Dualism and Cultural Hybridity in Rudyard Kipling''s Kim

• Main Authors: Pei-yi Su, 蘇佩儀
• Other Authors: Rufus Cook
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2003
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/58621197498967900779

碩士 === 國立成功大學 === 外國語文學系碩博士班 === 91 === As an imperialist writer, Kipling’s childhood sojourn in India caused a “double vision” in his works and raised controversy from post-colonial critics. Edward Said, a post-colonial critic, thinks of white writers like Kipling as an “imperial agent” of the British Empire as well as a jingoist who assists in passing on racism. Kipling’s Oriental stereotypes and his characterization of “benevolent despots” who recruit dissidence of the colonized by racial tolerance raised the so-called “The Kipling Controversy.” Through the Kipling controversy, this paper aims to discover how the two cultural hybrids in Kipling’s Kim demonstrates but challenges Said’s political interpretations and how they match “the mimic man” that the post-colonial critic Homi Bhabha proposes. In chapter one, Robert Young’s theory of “hybridity” is adopted to explain how the binary opposition of nature and culture reveals Kipling’s ambivalence towards Indianness and Englishness. In chapter two I focus on how Kipling juxtaposes the two cultural hybrids, Kim and Hurree Babu, in order to balance the power relationship between the ruler and the ruled. In chapter three, I mainly discuss the identity crisis of cultural hybrids, showing how Kipling tries to seek resolutions for colonial conflicts through Kim’s identity crisis. In chapter four, Homi Bhabha’s “The third space” is compared to Kipling’s “middle way,” uncovering both the political and the metaphysical sides of “cultural hybridity.” Through Kipling’s concept of cultural hybridity and dualism, on the one hand, we are informed that identity can be constructed for political use; on the other hand, we are also reminded that identity can be redefined metaphysically. Chapter five is a brief conclusion, summing up how Kipling’s concept of “cultural hybridity” lays the foundation of dualism in Kim and explores new ways of thinking for colonial literature.