A Study On The Cultural Identity Construction Of "Irena" In The One-Legged Traveler From The Post-colonial Perspective

German writer Herta Miller is the winner of the 2009 Nobel Prize in Literature.She was born in 1953 at a German-speaking town in western Romania and moved to Germany in 1987.She is best known for writing about the German-Romanian diaspora.After the emigration,she wrote her novel The One-Legged Traveler(1989)based on her diaspora experience across Romania and Germany for the first time,creating a female image with autobiographical characteristics —— cross-border traveler "Irena",focusing on the fluidity and the hybridity of the German ethnic group’s cultural identity.This thesis studies the construction of the cultural identity of the heroine Irena from the perspective of post-colonial criticism and the theory of cultural identity.Irena’s pursuit of cultural identity is not smooth sailing.After immigration,Irena has always suffered from the dual influence of the country of origin and the place of immigration,unable to fix any kind of definite cultural identity,and always wandering at the intersection of mainstream and fringe.From a post-colonial perspective,this paper analyzes Irena’s cultural identity construction process of alienation,pursuit and negotiation in three different resistance Spaces:Romania(her old residence),Germany(her cultural mother country),and the hybrid border.There are three main parts.The first chapter mainly analyzes Irena’s alienation from the old cultural identity when she was scattered in a foreign country before immigration,which is carried out in three sections: "another country","another Irena" and "the language of another country".The second chapter specifically analyzes the three stages of Irena’s pursuit of cultural identity after she immigrated back to her native country: the first is the search for the root of the original collective cultural identity,the second is the longing for the constant ontological identity,and the third is the reconstruction of the self-cultural identity.In the first two stages,she tries to find the value of her existence by integrating into the community of her mother’s culture and relying on her boyfriend in an erotic relationship.With her hopes dashed,she finally returns to herself to reshape cultural identity.The third chapter explores her journey to the border and her negotiation of the cultural identity of hybridity.It is mainly reflected in regional boundaries,political boundaries and urban space to balance the differences between heterogeneous culture and homologous culture.In the process of constructing her cultural identity,she changed from the alienation of ethnic identity to the constant pursuit of self-cultural identity,and finally accepted her hybrid cultural identity.Finally,Irena stopped traveling and got the German nationality,recognized the hybrid of "city" and realized the identity of hybrid culture.The construction of cultural identity in the post-colonial context is a dynamic process of change,and there is no stable single cultural identity.Herta Miller’s works provide a new way of thinking about the cultural identity of diaspora people: such groups should negotiate the influence of multiple cultures and actively participate in the construction of a hybrid cultural identity.