Identity in Diaspora:A Postcolonial Reading of Michelle Cliff’s No Telephone to Heaven

• Main Author: 洪敦信
• Other Authors: 田維新
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2001
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/66873683905189199887

碩士 === 國立政治大學 === 英國語文學系 === 89 === The discussion of the relationship between literature and the colonial manipulation has been an important theme in the study of literature in recent years. In the introduction of my thesis, Louis Althusser’s concept of ideology is utilized to interpret this complicity relationship. As a literary work, Michelle Cliff’s No Telephone to Heaven tries to reverse and subvert the dominant ideology by presenting the story of Clare Savage and her family under postcolonial condition. My discussions are aimed at three important themes, displacement, history, and identity, interwoven in the whole story. The second chapter of my thesis is the elucidation of the postcolonial phenomenon, the diaspora experiences, and the relative concepts of exile and migration. In this part, Robin Cohen’s four criteria of cultural diaspora are useful to assess the immigrant condition of the Savages in No Telephone to Heaven. Moreover, the politics of “home” is associated within this part of discussion. What Clare’s wandering journey leads her to is the contemplation of the questions arising around her: of these questions, one is the suspicion of the reliability of “history,” and another is the inquiry about her own identity/identities. So, in the third chapter, I discuss the regime of representation and the historiography as a kind of representation of the dominant ideology. The personal memory/history of Clare in No Telephone to Heaven, then, becomes a counter-force to interrogate the reliability of the official history, and provides another version of history. Interweaving with the diaspora experiences and the interrogation of history and memory is the topic about identities, particularly the cultural identity. In the fourth chapter of my thesis, I discuss the process of identity formation and the transformation of cultural identity. In this chapter, first, Clare’s nomadic journey is explained by the concept of “travel.” Then, I state the thoughts about identity between the essentialists and non-essentialists and the debates of identity between them. Such different views of identity are prominently demonstrated in Stuart Hall’s definition of cultural identity. Besides, Homi Bhabha’s innovative idea of “the third space” and the concept of “in-between” are included in this part of discussion about identity. How to face the crisis of cultural identity out of migration, exile, and diaspora, how to negotiate or reconstruct a new cultural identity under postcolonial condition, and how to interpret Clare’s return to Jamaica by virtue of this new identity, are the last parts of my discussion. I hope, through my reading of No Telephone to Heaven, I might provide some insights for understanding the postcolonial novels, especially the novels of/about/from the Caribbean area.