The Identity Construction Of The Characters In Half A Life And Magic Seeds From The Perspective Of Nomadism

V.S.Naipaul,winner of the Nobel Prize for literature in 2001,is one of the most influential,original and controversial writers of this era.As the "Father of Caribbean literature" and one of the "three masters of English immigrant literature",this "world writer" has multiple cultural backgrounds and multiple identities: he was born in an Indian contract laborer family on the British colonial island Trinidad,received higher education in Britain,joined British nationality,traveled widely in Europe,America and Africa,realized his dream of writing in the western world,but the world he wrote has always been connected to the post-colonial situation.He is a Brahman,a colonized man,a son of a contract laborer,a British citizen,a man from the Third World,a person of color,an English writer...Naipaul's identity involves religion,culture,politics,history,nationality,race,language and class.This identity complexity is also shown in his works.The discussion of identity is the eternal theme of Naipaul's writing.The works of different stages show the author's deep and expanding thinking about identity.His early works show his anxiety about "culture without roots".From the deconstruction of cultural identity in mid-term works to the reconstruction of identity and subject in later works,Naipaul solved the "arrival mystery" of identity by writing and realized the construction of identity.Later works Half a Life and Magic Seeds co-wrote the hero Willie's wandering life,Magic Seeds is Naipaul's last fictional writing,he said when talking about this work: " Magic Seeds will connect the different worlds I have lived in,and make a summary of my literary career." These two works are also the summary of the author's "identity travel".Willie,the protagonist,has traveled all over India,Britain,Africa and Germany.The change of identity and identity concept is accompanied by geographical vagrancy.In Half a Life and Magic Seeds,beyond the single concern about the national cultural identity,the author launches deep metaphysical thinking on the identity itself.The national cultural identity is the starting point of the identity problem,not the whole,and the identity is pluralistic.It includes family identity,gender identity,political identity and professional identity,which are closely related to everyone.Identity studies go to the cosmopolitanism through post-colonialism and to the universality through individuality,which is of guiding significance to the construction of postmodern individual identity.The identity construction of the hero Willie in Half a Life and Magic Seeds shows the characteristics of difference,initiative and rheology,showing the trend of decentration,de-essence and embodiment,which is consistent with the thoughts of nomadism of French thinker Gill Deleuze,which has obvious features: anti-foundation,anti-system,anti-binary opposition and anti-grand narrative.Under the perspective of Deleuze's thoughts of nomadism,Willie's father,Willie and Willie's sister,the three main characters in Half a Life and Magic Seeds,adopt the postures of settlers,immigrants and nomads respectively in the face of identity dilemma.This paper mainly uses Deleuze's generative theory,difference theory and rheology theory to analyze the hero Willie's escaping from identity dilemma,realizing the deconstruction of traditional identity in practice,shaking off ideological shackles and forming a new concept of identity.In his wandering life of pursuing cultural identity,family identity,political identity and professional identity,Willie gradually realized the power operation mechanism behind the concept of identity.The process of identity is the process of suppressing individual differences with social identity.Willie is unwilling to give up his particularity and eliminate the end of identity travel in the failure of seeking identity one after another.His concept of identity has also changed from the concept of identity based on ontology to the concept of identity generation based on rheology.Identity is the continuous differential production.It constantly carries out the movement of territorializing,de-territorializing and re-territorializing,and constantly moves towards the concept of identity generation based on rheology.In the process of identity generation,individuals open themselves to heterogeneous factors,and there is no eternal end point.This paper extends Willie's metaphysical thinking on identity from discussing the transformation process of his concept of identity.Based on Anthony Giddens' research on the relationship between late modernity and self-identity,this paper argues that the essence of identity dilemma and the causes of identity anxiety have changed in the context of globalization,from the past identity crisis to the confrontation between individual smooth space and social stripe space,that is,the attempt of society to fix an individual in a given identity and the individual's desire of flowing of identity.With the change of indentical concept,the concept of subject has changed from traditional rational subject to nomadic subject.Identity of nomadism is not only the way of existence of nomadic subject,but also a micro-resistance movement to macro-political rule.Individuals living in the late modern society expose the illusion of shaping subjectivity through identity by nomadic attitude,emphasizing the freedom of identity flow,and safeguarding individual's unique identity.