Trans-racial Community Building: Rethinking The Post-colonial Writing In Nadine Gordimer’s Burger’s Daughter

Opinions on the post-colonial writing in Nadine Gordimer’s novel Burger’s Daughter(1979)vary from critic to critic.On the one hand,Gordimer reflects the complex colonial relations of South Africa with a strong anti-colonial stance so that she is called “the conscience of South Africa.” On the other hand,owing to being the offspring of white immigrants,Gordimer is criticized that her novel is permeated with colonial thoughts,which should belong to the category of imperial novel.Therefore,this thesis will discuss the initial building,corruption and rebuilding of the trans-racial community in Burger’s Daughter in order to rethink Gordimer’s postcolonial writing with firm belief in the anti-colonialism in the novel.First of all,the trans-racial community is initially built based on the common acknowledgement on anti-colonialism by former revolutionaries.However,there are discords between the invisible colonialism and the explicit anti-colonialism in the trans-racial community,which will lay a hidden danger for the corruption of the trans-racial community in South Africa.Secondly,the awakening of black consciousness brought by the “Black Consciousness Movement” is followed by the reversed binary opposition,which becomes the decisive factor to destroy race relations.Thirdly,a new trans-racial community will be achieved by overcoming the invisible colonialism and reversed binary opposition based on the intimacies of human beings in an attempt to remove the psychological segregation under colonial relations.Henceforth,Gordimer firmly grasps the basic tone of post-colonial writing in Burger’s Daughter.Through describing the construction,corruption and reconstruction of the trans-racial community,Gordimer further and comprehensively explores the complex colonial relations in this novel: the discords between the invisible colonialism and the explicit anti-colonialism among the white and the black,dialectical view on the reversed binary opposition in the process of black consciousness awakening,the intimacies of human feelings crossing the racial barrier to achieve a true trans-racial community.The post-colonial writing and the pursuit of the trans-racial community in Burger’s Daughter unfold literary imagination for solving the racial problem and also enlighten the pursuit of the community with a shared future for mankind.