Cosmopolitanism And The Rewriting Of History In Middle Passage

Charles R.Johnson(1948–)is a distinguished contemporary African American writer whose literary works emphasize the complexity and diversity of the black experience and increasingly demonstrate the cosmopolitan aspects of black culture.His third novel,Middle Passage,won the National Book Award in 1990.Scholars at home and abroad have examined the novel’s themes of identity,freedom,and humanity through the lenses of post-colonialism,New Historicism,feminism,psychoanalysis,and trauma theory.However,few have explored Johnson’s rewriting of the slave trade history from the perspective of cosmopolitanism.Therefore,the thesis delves into how Johnson constructs a “cosmopolitan” black identity by rewriting the slave trade history.The thesis mainly consists of four chapters.Chapter One introduces Charles Johnson and his novel Middle Passage,the research status of the novel at home and abroad,and the research perspective and structure of the thesis.Chapter Two analyzes the author’s historical rewriting of the slave trade,in which Johnson juxtaposes diaspora groups originally from different countries,races,and classes,thus demonstrating the danger of racist discourse in a broader context;And illustrating the slave mutiny and rewriting classic slave narratives,Johnson debunks the cultural views of Euro-centrism and Afrocentrism respectively,which exhibits his cosmopolitan concerns.Chapter Three discusses Johnson’s portrayal of various images of the black “Other” and his reflections and critiques on the black national character.In the novel,the lack of black fatherhood leads to two extremes: avoiding responsibility or being subservient;African Americans’ “Double Consciousness” and their cultural disconnectedness from Africa also lead to divisions,conflicts,and even betrayals among blacks.To uphold his more comprehensive and profound understanding of the black “Other”,Johnson’s concerns for misfortunes experienced by the black are accompanied by his reflections on the black people’s own problems and his appeal for a new black subject identity.Chapter Four explores the representations of different cosmopolitanism and the construction of diaspora community in the novel.The diaspora groups in the novel share a“commonality” in existing circumstances,thoughts,and feelings due to similar experiences,which provide valuable “resources” for the construction of diaspora community.Generally speaking,for Johnson,the formation of the hybrid black identity lies not in some fixed and precisely definable destinations,the “roots” or origins of African culture,but in the “routes” of commuting diasporic trans-Atlantic journeys.With his cosmopolitanism vision,Johnson encourages African Americans to face history and transcend the trauma by taking responsibility and caring for others to build a more just and harmonious community relationship and the “friendly community” envisioned by Martin Luther King,Jr.