Relational Interracialism and the American Dream of Race in Ha Jin’s A Free Life

關係跨種族主義與哈金《自由生活》

Sarah Yihsuan Tso

《Tamkang Review》 46卷1期 (2015/12) Pp. 23-48

https://doi.org/10.6184/TKR201512-2

摘要

此千禧年之際已預言理論與文學研究跨種族的趨勢。本文主要以哈金的小說《自由生活》、其他小說與詩為例，認為種族和諧是哈金等美國作家在故事與詩中探討美國夢的種族關係。以約翰．E．法爾利的四個種族理論模式，本文分析哈金的小說《自由生活》中分工、收養、羅曼史與友情等合作的種族關係，另提出自創的「關係跨種族主義」一詞，此主義認為將種族置於種族間看待為一種可行的理論。關係跨種族主義探究種族間的關係，提出多元文化主義在實施上的修正，將種族間的關係奠基於種族間的合作與文化的相互影響，且將衝突限制於可解決的範圍內。《自由生活》開始建造與現代人際關係與情感有關的美國夢，以合作與相互影響取代衝突來定義種族關係，其中合作重於衝突。探討的作品包括哈金的《自由生活》、《南京安魂曲》、《背叛指南》與詩歌，與約翰．岡田的《雙不男孩》，兩位作家描繪的未來遠景。

關鍵字

哈金 ； 自由生活 ； 種族和諧 ； 跨種族收養 ； 關係跨種族主義

並列摘要

Critical discussions in the new millennium have augured an interracial turn in both theories and literary scholarship. This paper argues that interracial harmony is the American dream of racial relationships that American writers, including Ha Jin, explore in literary narratives and poetry, and I will illustrate this American dream of interracial harmony with his novel A Free Life and examples from other novels and poems. Through four of John E. Farley’s models of racial theories this paper analyzes collaborative interracial relationships in the division of labor, adoption, romance, and friendship in Ha Jin’s novel A Free Life, while advancing a relational interracialism, a term I coined as a viable theoretical grappling with the subject of race between races. Relational interracialism studies the relationality between races and suggests that multiculturalism in practice can be revised so that interraciality is premised on interracial cooperation and cultural infiltration with conflicts constrained within a resolvable range. A Free Life starts constructing an American dream of modern human relations and emotions less in their contradictions than in their relationality in which cooperation and mutual infiltration supersede conflicts to define interraciality. Ha Jin in A Free Life, Nanjing Requiem, A Map of Betrayal, and poems and John Okada in No-No Boy paint a vision for the time to follow.

並列關鍵字

Ha Jin ； A Free Life ； interracial harmony ； transracial adoption ； relational interracialism

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