| This M.A.thesis aims to reveal Bernard Malamud's view on Cultural Hegemony hidden in The Tenants.In the postcolonial period,in order to deceive those non-white groups and females,hegemony takes the form of culture instead of economy.This form of hegemony is even embraced by them.Moreover,cultural hegemony finds its full play in America.White Anglo-Saxon Protestants,in order to maintain the superior position of their culture,have long been engaged in assimilating others,excluding others and labeling others' culture as the inferior.In The Tenants,Malamud exposes the hegemony by whites on non-white groups and the hegemony by males on females.The novel brings into full play the battle between assimilation and anti-assimilation among such characters as Lesser,Willie and Irene.Lesser,a successful Jewish-American writer assimilated radically,turns out to be the spokesman for the whites in America and intends to Americanize Willie. Learning from his terrible experience and the history of his race,Willie realizes that writing about blacks in a black way is the best way for blacks to protect and promote their culture and then fight against cultural hegemony.He hopes to awaken his race by writing his race out of humiliation,oppression and suffering.However,no matter how hard Willie wields his will over assimilation,he finally cannot get rid of assimilation and suffers in the conflict between assimilation and anti-assimilation.The betrayal of Lesser and Irene hurts him badly and makes Willie unable to pick up his writing again. For Willie,Lesser is the only white he trusts and Irene symbolizes his power over whites.Interestingly,in spite of various differences between Lesser and Willie,the two men hold the same attitude toward females.Both of them just regard females as their subordinates and even tools.Although compared with Spivak,Malamud gives less profound and radical criticism on the subaltern position of females,the author,as a Jewish-American male writer,really takes a huge step.The three endings of the novel bring about ambiguity,and critics differ in their views on those endings—intermarriage,mutual killing and mercy-crying.Those endings just function as emblems of possibilities.Malamud aims to expose the progress,the terrible consequences and the universal and damaging force of cultural hegemony.And on the other hand,Malamud fails to figure out a definite and effective way to solve the racial and gender problems.Up till now,there is still no solution to the problems.However,lots of postcolonial critics,represented by Homi K.Bhabha and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak,take cultural hegemony as one of their critical focuses.It is Gramsci that puts forward the concept of cultural hegemony and it is Fanon that attaches great importance to the establishment of national culture for blacks in the postcolonial period.The great ideas of the precursors of postcolonial criticism find their representation in The Tenants.Although Malamud's critical idea is not as mature and radical as that of Bhabha and Spivak,The Tenants is good evidence that Malamud is not only a Jewish-American writer but writing for all mankind.Malamud is not only a writer but also a literary critic,who absorbs the essence of Fanon's and Gramsci's ideas and also shares a lot in common with such 21st literary critics as Homi K.Bhabha and Spivak.In conclusion,Malamud holds a sharp,profbund and foresightful view on cultural hegemony in the world. |
