Pursuing The American Southern Cultural Identity

After the American Civil War, the South was conquered and colonized by the North. As a result, southerners gradually lost their southern tradition and their cultural identity. Therefore, the pursuit of southern cultural identity became the most important task for the postwar educated southerners. As one of the most important southern writers in America, William Faulkner embarked on his mission to bring back southern tradition and to reconstruct southern cultural identity.This thesis is divided into four parts. The first part is the introduction and the last one is the conclusion. The second part elaborates on how William Faulkner deconstructs northern hegemony over the South. In order to arouse southerners'collective unconsciousness and deconstruct northern cultural hegemony, William Faulkner portrays a Yoknapatawpha mythical world, and uses"Southernness"extensively in his novels. In order to deconstruct northern discourse hegemony, Faulkner uses southern dialect and polyphonic technique particularly in his novels. The third part illustrates how the South tries to negotiate with the North and integrate its culture with that of the North. According to Homi K. Bhabha's"negotiation"and"hybridity"theory, the colonial cultural identity could only be gained and established through the cultural communication and hybridity between the colonizer and the colonized.From the post-colonial perspective, especially Gramsci's"hegemony"and Homi K. Bhabha's"negotiation"and"hybridity"theories, one gets to know that William Faulkner as a conscientious writer aims at keeping and reconstructing southern cultural identity with two important steps. Firstly, Faulkner tries to deconstruct northern hegemony in an effort to ensure the equal status with the North and to get rid of the marginalized situation. Secondly, Faulkner attempts to advocate that the southern culture should have"negotiation"and"hybridity"with the northern culture, which mainly involves great efforts taken by the South to communicate and to negotiate with the North. All these could boil down to the fact that William Faulkner in his literary creation endeavors to construct southern cultural identity through deconstructing northern hegemony, reconstructing southern cultural tradition and hybridizing the southern culture with the northern culture.