露丝·尾关小说《食肉之年》中的话语特征研究 本文关键词：之年，露丝，话语，特征，研究
露丝·尾关小说《食肉之年》中的话语特征研究 本文简介：摘要 露丝·尾关的《食肉之年》（1998）是一部与多元文化主义历史话语展开深度互动的作品。它涉及美国多个少数族裔及边缘群体的生活困境与努力挣扎，反映了以主人公简为代表的日裔美籍少数族裔在亚洲文化与美国文化博弈的狭缝中寻求自我身份认同的历史境遇，以道斯家庭为代表的黑人群体与美国白人
露丝·尾关小说《食肉之年》中的话语特征研究 本文内容：
摘 要
露丝·尾关的《食肉之年》（1998）是一部与多元文化主义历史话语展开深度互动的作品。它涉及美国多个少数族裔及边缘群体的生活困境与努力挣扎，反映了以主人公简为代表的日裔美籍少数族裔在亚洲文化与美国文化博弈的狭缝中寻求自我身份认同的历史境遇，以道斯家庭为代表的黑人群体与美国白人文化的冲突，以墨西哥马丁内斯家庭为代表的非法移民群体在美国移民文化下的艰苦生存与虚幻的美国梦之间的冲突，以及少数族裔异性恋和同性恋间的亲密关系中存在的问题。本文将主要借鉴新历史主义所揭示的文本与历史互相塑造的理论来分析文本。
首先，本文分析了《食肉之年》所呈现的多元文化主义话语特征，具体从人物与多元文化的接触、人物间情感关系的多元化，以及人物对杂糅身份的认同等方面来展开，表明该小说深受多元文化主义话语的影响。
其次，本文分析了《食肉之年》对多元文化主义话语的反思与批判。具体从少数族裔及边缘群体所受到的利益侵害、表面亲密关系下的不和谐、生态问题、以及身份困惑来展开，表明该小说对多元文化主义的反作用力。
再次，本文指出《食肉之年》最终没有突破多元文化主义话语的局限，只能依靠虚构一个美好的结局来迎合多元文化主义宣扬的幻景，跌回多元文化主义的陷阱中。
最后，本文指出《食肉之年》既深受九十年代的美国多元文化主义话语的影响，体现出文本的历史性，又努力对多元文化主义话语进行反思，并最终迎合多元文化主义的愿景而虚构美好结局，推动多元主义话语进一步发展，成为我们了解美国多元文化主义话语的重要文本，展现出历史的文本性。
关键词： 《食肉之年》 露丝·尾关 多元文化主义话语 新历史主义。
ABSTRACT
My Year of Meats (1998), written by Ruth Ozeki and published in the 1990s, is a typical reflection of the historical context of multiculturalism. It mainly concerns the living dilemma and struggle of many ethnic minorities and marginal groups in America.
It profoundly reflects the historical discourse of the Japanese-American ethnic minorities represented by the protagonist Jane, who is seeking self-identity in the narrow gap between Asian culture and American culture; the discourse between the poor black group represented by the Dews family and the mainstream white culture of America; the discourse between the illusory American dream and the tough life of illegal immigrant marginal group represented by the Martinez family from Mexico, and the discourse of intimacy between women and men as well as lesbians among ethnic minorities. This paper analyzes the novel from the basic principle of New Historicism that text and history are interactive with each other.
First of all, this paper analyzes the characteristics of multiculturalism in My Year of Meats (1998). It is mainly based on the relations between the characters and multiculturalism, multiple emotional relations among the characters and the recognition of Hybrid identity of the characters. This chapter concludes that multiculturalism has been rooted in the novel.
Next, this paper analyzes critical reflections on My Year of Meats (1998) according to multiculturalism. More specifically, it discusses the loss of interests of minorities and marginalized groups, the disharmony under intimate relationship, the ecological issue and dilemma of individual identity, reflecting the reaction of the novel to multiculturalism.
Thirdly, this paper points out that My Year of Meats (1998) fails to break away from the limitations of multiculturalism and falls into its trap by itself because it caters to the illusion of multiculturalism through a fictional happy ending.
Finally, this paper concludes that, on the one hand, My Year of Meats (1998), deeply influenced by American multiculturalism in the 1990s, embodies the historicity of text; on the other hand, it reflects the textuality of history by trying to reflect multiculturalism and giving a happy ending to cater to the illusion of multiculturalism, which promotes the further development of multiculturalism and becomes a key text to help us understand American multiculturalism.
Keywords: My Year of Meats, Ruth Ozeki, Multiculturalism, New Historicism。
Chapter 1 Introduction
1.1 Ruth Ozeki and My Year of Meats。
Ruth Ozeki, a prominent writer in the contemporary American literary world, is a Japanese American with mixed-blood and immigrant-family background. Born in New Haven, Connecticut, America, she is the daughter of the American linguist,anthropologist and Mayanist scholar, Floyd Lounsbury, and Masako Yokoyama. In 1980,after graduating from Smith College with a B.A. in English and Asian Studies, she received a Japanese Ministry of Education Fellowship to do graduate work in the study of classical Japanese Literature at Nara Women's University and Kyoto Sangyo University.
In 1985, she gave up the title of professor to return to America, and launched a career as an art director and production designer, mainly shooting horror films with low budget. In 1988, she began working for Telecom Staff, a Japanese production company,coordinating, producing and directing documentary-style programs for Japanese TV.
Since the publishing of her first novel My Year of Meats in 1998, the works of Ozeki gradually gained a high international profile, and have been awarded many prizes, such as The Year?s Best Book issued by New York Times, Kiriyama Pacific Rim Book Prize,Barnes and Noble US Book Awards. Her second novel All Over Creation (2003) was translated into 11 languages and was awarded Columbus Foundation American Book Prize and Vera Literature Prize. The third novel A Tale for the Time Being (2013) received dozens of Superb European and American Literature Awards, such as Booker Prize,Dublin Literature Prize, Best Fiction Award issued by American Library Association, and was published and sold in more than 30 countries. Her first independent narrative film Body of Correspondence (1994), led Ozeki to be the Winner of the New Vision Category at the San Francisco Film and Television Festival in 1995 as a filmmaker and Zenpractitioner, getting a chance in Sundance Film Festival and screening on PBS. Her autobiographical film Halving the Bones (1995), based on the trace of cultural roots of her mother as Japanese, provided a special portrait of her grandparents and their lives in Hawaii. The unique perspective she has beyond the East and the West is acclaimed as to have people appreciate the details that have never been noticed in American culture.
My year of Meats, the debut novel of Ozeki, was published in 1998. It portrays multiple characters, and the plot is complex and interlaced. The main plot is related to the growth of two women (Jane-Takagi-little and Akiko Ueno) living on opposite sides of the world in two different ways and the main storyline is interacted with other multiple ones.
On the one hand, the story of Akiko Uene is one clue in the novel. Akiko Uene lived in Japan. She was a very thin, weak and traditional Japanese female and even worse, her depressed life with Joichi Ueno caused her menstruation to stop. Her husband, the director of the partner of BEEF-EX in Japan, Joichi Ueno, who is in charge of the documentary TV program “My American Wife”, firmly believed that Akiko could be as plump and strong as American women if she had more beef imported from America. So,she was forced to watch “My American Life” on time, to try her best to cook beef according to the method shown in the documentary and to eat it under the supervision of her husband. Akiko likes The Pillow Book and looks forward to having a free life as Jane does, but she had to give up her own job to be a housewife influenced by Japanese traditional culture, which requires women to take care of her husband and prepare forhaving baby as soon as possible. Gradually, she was disappointed with her marriage and unwilling to have children. Under the pressure of not being able to be pregnant, she suffered from her husband?s domestic violence and realized that she was partly lesbian when she was in hospital caused by a terrible domestic violence. Out of her expectation,she was pregnant. Finally, she left Japan for America alone seeking for her own independence, liberty and new life and gave birth to her children in America.
On the other hand, the story of Jane-Takagi-little is the other clue of the novel. When Jane-Takagi-little, a Japanese-American documentary filmmaker was almost dying of hunger and cold for she had been unemployed for a month, her life was completely changed by a phone call, which gave her a job as a coordinator anddocumentarianof “My American Wife”. It is a TV documentary for Japanese customers sponsored by a large American export organization named Beef Export and Trade Syndicate (BEEF-EX for short). BEEF-EX was a national lobby organization that represented American meats of all kinds-beef, pork, lamb, goat, horse-as well as livestock producers, packers, purveyors,exporters, grain promoters, pharmaceutical companies, and agribusiness groups(Ozeki,1998:10). The goal of “My American Life” was to promote the sales of all kinds of meat in Japan: beef, pork, mutton and other meats imported from United States,taking beef as major. Once Jane huddled over her computer keyboard to write “Meat is the Message” in the morning wrapping herself in blankets, a totally new journey started.
In order to shoot and air the documentary, she led a Japanese filming team to seek American wives with good health, kindness and elegance throughout the country,shooting the process of cooking beef and sharing with their families, and aiming to sell American beef to every household in Japan. During the year of seeking for suitable families for “MyAmerican Wife”, she touched many other uncommon families and their stories. One of them is the Martinez family in Texas. They are illegal immigrants from Mexico, and in order to make their son an American, the father sacrificed his one hand.
The second one is the Beaudroux family in Askew Town, Louisiana, adopting 12 Asian kids. The third one is the Dawes family, typical black one. The wife Helen invited Jane to pray together in a harmonious community in Mississippi. In that way, Jane got the chance to shoot the delicious chicken cooked by Helen, and the hormone problems with chicken being exposed. The forth one is the Bukowsky family in Quarry Town, Indiana. Their daughter, Christina, a lovely girl, whose legs were crushed by Wal-Mart's tuck in an accident, still kept positive and optimistic attitude towards life. The fifth one is a lesbian vegetarian family Lara and Dyann in Massachusetts. Jane deliberately shot these families in order to truly record the lives of American people, so the entire filming journey took a circle around the country to make all these characters show real America from multiple perspectives. Each of the characters in “My American Wife” is unique with their distinctive charms. These characters chosen by Jane were arranged to reveal the stereotype of American wife in the eyes of Japanese, but her attempt was strongly blocked by the sponsor, especially Joichi. The storyline behind the explicit story is Jane?s pursuit of real America, and it was exposed that the real American wife was not as healthy, plump and elegant as required by the sponsor.
In the course of shooting “My American Wife”, two implicit storylines are embedded with each other. One is in relation to Jane?s intimate relationship with the musician Sloan, which is confused and complicated. The other is with regard to the investigation and exposure of the use of hormone and food safety in American meat processing. Besides, it reveals that 95% of U.S. cattle were routinely fed "growth-promotion" drugs, such as hormones, herbicides and pesticide were permeated in the beef sold in supermarkets like Wal-Mart. What is worse, one kind of hormones names DES revealed terrible social problems. To Jane?s astonishment, DES was regularly prescribed by American doctors for those pregnant women to help give birth, while it is DES that led to Jane?s womb malformation, and DES made it difficult for Jane to be pregnant and triggered the result of Jane?s giving a died baby after getting pregnant. In addition, duringthe period of watching“MyAmerican Wife”, another storyline of culture contest between America and Japan was constructed through Joichi?s worship forAmerican lifeandthethemeoftheDocumentary“Porkis Possible,but Beef is Best” (ibid:12).
My Year of Meats (1998) is a complicated and diversified novel both in the subject and in the narration. Its rich hybrid factors are worth studying from multiple perspectives. Furthermore, as a Japanese-American writer, a filmmaker and Soto Zen Buddhist priest,Ruth Ozeki has made the novel so charming. So much attention has been paid to both the novel itself and the author.
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1.2 Literature Review
1.3 Introduction to New Historicism
Chapter2 America and Multiculturalism 2.1 Development of American Multiculturalism
2.2 Major Arguments about Multiculturalism
2.3 Asian American literature under Multiculturalism
Chapter 3 Demonstration of Multiculturalism in My Year of Meats 3.1 Demonstration of Multiculturalism in the Characters
3.1.1 The main character Jane and Multiculturalism
3.1.2 Minor Characters and Multiculturalism
3.2 Demonstration of Multiculturalism in Multi-relations
3.2.1 Relationship of Intimacy under Multiculturalism
3.2.2 Relationship between Human and Ecology under Multiculturalism
3.3 Demonstration of Multiculturalism in Individual Identity
Chapter 4 Critical Reflections on Multiculturalism in My Year of Meats
4.1 Multiculturalism and Economic Inequality
4.2 Victimized Women under Multiculturalism
4.2.1 Suppressed Women in Relationship of Intimacy
4.2.2 Suffering of women and Ecology
4.3 Dilemma of Individual Identity in Multiculturalism
Chapter 5 Returning to Illusion of Multiculturalism 5.1 Happy Endings
5.2 Causes of Happy Endings
5.2.1Dilemma of the Author
5.2.2 The Political role of Multiculturalism
Chapter 6 Conclusion
Acknowledgements
In the past three and half years, I took courses, fought against cancer, wrote my paper and built my own career. From the beginning of my study to the end of my defense, I have been fortunate to get too much help, encouragement and support from my supervisor, my family, my classmates and friends, my doctors and all the teachers in the School of Foreign Languages.
Firstly, I?m forever grateful to my supervisor, professor ZOU Tao. Without her, it would have been impossible for me to complete the thesis. She is like the brightest one beneath the stars, which calmed my fears and anxiety and guided me to move forward both in study and in life. I thank her with all my heart for her great care, patience to me and belief in me.
Meanwhile, I?m indebted to Professor He Min and Professor Wei Quanfeng for spending much time on my paper. And I can never show you how much I appreciate thetime and guidance you gave me. So much thanks for caring about me and my paper. At the same time, I would like to give my appreciation to all the teachers in School of Foreign Languages.
Besides, I also want to thank my friends and classmates. In the whole process, they helped me a lot and spent much time and efforts reading my paper and giving me feedback. Thanks for being my classmates and friends.
Finally, I would like to thank my doctors and family. Thank you for everything that you have done to let me revive, to ensure that I had a good state to fight against the cancer,to keep optimistic and moving toward the future.
Bibliography
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