A Study of Racial Discrimination in Intruder in the Dust Based on Gaze Theory 凝视理论视角下《坟墓的闯入者》的种族歧视研究文献综述

 2023-04-22 04:04

文献综述

1. Introduction1.1 Research backgroundWilliam Faulkner, who was born in 1897, is one of the most significant writers in the USA of the 20th century. Faulkner had written 19 novels and about one hundred short stories during his lifetime. Whats more, he got the Nobel Prize in 1950. His most significant experience was from his family lifeespecially the young people struggling to grow up in communities where social values or even family history and ambition make the realization of their ideals very difficult. His habit of writing about declining or tragedy-haunted families in the county-seat towns of Mississippi is not solely the result of a romantic imagination, judicious reading of family-chronicle novels, or explorations of modern psychology. It is, in effect, Faulkners own family story.Intruder in the Dust (1948), which is set in his Yoknapatawpha County, is a great introduction to Faulkners various and confused novels of the American South. Setting in his mythical Yoknapatawpha County, his standard fictional location, Intruder in the Dust also includes such familiar inhabitants as attorney Gavin Stevens and farmer Carothers Edmonds. This novel has some examples of unique Faulkners stylistic components as elongated, periodic sentences, disconnected narratives, multiple narrative perspectives, psychological time, and stream of consciousness. Based on the parable and folklore, his novels form a vision of life as a neurotic and involve psychological process. Intruder in the Dust, however, blends folklore and parable with a formula mystery story which is much simpler to understand than most of Faulkners works. The paper will interpret Intruder in the Dust (1948) from the perspective of gaze theory. Gaze theory has appeared as early as ancient Greece. People in ancient Greece used gaze theory to comment on current affairs and politics at that time. In the 20th century, gaze theory had developed prominently. French philosopher Sartre linked the gaze theory with the relationship between subject and object (Lin, 2005). In the middle and late 20th century, the development of gaze theory reached a new stage. Lacan discussed the existence of gaze in visual behavior from four aspects: the distinction between eyes and gaze, abnormity, line and light and what is image. At the same time, it also presents us with a large number of vivid, perceptual and enlightening stories and empirical analysis. Lacan believes that the eye is an organ of desire, so we can get pleasure from watching, but the eye is an organ that fully symbolizes order. Therefore, people usually choose to see what they are willing to see and turn a blind eye to other existence. We see that in the dialectics of eyes and gaze, there is no coincidence, but on the contrary, there is temptation. When you fall in love, you want to be seen, but you cant be seen. What is deeply satisfied and always in a certain state is that you never look at me like the way Ilook at you. On the contrary, I never see what I want to see (Jiang, 2019). When gazing, we carry and project our wishes, and we can escape from the symbolic order and enter the imaginary order. In this process, fantasy exists. Fantasy is an imaginary scene. Fantasy refers not to the satisfaction of needs, but to unsatisfied wishes. From the perspective of gaze theory, analyzing racial discrimination will more clearly show the views of people of different races in the works. For example, when analyzing how whites discriminated against blacks,we can see how do they view the black people in the lower position from the perspective of the upper one (Zeng, 2011)1.2 Need of the studyThe necessity of analyzing grave intruders from the perspective of gaze theory is as follows: The research has certain practical significance. On the one hand, it helps us understand the relationship between racial discrimination and gaze theory, and let us face up to the seriousness of racial discrimination. On the other hand, it helps to defuse the racial issues that still exist. As we all know, discrimination against blacks still exists in many areas, and many blacks still live under discrimination and even oppression by whites. There are still many blacks who cannot get their own rights. This paper also hopes readers to get a deeper understanding of the issue of racial discrimination.1.3 Research purposesThrough the story of a white child and his friends saving a black man accused of murder, this paper discusses the racial view of whites staring at blacks in the environment of serious racial discrimination. Further explore what changes racial discrimination has brought to whites and how much pain and suffering it has brought to blacks. Besides,it also explores how the gaze theory can be applied to racial discrimination, which brings benefits to our further understanding of the racial views of whites and blacks, so that we can explore the causes and development of racial discrimination.2. Literature review2.1 The development of Gaze TheoryForeign scholars have conducted in-depth research on Intruder in the Dust, and there are many previous research results. This paper selects three scholars research results on such articles. They are Merleaus (1964), Lacans (1981) and McGonagalls (2007).The study of gaze in the 20th century echoes the praise of vision in ancient Greek thought through the time and space of history, and endows gaze with theoretical connotation. As one of the outstanding French philosophers in the 20th century, Paul Sartre is an earlyand complete scholar who analyzed the visual system among the philosophers in the 20th century. At the same time,he is also a famous writer, dramatist, critic and social activist. Merleau (1964) believes that human existence is a subject of the body, which is temporal, because it inherits the past, experiences the present and the future. Painting the future, the body is the three-dimensional intersection of the past, the present and the future. The body is also spatial, because each part contains each other in a unique way, so as to form a whole and form the body intention, so that our cognition of the limbs can obtain a pre reflective consciousness model, a situation space. Then, the body is still an inherent synthesis. It is the mutual supplement of various sensory abilities and forms an organic whole with the world. Body subject is the subversion of Descartess dualism of mind and body and traditional subject object. It is intentionally connected with the world. In the perspective of perceptual phenomenology, body subject is not only the subject of perception, but also the object of it. It is the subject of see in I see myself looking, as well as the object of the action looking.Lacan (1981) brings vision into the research field of psychology, and then turns it into a kind of thinking about human subject like the theory of structure. In the above analysis, it is not difficult to see that the mirror stage leads to the emergence of an illusory subject, or the generation of mistaken subjects. However, it is obviously superficial to stop the development of Lacans subject theory here for a prominent scholar. With regard to a core figure who has formed the so-called Lacan industry, the subject obviously means more, which also requires us to pay more academic efforts. Starting with a theoretical model of Lacan, and Freud, personality is divided into a ternary structure of ego, id and superego. Similarly, Lacan divides human survival experience into imagination, symbol and reality, and believes that these three orders constitute human reality. The three realms of reality include imaginary, symbolic and real. Of course, Lacans three points do not correspond to Freud. And this division is fundamentally philosophical rather than psychological. McGonagall (2007) believes that various ethnic characteristics based on universal beliefs are strengthened through selective perception. In other words, people usually pay attention to cases that can consolidate their stereotype and ignore or ignore cases that do not conform to the stereotype. After accepting the racial stereotype, in the tomb intruder, the white people strengthen this misconception through a sense of choice. In the novel, when a white shopkeeper meets a black man who comes to buy something, he subconsciously thinks that the black man is here to steal. In the eyes of whites, all blacks are bad and have a natural disposition of thieves. In this way, the stereotype of blacks is strengthened by selectively and repeatedly perceiving some improper behaviors of blacks. From a white mans view of blacks, then to the whole white groups view of blacks. Finally, the racial discrimination will become worse and worse.According to the current research, the use of gaze is used frequently but seldom explained. As a theoretical concept from the west, the use of gaze by western scholars is mostly integrated in cultural criticism such as film theory, feminism and post colonialism, and the theory is often directly applied to specific texts.This kind of research can be described as numerous. However, no special works have been retrieved from the comprehensive investigation of the gaze theory. In domestic research, there is a similar situation. Male gaze and colonial gaze are important keywords in many research papers, but the keyword-- gaze are vague. Such a situation undoubtedly needs a more comprehensive and systematic research.2.2Research on Intruder in the Dustin ChinaShaws William Faulkner (1995) is the first monograph in China to study Faulkner comprehensively and systematically. The first prominent feature of the book is to study Faulkner and his creation under a wide range of historical and cultural backgrounds, and deeply explore the relationship between American society, especially the social and cultural traditions of the south, and the trend of modernist literature in the 20th century and Faulkner. Lis Critical Biography of Faulkner (1999) is a major achievement of Chinese scholars in the study of Faulkner. As a translator of several important works of Faulkner, Li has rich materials and has a very detailed and thorough understanding of Faulkners works. The uniqueness of the book is that it first introduces Faulkners life, thoughts and creation, and then analyzes a representative work in detail. On the one hand, readers can clearly, systematically and completely understand Faulkners writings. On the other hand, they can gain a more detailed understanding of Faulkners representative works. Because this book cites a large number of materials and has more than 20 English references, it also lays a foundation and provides convenience for later researchers to study Faulkner.In recent years, domestic research on Faulkner has lasted for a long time. Some scholars analyze it from the perspective of time. For example, Fang Yanhong (2021) believes that Faulkner breaks the restraint of rationalists linear view of time on social thoughts by means of stream of consciousness, and calls for eternal human spirit by shaping the image of ideal man in his novels, in an attempt to bridge the fractured time and guide American South out of time dilemma. And other scholars analyze it from the perspective of narrative art. Wang Xiaoping (2019) believes that Faulkners novel, which takes multi-angle narrative pattern and stream of consciousness as the main writing strategies, constitutes the modernist view of reality generated in the writers subjective consciousness. At that time, this work made great innovation in the narrative mode of the novel. It is a great contribution to the history of American literature and establishes a new paradigm of modernist literary aesthetics for peoples ultimate value pursuit.However, there is little research on this novel. We can only find one paper about it. With the help of Jamesons political unconsciousness theory, Lin Changyang (2015) analyzes that the root of racial violence in the south is the class unconsciousness with racist ideology in the plantation, and reveals the writers expectation of building a value community. And we can see the research on Faulkners works mainly focuses on his mid-term works. There is a lack of research on his early novels and his later works. Without these two parts, the study on Faulkner is incomplete. In addition, the research in the mid-term works is also very unbalanced. Most of us are interested in The Sound and The Fury and A Rose for Emily. The studies on these two works account for almost half of Faulkners research papers, while those for Intruder in the Dust and other works are far from in-depth and comprehensive.2.3Research on Intruder in the Dust in other countriesIn other countries, the first critical article about Intruder in the Dust (1948) was Brookss The Community in Action (1963). The author discussed many conflicted questions such as Lucass characteristic. Then Ikuko (1971) showed us how women, the black and children share the ideologies and realize the realities of the South. Through children, the limitations of southern white mens ideologies are presented. In Clarks Man on the Margin: Lucas Beachamp and the Limitations of Space (1990), the scholar got a conclusion that Lucas was marginalized and dislocated in both works with a comparison of Intruder in the Dust and The Fire and the Hearth. And only by getting rid of the black community can he achieve the manhood of a black male characters. He also pointed out that Lucas was voiceless in the latter part of the novel. Besides, many scholars identified Gavins ideology as a representative of Faulkner, but Matthias and Noel Polk held different ideas. Matthias (2004) analyzed every character in the novel and explained Chicks process of growing up and got a conclusion that Faulkners purpose was to bring about justice but not a reliance on abstract ideologies. Polk (1996) shared the same view and argues that Faulkners emphasis was not 'the Negro', but the black as individual human.In recent years, scholars have expanded their thinking on Faulkners postcolonial thought to the contents related to the North in his works, such as the relationship between the real North and the imaginary North, the colonization of the north, and the construction and query of the binary opposition between the north and the south in Faulkners text. In addition, the reproduction and reconstruction of native South in Faulkners novels have also been brought into the perspective of research, including the south in the tribal era in the pre-modern period, the trauma of Indian tribal migration, and the construction of the image of 'Indian'. As Faulkners detective reasoning novel, the tomb intruder is another research hotspot in recent years. Foreign scholars are also actively studying the plot of racial discrimination in this book. All these can further broaden the vision of academic research and provide a new path for scholars from all over the world to study Faulkner.ReferencesAutry, T. (2016). As Out of a Seers Crystal Ball: The Racialized Gaze in William Faulkners Intruder in the Dust, The Faulkner Journal, 30, 19-39.Faulkner, W. (1948). Intruder in the Dust, New York: Vintage.Harris, W. (2008). Reflections on William Faulkners Intruder in the Dust in a cross-cultural complex. World Literature Written in English, 1,98-106.Masami, S. (2007). Signifying, Ordering, and Containing the Chaos: Whiteness, Ideology, and Language in Intruder in the Dust, The Faulkner Journal, 22, 54-73.Matthias, E. (2004). Intruders in the Dust: Air-Driven Granular Size Separation, Physical Review Letters, 93, 1-4.Noel, P. (1996). Man in the middle: Faulkner and the Southern White Moderate. Oxford: The UP of Mississippi.Ticien, M. (2007). Avoiding Adjudication in William Faulkners Go Down, Moses and Intruder in the Dust. 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