The Politics Of Ugly Feelings And Reconstruction Of Jewishness In Philip Roth's Novels Of Post-alienation

The 1950s witnesses the turn of post-alienation in American Jewish literature,which focuses on the issues faced by American Jewish immigrants after their assimilation with the mainstream American society.As a prestigious American Jewish writer who is concerned about the fate of the Jewish nation in contemporary literary circles,Philip Roth focused on the issue of Jewishness under American Jewish policy in the post-alienation period from the scope of emotion.In his works,depiction of American Jews swaying between Jewish tradition and American assimilation and suffering from physical and psychological illness,especially those trapped by ugly feelings,is rather obvious.In Ugly Feelings,Sianne Ngai defines the concept of ugly feeling,referring it to negative emotion that is weak and inhibited in comparison with classical grand feelings like anger and fear,and ugly feeling is politically metaphorical and contains itself with positive agency.Ugly feelings in Roth's works are not confined to catharsis and expression of emotion,the historical cause of which mirrors the profound cultural background.While impelling Jewish individual to restore one's subjectivity in the cultural dilemma,ugly feeling is constructive to the cultural identity of Jewish American as well.This dissertation proposes to explore the interactive relationship between Jewish ugly feelings presented in Roth's novels and their political and cultural context,revealing Roth's critical thoughts on the issue of Jewishness in the period of post-alienation.Roth depicted three representative Jewish ugly feelings in his works: Jewish self-hatred,Jewish paranoia and Jewish disgust.Based on the representation of ugly feelings,the dissertation focuses on American Pastoral,The Ghost Writer,I Married a Communist,The Counterlife,Zuckerman Unbound,and The Anatomy Lesson to examine Roth's critical thoughts on the issue of Jewishness from three dimensions:de-Judaization,Orthodox Jewishness and Americanized Jewishness,highlighting that Americanized Jewishness might be the possible way out for American Jewry to cope with American Jewish policy.Chapter One begins with American Pastoral,The Ghost Writer plus I Married A Communist,holding that anti-Semitism in America leads to Jewish self-hatred of American Jewry,who cater to mainstream ideology through de-Judaization,whereas the positive power of Jewish self-hatred guides the subject to a new understanding and acceptance of ethnic characteristics,awakening the individual's Jewish consciousness.Jewish self-hatred in Roth's fictional writing refers to American Jewry' hatred,denial and even abandonment of one's own Jewishness,which is manifested as the unconditional identification and imitation of Americanness.In Roth's American Pastoral,The Ghost Writer and I Married a Communist,the dissertation analyzes anti-Semitism in America as the historical reason of American Jewry' self-hatred,the generation of which is related to the cultural low self-esteem as a result of America's anti-Semitic position and the internalization of racist prejudice.In American Pastoral,the dissertation points out that the in-adaptability and exclusiveness in the process of assimilation activate the driving force within the ethnic group,promoting subject to shift from Jewish self-hatred to Jewish identification and realize the establishment of Jewish consciousness.Examining Jewish paranoia in The Counterlife and American Pastoral,the second chapter claims the limit of maintaining Orthodox Jewishness in response to American assimilation and reinforces the necessity of promoting cultural communication on the basis of preserving basic Jewish spirit.Jewish paranoia presented in Roth's novels refers to an intense fear of American Jews for the all-round assimilating system in American society,which is manifested as the strengthened Jewish consciousness and resistance of external assimilating forces by maintaining Orthodox Jewishness.In The Counterlife and American Pastoral,the dissertation analyzes the Jewish paranoid's advocacy of “conspiracy theory”,i.e.,American assimilation as “the spiritual Holocaust” is imposing a gentle,slow and hidden cleansing of ethnic consciousness compared with that of the Holocaust.In The Counterlife,the dissertation maintains that the paranoid American Jew's resistance to American assimilation and maintenance of Orthodox Jewishness seem to be radical and absurd,yet it works as a warning to Jews living in the comfortable state.However,the novel's skepticism about the violent politics of Zionism implies that though it's imperative to maintain basic Jewish spirit,it is also significant to remove ethnic barriers and promote the integration of Jewish immigrants with other ethnic groups.On the basis of Zuckerman Unbound and The Anatomy Lesson,Chapter Three discusses the disobedient Jewish intellectuals and the generation and development of Jewish disgust,demonstrating the power of Jewish disgust in the reconstruction of Jewishness,i.e.,the Americanized Jewishness.The subject of Jewish disgust in Roth's fictional writing is represented by the disobedient Jewish intellectuals among the young generation,who felt disgusted about the conservative,inhibited and inferior Jewish heritage though they identity with the cultural identity of being Jewry.In Zuckerman Unbound and The Anatomy Lesson,the dissertation holds that the disobedient Jewish intellectual's criticism of Jewish convention stems from the estrangement between the rebellious Jewish youth and the traditional Jewish parents due to the assimilation of American education.In The Anatomy Lesson,the dissertation demonstrates the two dimensions of Jewish disgust,namely,while criticizing and attacking Jewish culture,the rebelling youth became disgusting for the Jewish community as well.Meanwhile,the bi-dimentional emotional motives of Jewish disgust arouse Jewish consciousness of self-reflection.The mutual compromise between the Jewish father and his Jewish son also represents the interdependent and interactive relation between American culture and Jewish tradition.In conclusion,the dissertation holds that the politics of ugly feelings in Roth's novels presents two dimensions: firstly,the cultural roots of the three Jewish ugly feelings expose the impact and menace that American assimilative policy posed upon the foundation of Jewish tradition,which is manifested as the dilemma of Jewishness;secondly,the positive tension of Jewish ugly feelings sheds new enlightenment on the issue of Jewishness.Philip Roth's dual identity as an American Jewish writer along with his personal experience of ugly feelings has influenced his position of Jewishness.Reconstruction of Jewishness in Roth's novels is embodied as Americanized Jewishness,which is a combination of the maintenance of Jewish kernel and the influence of American culture and reinforces the dialogue and cultural symbiosis between the two.Viewing from the scope of diaspora culture,the symbiosis that Americanized Jewishness reinforces transcends the dimensions of“Americanness” and “Jewishness” and manifests the characteristics of “cosmopolitanism”.