Loss Of Self And Reclamation Of Hope

As a distinguished young British writer,Zadie Smith has attracted much attention in the contemporary literary world.Most of her characters are younger generations of immigrant groups and she pays close attention to their living conditions.Swing Time is set in a multicultural society,and it uses the first-person narrative to tell the story that the protagonist who is the second generation of immigrants(a brown girl with half Jamaican and half British blood)is caught in the predicament of identity under the influence of multiple cultures.The protagonist loses herself in the crack between different cultures and cannot find the sense of belonging of spiritual state and living state,which makes her face the crisis of cultural identity.She gradually loses the hope for the future and lives an aimless life.Experiencing the emotional betrayal and living crisis,the protagonist's awareness of cultural identity is awakening gradually,and she begins to explore the ways to construct her cultural identity with her hope reclaimed.Based on Stuart Hall's cultural identity theory,this thesis takes the protagonist's cultural identity as the study object.From the perspective of the crisis of cultural identity,the representation of cultural identity and the construction of cultural identity,this thesis analyzes the performance and the reason for the protagonist's loss of self,reveals the power behind her identity's representations,and explores her new understanding about her cultural identity and the ways to construct the cultural identityApart from Introduction and Conclusion,the main part of this thesis is divided into three chapters.The Introduction part provides the information of Zadie Smith and Swing Time,and then studies of the author and her novels at home and abroad are reviewed.Hall's cultural identity theory is also introduced in this partChapter One mainly discusses the crisis of the protagonist's cultural identity.When the protagonist compares with the people around her,the identity confusion brought by the collision of identity's similarities and differences is the expression of the crisis.Under the dual impacts of black culture and white culture,the protagonist has an unstable self-consciousness which results in the dislocation of the subject.It is the main reason for the protagonist's identity crisis.The cultural identity of the half-caste protagonist should be formed through the dialogic relationship between continuity vector and rupture vector,that is,the dialogue between the past Jamaican history and the present multicultural society However,the discontinuity between the past and the present makes her ignore these two important vectors,thus falling into the dilemma of identity.Chapter Two mainly investigates the representation of the protagonist's cultural identity.In the process of trying to find herself,the protagonist is characterized as the "Other" due to the interference of power.The ruler exploits the school to input the idea of cultural hegemony imperceptibly,so that the protagonist is excluded from the dominant clubs and automatically joins in the abandoned "Goth".When the protagonist shows the instinctive dance talent which has the African gene,the African memory dissolved by power makes her just a "white girl" who dances well in the eyes of the local Africans.The protagonist loses the right to resist the prejudices of pizzeria owner and has to be labeled as "the Banned Customer",because she is deprived of her cultural discourseChapter Three mainly expounds the construction of the protagonist's cultural identity.The protagonist resists Aimee's revenge by challenging the stereotype imposed on her,tearing off the "vengeful ex-employee" label which Aimee gives her.Even if she fails to resist Aimee,she could see Aimee's real thoughts.The protagonist proactively embraces the differences between different cultures to learn to reconcile with her past self and returns her hometown with a new recognition of her identity.The protagonist's self-acceptance of her half-caste cultural identity is achieved by negotiating multiple identities.She realizes the differences between herself and others,understanding the cultural identity's diversities between her mother,Tracey and her,and accepts the multiple cultural identities given by her diverse and complicated culture backgrounds.The creation of new cultural identity is for the self-development and self-elevation.In this process,the protagonist gradually walks out the identity dilemma and completes herself.She is no longer a shadow which needs to be attached to the dominant culture and has her own light,reclaiming the hope for the futureThe exploration of the protagonist's cultural identity reveals the cultural identity problems faced by ethnic minority immigrants in the multicultural society.When the protagonist is pursuing for her culture identity,the process from loss of self to reclamation of hope shows Smith's thinking about cultural identity,and the tolerant,open and gentle attitudes towards different cultures provide a reference for others who have the same cultural identity confusion.