On The Cultural Reconciliation In Alexis Wright’s Carpentaria

Alexis Wright is a prestigious contemporary Australian Aboriginal writer,and she is also the first Aboriginal writer to be granted Australia’s most prestigious literature prize The Miles Franklin Literary Award of 2007 for her epic novel Carpentaria published in 2006.Compared with the continuous critical attention to this Aboriginal writer at abroad,the domestic literary critic circle knows little about her.And the current study on this novel is mostly based on post-colonial theory,which ignores the novel’s reflections on how Aboriginal culture and Western culture can coexist and its thoughts about cultural reconciliation.In view of this,by focusing on the conflicts and dialogues between the two incommensurable cultural systems,this dissertation will explore how the novel has blended Western literary form with Aboriginal oral storytelling to represent Aboriginal traditional culture and deconstruct Western culture so as to promote cultural reconciliation within the Aboriginal tribes and between the Aborigines and the white settlers.This dissertation is consisted of five chapters in all.Chapter One introduces Alexis Wright and her work Carpentaria,introduces the research status both at home and abroad,and states the purpose and structure.Chapter Two focuses on the representation of Aboriginal culture in the novel,which aims at restoring the subjectivity of Aboriginal culture.Firstly,the novel revitalizes the tradition of oral storytelling by imitating Aboriginal oral narrative.Then,the novel represents the wholeness of Aboriginal spirituality by showing the spiritual system of Dreaming myths,ancestral spirits and animism.At length,the novel has reawaken tribal memories of totemic culture by opening with the collective totem Rainbow Serpent,showing the profoundness of Aboriginal history.Chapter Three applies some post-colonial theories to discuss the deconstruction of Western culture,which intends to eliminate the cultural superiority complex of the white settlers.The novel adapts the standard English with Aboriginal languages when appropriating the imperial language to speak out Aboriginal experiences,showing the tendency of the coexistence of these two language codes.Genocide and racial descrimination constitue the allegorical original sin in the novel,revealing the hypocrisy of the universal love of Christianity.The white settlers’ cultural amnesia accounts for the rootless state of their history from its source.Chapter Four firstly discusses the embodiments of cultural reconciliation in the novel from both the form and content Then,it explores the main idea of cultural reconciliation contained in the novel from two levels.On the one hand,the novel critically reflects upon the internal historical conflicts within Aboriginal tribes,and then promotes inter-tribal marriages to reconcile the two tribes.On the other hand,the novel reflects upon the ambivalent attitude of the white settlers toward the Aborigines,and then explores possible measures to achieve the reconciliation between the Aborigines and the white settlers.What’s more,by close reading,it is found that the ideas of cultural reconciliation actually reflect cosmopolitan thoughts in the novel.Chapter Five is conclusion.The conclusion points out that Carpentaria has reconstructed the subjectivity of Aboriginal culture and meanwhile critically reflected upon Western culture,which has eliminated all the stereotypes about Aboriginal culture and Western culture and embodied the concept of seeking for historical truth and justice,laying the foundation for cultural reconciliation.During the process of reconstruction and deconstruction,the novel has explored a hybrid cultural space in which the two heterogeneous cultural systems can reconcile with each other so as to construct an Australian national culture with hybridity,tolerance and openness.The idea of cultural reconciliation suggested in the novel actually reflects cosmopolitanist thoughts.