universal humanity for a community with a shared future beyond race,gender and class.This dissertation first expounds on the development of naming and identity issues in Western traditional as well as contemporary contexts,and makes a theoretical argument for the relationship between naming and the construction of identity,revealing that the formation of Kincaid's “to name is to possess” is inseparable from the cultural background of Greek and Hebrew civiliazation,the foundation of Western philosophy and the comprehensive influence of English literary traditions.Guided by this theoretical framework,the following three chapters discuss a series of literary practices that Kincaid uses memory as her source material,naming as its strategy and the construction of identity as her goal.Those three parts take named spaces(“at the bottom of the river” “a small place”and “New England Village”),named identities(“the writer in the small room under the kitchen” and “my slave ancestors”)and named action(“love is an action”and “I write therefore I am”)as examples,analyzing the anxiety of the completeness of self-identity and the dilemma that the collective identity needs to get rid of,discussing the key stages of the identification of self-identity and the critical relationship of the identification of social identity and consequently presenting Kincaid's solution for the rebuilding of identity.The conclusion of this dissertation: “To name is to possess” is the crystallization of Kincaid's literary thoughts under the influence of African and Caribbean history and cultures,British colonial education and American immigrant life.The complex historical and cultural background,rich theoretical connotation and sharp practical problems are the key to comprehensively understanding the creative theme of Kincaid's care for human beings,her aesthetic skills of emotional language and the value of multiculturalism.Starting from this point,Kincaid is dedicated to seeking balance and harmony in understanding a coexistence of self and others,leading African American literature to more incolusive direction and speaking upfor Caribbean women literature.Her meditation and efforts on identity construction for both individual and collective has led us to reflect on how to unite as a harmonious community with a shared future in postmodern society.Kincaid is one of the most representative ethnic writers in contemporary literature written in English,but unfortunately,overseas scholars have never been able to get rid of looking down from the above nor have domestic academia paid sufficient attention to Kincaid's opus.The main academic innovations of this dissertation are as follows: The first is that its study objects are different from those of other scholars.Having probed into a range of Kincaid's core ideas,this dissertation is the first comprehensive and systematic study of Kincaid's literary creation,which may infuse the domestic research on American literature and Caribbean literature and speed up the construction of “identity” of each field.The second is that it opens up a new study perspective in Kincaid studies.Taking her sense of naming,which is also her sense of identity,as the starting point,this dissertation carefully observes Kincaid's attention to different dimensions of Western civilization,regional history,literary traditions,social symptoms,etc.,solving the problemes,brought by the author's complex cultural identity,with understanding her works as a whole and overcoming some limitations placed by feminist and post-colonial criticism.The third is that it involves interdisciplinary theoretical approach.This dissertation analyzes the origin and cannotation of naming and identity,and discusses the relationship between the two in Kincaid's literary creation practice based on the research achievement of philosophy,sociology,psychology and cultural studies,giving a definition to the concept of“to name is to possess” for the first time.