Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Notes of a Native Son'

This thesis analyzes James Baldwin's essays as a method for understanding racial identity and authenticity. By using Vetta Sanders-Thompson's racial identification parameters, I suggest that Baldwin's struggle with his identity as a black American is crucial to deposing the idea of a monolithic black experience, which opens up new ways of analyzing African American literature.

The promise of Mills's (1959) classic sociological imagination for criminology is revisited and assumptions about the adequacy and usefulness of fiction in terms of its analytical and explanatory potential are challenged. The criminological imagination, as a quality of mind, analytic framework and method of knowledge production, provides an ideal meta-framework with which to consider fiction. The theories of Jack Katz (1988) and the symbolic interactionists further develop Mills's concept of biography, while the Birmingham School (Clarke, Hall, Jefferson, & Roberts, 2006) expands on Mills's concept of society; integrating these within the meta-framework of the criminological imagination produces a reflexive analysis of Native Son, a classic novel by Richard Wright (2005). In so doing, fiction is demonstrated to be a legitimate object of criminological inquiry that challenges criminological conventions, clarifies and critiques criminological concepts, and creates and communicates criminological knowledge.

À une époque où les technologies digitales, la profusion d’images reçues et partagées, la vitesse et la mobilité n’ont jamais été si manifestes, se pose la question de la relation entre les gestes, les objets connectés et les pratiques créatives artistiques voire « amateures ». Dans un monde désormais localisable, connu et reconnu de tous, l’expérience du voyage traditionnel aurait-elle laissé place à la navigation de tous les jours sur Internet ? Que provoque la présence de cet outil dans l’expérimentation de l’artiste ? Comment l’utilise-t-il ? Montre-t-il, d’ailleurs, quelque chose de cette expérience ? De nouvelles formes apparaissent-elles avec l’accompagnement du téléphone mobile, intelligent ? Changent-elles notre perception et relation à l’image ? Que produit l’environnement numérique sur ces formes, qui, quand elles se révèlent, ou sont révélées, contrastent singulièrement avec les œuvres d’art dites « traditionnelles ». Elles constituent des modes de résistance face aux conceptions « reconnues » de l’art, comme celles de la présentation de l’œuvre. Un des enjeux essentiels de la thèse pointe la réflexion sur l’acte d’image réalisée avec le mobile, ou le geste « fait » souvent plus que l’œil « voit » ou contrôle. Une expérience artistique et réflexive au cœur de mobilités cumulées ; où un nouveau paradigme de l’œuvre, des modes de diffusion est spécifiquement pensé en relation avec l’image saisie
At this time of digital technologies, the profusion of received and shared images, speed and mobility have never been so evident, we can discuss the question of the relationship between gestures, connected objects and creative artistic practices, which can appear as “amateurs”. In a world now localizable, known and recognized by all, the experience of traditional travel would have given way to navigation on the Internet every day? What can cause the presence of this tool in the artist experimentation? How does he use it? Does he show, although, something of this experience? Do new forms appear with the accompaniment of the mobile phone, intelligent? Do they change our perception and relationship to the image? What does the digital environment produce on these forms, which, when they are revealed, or if they are revealed, are contrasting to the so-called "traditional" works of art. They constitute modes of resistance to the "recognized" conceptions of art like those of the work presentation. One of the essential object of the thesis is the reflection on the act of image realized with the mobile, or the gesture “made” often more than the eye "sees" or controls the frame. It is an artistic and reflective experience at the heart of cumulative mobility; where a new work paradigm, modes of diffusion is specifically thought in relation to the captured image

Le concept de soi physique joue un rôle essentiel dans les apprentissages et les performances motrices. Se fondant sur une méthodologie de modélisation d'équations structurales, quatre études ont permis de démontrer la généralisabilité transnationale d'un modèle de concept de soi physique et de souligner son rôle dans la recherche sur les interactions causales entre les perceptions de soi et l'environnement. Un instrument australien de concept de soi physique: le Physical Self-Description questionnaire (PSDQ) de H. W. Marsh a été validé dans sa structure factorielle sur un échantillon d'adolescents français en milieu scolaire. En outre, la validité interne a été renforcée par l'établissement de la validité convergente et discriminante du PSDQ français dans une analyse multitraits-multiméthodes mettant en jeu deux autres modèles de concept de soi physique. Afin de compléter le processus de validation, la validité externe du PSDQ a ensuite été testée avec des tests d'aptitudes physiques provenant notamment de la batterie EUROFIT. Enfin, il a été mené une étude longitudinale examinant la directionnalité causale entre le concept de soi physique, les résultats scolaires en EPS et des tests d'aptitudes de force, d'endurance cardiorespiratoire et de pratique physique. Les résultats plaident en faveur d'une réciprocité causale plus importante pour le modèle impliquant les notes d'EPS que pour ceux intégrant les tests d'aptitudes physiques. En outre, il a été montré que ces relations causales n'étaient pas médiatisées par les concepts de soi globaux
Physical self-concept plays a critical role in the learning process and motor performance. Based on structural equation modeling methodology, four studies supported the cross-national generalizability of a physical self-concept model over several French samples and emphasized the usefulness of this construct in a causation research exploring relations among physical self- perceptions and environment variables. The factorial validity of an Australian physical self-concept instrument: The Physical Self-Description questionnaire (PSDQ) by H. W. Marsh was supported with a sample of French adolescents in a school environment. Moreover, the within- construct validity was supplemented by an MTMM analysis, involving two other physical self- concept models, which supported convergent and discriminant validity. Pursuing the validation on-going process, between-construct validity was next tested and supported in relation to a set of external criteria from the EUROFIT fitness test battery. Finally, a longitudinal panel study assessing causal directions among physical self-concept, P. E. Achievements, strength, cardiorespiratory endurance and physical activity objective measures provided some support for causal relations between physical self-concept and fitness tests and better evidence for reciprocal effects between physical self-concept and P. E. Achievements. Additionally, it was shown that these causal relations were not mediated by global self-concepts

Este trabalho se dedica a Os Sertões (1902), de Euclides da Cunha, Native Son (1940), de Richard Wright, e Cidade de Deus (1997), de Paulo Lins. Buscando construir-se uma leitura crítica criativa, esta tese utiliza o método comparativo de forma a possibilitar que novos aspectos das obras surjam, assim como os elementos hegemônicos e contra-hegemônicos que as constituem, e as suas fortunas críticas. Partindo do entendimento de que os textos críticos e literários sempre se situam num campo maior, político, o presente estudo visa compreender as relações estabelecidas entre as obras, a crítica, a nação e o Estado. Com esse objetivo, além dos textos de Euclides, Wright e Lins, e de algum das respectivas críticas, outras disciplinas e seus teóricos serão mobilizados; entre eles (mas não só): Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Ranajit Guha, Gilles Deleuze, Felix Guattari e Jacques Derrida.
This dissertation looks at the work of Euclides da Cunha\'s Os Sertões (1902), Richard Wright\'s Native Son (1940) and Paulo Lins\'s Cidade de Deus (1997). It seeks to be a creative reading of the books and their critical fortune by way of a comparative approach, ultimately allowing new aspects, such as hegemonic and counter-hegemonic elements, to come to the fore. The basis of this study is that literary and critical texts are all inserted in a greater political field. This research draws upon neighboring disciplines and theorists such as: Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Ranajit Guha, Gilles Deleuze, Felix Guattari and Jacques Derrida.

O tema desta dissertação centra-se na problemática do racismo e na sua relação com a literatura de intervenção. O nome de Richard Wright surge precisamente neste contexto, visto tratar-se de um autor afro-americano que sofreu com as injustiças do racismo desde a sua infância e que tentou lutar para que esta situação se alterasse através das suas obras literárias. O propósito desta dissertação é o de provar que as cenas de violência que Wright incluía nas suas produções literárias não eram inócuas e que serviam um objectivo bem claro.

Since the 1992 republication of On Our Own Ground: The Complete Writings of William Apess, a Pequot, most academic work on Apess has focused on his Methodism, his Native American identity, or the intersection between these two parts of his life and work. Dr. Tim Fulford is the only scholar to have written about Apess and Romanticism. In his book Romantic Indians: Native Americans, British Literature, and Transatlantic Culture, 1756-1830, Fulford illustrates the elegiac modes often present in the work of Apess. This thesis will examine William Apess’ Son of the Forest as an expression of early nineteenth century American Romanticism from a post-colonial standpoint. Apess uses Romantic rhetoric to define Native American identity and through that identity, argue for Native American political agency.

La thèse sur travaux, intitulée THÉORIE DE LA DÉMARCHE, présente un ensemble de recherches et d’enquêtes autour du cinéma et de ses métamorphoses. La mutation technique du médium, sa dissémination dans l’espace social ont transformé nos usages. Nous continuons à appeler cinéma un médium désormais dissocié de son dispositif technologique. Il semble persister sous son avatar numérique à la manière d’une promesse, d’un fantôme ou d’un double. La série des travaux étudient cette transformation dans les relations du cinéma à l’art contemporain, son devenir performatif, ses marges et ses frontières. À la manière d’une histoire contre-factuelle, les travaux privilégient les figures oubliées, les impasses, les seuils, les trous noirs, les fantômes, les rencontres sans suite, les anachronismes. Un mémoire original est consacré aux relations de l’écrivain Raymond Roussel au cinéma, à la lumière des travaux sur le cinéma des premiers temps, l’archéologie des médias et le processus de remédiation. Si le cinéma est absent, au sens littéral, de l’œuvre de Roussel, il ne cesse de l’informer par le biais d’allusions aux dispositifs optiques, au cinéma des attractions, au cinéma vivant. À travers cette enquête, le cinéma semble être devenu, au fil de ses transformations et de ses avatars, un « signifiant flottant »
Under the general title of “THEORY OF WALKING”, this thesis presents a series of previous and new research around the metamorphoses of cinema. The technical mutation of the cinematographic medium, its dissemination in the social space, have transformed its usage. We continue to call cinema a medium now dissociated from its technological device. Cinema then seems to persist under his digital avatar like a promise, a specter or a double. The series of essays presented in this thesis scrutinize this transformation through the relations between cinema and contemporary art, the becoming-performance of the film, its margins and its borders. Following the genre of counter-factual history, the different essays gathered in the thesis focus on the forgotten figures, the dead ends, the thresholds, the black holes, the ghosts, the meetings without continuation, the anachronisms, that are at work in the recent history of cinema, and may account for its mutations. The thesis comprises an original memoir devoted to Raymond Roussel's relationship with cinema, developed in the light of early cinema studies, archeology of media and remediation process. If the cinema is absent, in the literal sense, from Roussel's work, he is still present by means of allusions to optical devices, to the cinema of attractions, and living cinema. Exploring this labyrinthic questioning, I wonder if cinema has become, because of its transformations and avatars, a “floating signifier”

Abstract The "Defective" Generation: Disability in Modernist Literature aims to provide an analysis of how Anglo-American authors in the early twentieth century conceived of, utilized, and portrayed disability in their fiction. Building on the existing scholarship in the field of Disability Studies, I argue that modernists revise the tradition of representation to make disabilities a generational trait rather than a sign of individual deviance. In novel after novel, multiple characters exhibit some form of illness or impairment, which appears as both cause and effect of the instabilities and traumas of modernity. Like many of their predecessors, then, these authors portray diverse health conditions as "defects" rather than natural variations in the human body, and most draw little distinction between the types of "disorders" they represent. This perspective, however, becomes particularly destructive in the era leading up to the Holocaust, when eugenical attitudes would lead to the murder or sterilization of over a million people with disabilities. Modernists also continue to exploit disability's potential for metaphor and sometimes evoke traditional stereotypes. Unlike traditional representations, however, these works do not resolve what the authors perceive as the "problem" of disability by curing or eliminating it; instead, they portray characters struggling to lead fulfilling lives despite feeling limited by their health. Working against the public's conception of disability as solely a medical condition, many of these authors further depict the social forces that turn a perceived "difference" into a "disability." The project is arranged into four chapters. In the first, "Idiots and Other Degenerates: Disability at the Dawn of Modernism," I use Joseph Conrad's novel The Secret Agent to illustrate how disability becomes characteristic of a generation, primarily through the influence of degeneration theory. Mocking the popular conception of a society divided into the "fit" and "unfit," Conrad creates a circle of characters who judge others to be degenerate while ignoring their own similar traits. From that beginning, I move in chapter 2, "Modernist Style: The Inward Turn and Portrayals of Mental Illness," to an analysis of the effects of stylistic experimentation on depictions of disability in both Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway and F. Scott Fitzgerald's Tender is the Night. The authors' use of multiple points of view in these works leads to a representation of both an individual's experience of psychosis and the stigma that can accompany such illness, and, like Conrad, both writers elide the differences between the seemingly able-bodied characters and those they deem disabled. These authors also offer a contrast in perceptions. Whereas Woolf treats shell shock and emotional instability largely as the unavoidable effects of World War I, Fitzgerald links both schizophrenia and alcoholism to decadent behavior, thus aligning himself with the public's perception of illness as a matter of intent. Moving from style to theme, in chapter 3, "Impaired Relationships: Physical Injury and the Pursuit of Romance," I explore the ways in which authors depict physical impairments as obstacles to personal relationships. Through a comparison of Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises and the "Nausicaa" chapter of James Joyce's Ulysses, I discuss the intersection of gender identity, disability, and romance. I argue against the critical consensus that Jake Barnes feels emasculated by his injury and that Gerty MacDowell is "doomed" to spinsterhood because she limps, contending that both authors allow their characters to maintain a sense of masculinity or femininity consistent with the hegemonic ideals of their time. While Hemingway presents Jake's wound as a physical disability that prevents his having the relationship he desires, Joyce uses Gerty's limp to mark her as an imperfect beauty in preference to an array of idealized iconic images, and in her encounter with Leopold Bloom grants her the sexual attention that she desires. In my final chapter, "African American Modernism and a Deadly Game of Blind Man's Buff," I shift focus from mainstream to African American modernism with an analysis of Richard Wright's Native Son,, addressing the author's use of folklore in relation to the metaphor of blindness. Posing the literally blind Mrs. Dalton as a revenant of the American colonists who ignored the humanity of those they enslaved and as a symbol of continuing oppression, Wright develops Bigger Thomas as both a trickster who exploits the "blindness" of others and a badman who rebels against it. My conclusion then addresses the use of disability metaphors, the attitudes those metaphors expose, and the authors' apparent agreement with or challenges to contemporary perceptions of disability. Although critics have previously analyzed specific works or certain aspects of disability representations during this era, this project seeks a more comprehensive discussion of disability in modernist fiction than currently exists. My hope is that it will enhance our understanding of both the period's literature and the harmful attitudes that existed at the time, which the work of Disability Studies has endeavored to overturn.

L’étude dont nous présentons ici les résultats a pour objet l’étudiant non natif confronté au cours magistral. Cette étude s’intègre dans l’axe II de la section Adis-langues du laboratoire ICAR II. L’étude s’appuie sur l’hypothèse que la complexité du fonctionnement du cours magistral entraîne des difficultés de compréhension orale et de prise de notes chez les étudiants non natifs qui ont une maîtrise incertaine de la langue française.Nous avons travaillé sur des extraits d’enregistrements vidéo de cours de droit que nous avons analysé en nous inspirant des présupposées théoriques de l’école française de l’analyse du discours. Plusieurs autres concepts ont servi d’outils pour appréhender le fonctionnement du cours magistral. Nous avons notamment été longuement éclairée par les études menées au sein du groupe Interactions et Apprentissage des langues dans sa composante Analyses de discours didactiques et nous nous sommes servie de leur modèle pour identifier et étiqueter les différents paramètres de complexité du cours magistral. Pour mesurer la compréhension orale de ces paramètres, nous avons adopté une démarche expérimentale pas aussi sophistiquée que l’exige la méthode expérimentale proprement dite, pour des raisons heuristiques. Nous avons proposé aux étudiants natifs et non natifs des tests de compréhension orale à travers la prise de notes et d’autres questions orales et écrites.Les résultats obtenus révèlent des cas de maîtrise de la langue et des moments plus délicats où pour des raisons diverses la compréhension orale et la prise de notes sont rendues difficiles. Ces résultats ont permis de valider l’hypothèse de départ. Nous avons à partir de là ébauché un dispositif compensatoire des problèmes identifiés, puis nous avons formulé des perspectives pour des études plus approfondies à l’avenir
The study we present here the results has for object the non-native student face up to oral comprehension and taking notes challenges during lectures in law. This study is part of the axis II section of Adis-language laboratory ICAR II. The study is based on the assumption that the complexity of the functioning or of lectures in law leads to difficulties in listening and note-taking in non-native students who have an uncertain command of French. The data from which we have worked consist of excerpts from videotapes of law courses. We analyzed these recordings according to theoretical presuppositions of the French school of discourse analysis. Several other concepts developed by other schools and other researchers have been used tools for understanding the functioning of the lectures. We were also informed by extensive studies on the lectures conducted in the group Interactions and Language Learning in its component Analysis of didactic speeches.We used the model of listening to lectures theorized by this research group to define the term listening. This model allowed us to identify and label the different complexity parameters of lectures. To measure oral comprehension of these parameters, we adopted an experimental approach. We have developed an experimental design not as sophisticated as required by the experimental method itself, for heuristic reasons. The experimental protocol is based on a set of excerpts of recordings from which we offered to native students and nonnative students listening tests through taking notes and other written and oral questions. The results reveal cases of language proficiency and delicate moments where for various reasons, listening and taking notes are complicated. These results validate the starting hypothesis. We have sketched from here a compensatory mechanism of identified problems, and then we have made perspective for further studies in the future

碩士
長榮大學
翻譯研究所
95
This thesis discusses what the author has learned from the process of translating the book “The Accidental Asian: Notes of a Native Speaker”, by applying the translation techniques to a book written by an author with multicultural background. This thesis is divided into five chapters. Chapter I provides the background of the book and the motive and purpose of this study. Chapter II introduces book''s author and its content and discusses the translation process from advance preparation, actual translating and proofreading. Chapter III is the translation of“The Accidental Asian: Notes of a Native Speaker.” Chapter IV, the main body of the thesis, discusses various translation techniques used and background knowledge required for the task; it also discusses what this author has learned by comparing translated versions of her own and others. Chapter V concludes with a summary of this authors experience in translating this book and suggestions on the basis of her experience in translating the book.

碩士
國立臺灣大學
外文研究所
85
Richard Wright's Native Son, published in 1940, has been a highly disputed work with Bigger Thomas being one of the most representative literary characters in American literature. The criticisms have been legion since the publication of the novel. The sources of the arguments among critics for the past decades are mainly that the way of Wight's portraying Bigger potently challenges and thus subverts the stereotypical images of most black characters prior to and contemporaneous with 1940, as well as that his distinct political stance makes most conservative and orthodox writers during the forties take him as an object of hate. These obstacles and attacks, in reality, were envisioned by Wright in the process of his writing, but, as a very self-consious and conscientious writer, he overcame this fear of censorship and would risk being denied and calumniated by his own folk only because he had to tell the truth-- nothing but the truth--to his country people however dark and horrible it seemed. The reality he strived to convey was that the dark-skinned minority had been oppressed too long and too severely by the irrational capitalism and inhuman racism of white Americans that the seeds of rebellion through murderous violence had been planted in the heart of the black Americans. It was high time for all Americans to honestly look at their raw, open wounds and try to heal them if they desired a wholesome and integrated country in the future. 　　Wright's heavy use of violence, however, beomes the most debate point of the novel. As Robert James Butler reviews the motley criticisms in "The Function of Violence in Native Son': 　　　　Malcolm Cowley…worried that "the author's deep sense of the inequitis heaped upon his race" would result in his "revenging himself by a whole series of symbolic murders" would result in his"revenging himself by a whole series of symbolic murders" in his fiction. David Daiches complained…that the novel's thesis was seriously undercut because the killing of Mary Dalton was so"violent and unusual." James Baldwin put the case…that…Native Son is Wright's "gratuitous and compulsive" interest in violence of the book…Nathan Scott complained in 1970 that Wright's obsession with "the raging abysses of violent criminality" forced him "to practice a terrible brutalization upon his characters.” And Cecil Brown objected in 1968 to Wright’vs “gratuitous” use of viloence…Addison Gayle was aesthetically uncomfortable with the murder of Bessie Mears…(103) 　　My thesis is then to demonstrate that Wrihgt has his good reason and is in full control of the employment of violence; in effect, violence is only the point of departure from which he attempts to find out what and who the Afro-American is in relation to the large context of America in the thirties. He believes that the socalled Negro Problem should not be seen and readily explained away by the selfconceited dominant whites, but rather should be X-rayed and probed through historical, socio-economical, political and psychological perspectives; that is to say, there should not be only one segmented dimentsion but several scopes to reveal the true nature of the Negro Problem. Only by this kind of holistic studies can there emerge the possibility of resolving the split consciousness of the many Bigger Thomases and the divided personality of the whole America. Instead of making Native son merely as an ahistorical object of entertainment, Wright anchors it in specific socio - conomical and historical conditions with a very clear historical sense. This kind of historical depth distinguishes him from other black writers anterior to him. This method of writing fiction and his distinctiv ideological assumption are so unconventional that Wright is qualified to be entitled as a revolutionary writer of the forties. 　　The genesis of Wrihgt's special vision comes from his personal experience as a poor and discrimianted person in America as well as from his being inspired by Marxism during the time he served in the John Reed Club. Born in Natchez, Mississippi, one of the most repressive states or Afro-Americans in the United states, Wright was often puzzled to find that he and his people had to ldad a life like walking a tightrope lest the white people on the other side of the “line” should grow wrathful, and maim, lynch or kill hem. Wright just could mot figure out what his folk had done to make the white world ostracize them and why the white people lived in better homes and had more possessions. Usually his mother would shun these touchy questions and force him to memorize the ethics of Jim Crowism. However, from childhood, as recorded in his autobiography Black Boy: A Record of Childhood and Youth, at home Wrihgt was a recalcitrant son of his invertebrate father. The act that he dared to challenge the paternal authority heralds the recurrent motifs in his later works of quesioning and criticizing the injustices that he had suffered and endured as a black boy. Never did he cease to ask the question, “Who am I?” and “What am I?” under the threat of white violence. Never would he stop cultivating his literary skills and critical thinking so as to make the world different--to change the world--some day. This aspiration had been sustaining him to “drive coldly to the heart of every question and lay it open to the core of suffering,”to“ love burrowing into psychology, into realistic and naturalistic fiction and art, into those whirlpools of politics,” and most of all to direct his loyalties ”to the side of men in rebellion” (112). 　　During the Great Depression years. Wright had to stand in line with the hungry people waiting for the government relief. It was the first time in the parks of Chicag that he chanced to hear many speakers talking up the benefits of Communism. Its philosophy makes mandatory a strong central government in practice on the one hand, and the abolishment of private property in theory on the other. As a deprived young man in a system regulated by discrimination, with little real hope o achieving his goal to become a writer, Wright felt that those speakers struck a sympathetic chord in him, because they questioned the economic system that had permitted a great and rich nation to fall into the depths of depression. He wondered why there had never been voices from the whites to condemn the was their society functioned while they ervently upheld the Constitution as the genuine manifestation of the spirit of democracy. The only voices Wright heard were the voices of Communists, and they then spoke the trush as he knew it and felt it. Through some friends, Wrihgt finally had the chance to learn what Marism was at the John Reed Club of Chicago. It seemed to Wrihgt that this organizaion was one that really cared about A.Williams quotes Wright in A Biography of Richard Wriht: The Most Native of Sons: 　　　　The Communists seemed to me the only ones who really meant what they said, and I joined the John Reed Club in Chicago in 1934, where, for the first time in my life, I heard of T.S.Eliot and many others. I wrote some wild stuff which was published as political poems, them stopped. (60) 　　Wright's membership in the Club granted him the likelihood to help his people and at the same time created a forum for his writing. His pieces of writing were very meaningful to the Party at the time when it made a great effort to enlist the black masses to realize its goal of liberating the humanity, which is by first liberating the enslaved workers from the grip of oppressive capitalism of America. This envisioning is just the objective of Communists, the disciples of Marxism. For Marx, to effectively undermine the self-justified domination of the bourgeoisie necessarily takes a brand new perspective to reflect on the existent state affairs. Since the Western traditon has been based on and flourished from an abstract metaphysical realm, Marx inverts the legislated modality of conceptualization so as to establish the truth of this world by invalidating the other-worldly truth. That means he attempts to secularize the prevalent metaphysical thinking led by those German Idealists and bourgeois economists. The immediate task of philosophy is to unmask human self-alienation in its secular and material form indtead of a sacred and platonic form. With these in mind, Marx takes pains to analyze the inseparable relation between historical consciousness and the actural forms of hisorical existence, i. e. , between human self-identity and their material conditons and environment. 　　In Marx’s hypothesis, the theory and practice of human consciousness are intimately linkeda to the theory and practice of the society in which it arose. In primitive society, human beings live on nature. They appropriate nature to maintain their physical existence in a free and consicious was. Just as the external objects and phenomena constitute a part of human consciousness in the realm of theory, so too in the realm of practice they comprise a part of human life and human activity. The content and development of human consciousness are hence interrelated with the external various productive activities in which human beings participate in nature according to their physical organization. In this stage, human being are unified in themselves and in their cooperation with one another to utilize nature; their consciousness resembles an “animal consciousness,” a sheep-like or “herd” consciousness by existing in the primordial form of tribal society. The origin of their schism in consciousness is derived from the devision of labor, which is synonymous with ownership of private property. The division of labor in its initial form is “nothing but division of labor in the sexual act, ” thenj develops “spontaneously” into a division of mental and meterial labor (“The German Ideology”158-59). From now on human consciousness becomes something more than consciousness of actural material existence; it can transcend to a higher plane of consciouness by speculating on immeaterial objects of thought such as theology, ethics, and so on. This division of labor naturally leads to two classes in society with one doing intellectual activity in opposition to the other studied with the history of different modes of division of labor. Therefore Marx proclaims in “history of class struggles” (473) with different antagonistic forms between status groups in different historical periods from the Primitive Communist era to the Slave, Feudal and Capitalist. 　　In the division of labor can also be found the seed of human alienation in the sense that the laborer is not free to emgage in the economic activeities and is subjected to the products of his labor in, through and after the process of producction. His labor produces not only commodities but produces itself and the laborer as a commodity. In brief, the laborer commodifies -- objectifies -- himself when producing. Since his life-activity is not out of his tree will and consious drive, the more he produces, the more he feels depleted and cheapened, because he cannot prove of and identify with what he is doing. Therefore what he produces confronts his “as something alien, as a power independent of the producer” (“Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844"71). This alien power becomes greater and more unmanageable in proporition to the greater degree the worker puts his labor into it. That is why he is estranged from what he manufactures and also he alienates himself fron historically created human possibilities, especially from the human capacity for freedom and creativity. 　　In a capitalist mode of society, this sense of alienation on the part of the laborer is especially acute because is boss, the capitalist recognizes the worth of the laborer only by measuring how many commodities he can produce, how much exchange value he can beget since he aleady falls into the state of a commodty controlled, controlled, calculated and distributed by his boss. As Marx points out that on the basis of political economy, the worker 　　　　sinks to the level of a commodity and becomes indeed the most wretched of commodities; that the wretchedness of the worker is in inverse proportion to the power and magnitude of his production; that the necessary result of competition is the accumulation of capital in a few hands...and that the distinction between capitalist and land-rentier...disppears and that the whole of society must fall apart into the two classes-- the property-owners and the propertyless workers. 　　　　(“Maniscripts” 70) 　　We can infer from the passage that the concentration of capital, (or wealth) in few hands leads to the concentraiton of political power in few people, who then become the ruling class of society in possession of adventageous military, economic and politacal power. The ruled calss, the proletariat, will remain trapped, disinherited and exploitable under the mode of capitalist production. The only way to overturn the existing relations of production, then, is by making revolutions on a large scale. As a matter of fact, the notion of self-alienation is not merely a descriptive term, it is also an appeal, or a call for a revolutionary change of the world to achieve de-alienation. 　　For Wright, whose keen sense of alienation and self-alienation arises from his ethnic status, the theory and praxis of Communism ignited somewhere deep down in him the smoldering embers of new fires and made him perceive what he had not seen before. Though eager to deliver his people out of the state of a divided life with a divided consciousness, Wright realized that the task was actually tremendous and diffucult. The first overt obstacle was that, by the time of the thirties, the twelve million black presences had been deliberately obliterated by almost all the official versions of American history and literary history composed by the whites. The Afro-Americans became thus a people without language of their own. Fpr these people there was a big hole in history, a stretch of centuries whose content had been interpreted only by the whites. In short, these people had no vocabulary of history and were historical victims of a sort. Not to mention that the Afro-American masses were mostly illiterate so they could not read and write, even the black intellectuals and artists were silent when theyt saw that the point of view of the imperial power dominated the values of culture and life, The world confronting them nagated their humanity, yet they felt it was useless to protest with words. Even if they did protest, their tone became childish and exaggerated to the ear of the whites, Wright admitted in the Introduction “How ‘Bigger’ Was Born" that he himself had made an awfully naive mistake when he published the book Uncle Tom's Children, which “even bankers” daughters could read and weep over and feel good about.” Therefore he resolved to write another book, i. e. , Native Son, that would be “so hard and deep that they would have to face it without the consolation of tears” (xxvii) . 　　The second observable barrier to emancipate the blacks was that under the long term of control and intimidation of the white racists, the Afro-Americans had inescapably interiorized the views and value judgements of their ruler. They had been forced into a straitjacket which carsed their psychological crisis and thus crippled them to assert their true identity. They felf ashamed, bitter, resentful, sullen, and depressed. Whenever they met the gaze of the whites if they had the chance, they felf being reminded of their discepancy and degradation. To survive, according to Frantz Fanon, they had two alternatives left: either to publicly rebel against the while rulers or to seclude themselves in their tradionnal culture by developing various mechanisms of compensation. For the oppressed minority group of thet hirties, most of them would react to their situation by adopting the latter stance. But Fanon prefers to stress the aspect of open violence directed spontaneously against the colonizer so as to do away with their psychological torpor and alienation. At any rate the prerequisite for the true emancipation of the Afro-Americans was their liberating themselves form their own impvisoned consciousness long fixed to their white masters. And this was just the message that Wright wanted to convey to his folk. Although the whites could not absolve selves from their responsibility for enslaving the dark-skinned people physically and mentally, what might be of the greatest importance for the enslaved was that they had to seek an exit by ecultivating a perception of themselves. For a long time the oppressed had been too engrossed in either assimilating into or attacking the whites that they had no time left to be themselves. In Native Son, therefore, the scene in which Bigger has come to a state of self-acceptance and self-consciousness before he dies becomes quite symbolic and prophetic. By writing the story of Bigger Thomas, Wright in fact rewrote the history--or, wrote another history dialectical to the prevailing historical conscousness-- of his people by implicitly subvering the traditional official method of writing history. Wright's fiction proved more powerful and authenticated in its telling a historical truth that both racial groups in America had long been pretending not to know or even feeling too traumatic to listen to. 　　My thesis aims to delve into the roots of the dilemma for the Afro-Americans to declare their particular identity under stresses peculiar to them and their status of America. The terms "nogro," "nigger," and "black" used in this thesis does not contain any derogatory implicaiton; rather, they are employed here as a strategic necessity. A dramatic effect of hostility and antagonism between the races will be intensified by contrasting these "color-ful" terms. Wright himself unambiguously points out in his 12 Million Black Voices that the word "negro" is nothing but a "psychological term," a "fiat" most unanimous in all American history that "artificially and arbitrarily defines, regulates, and limits in scope of meaning the vital contours" of the lives of his people and their generation (30). 　　Chapter One of my thesis focuses on discussing Bigger's plight from a historical and social perspective based on Marxist theories. This chapter is essentially confined to discussing the first three parts of Native Son: "Introduction," "Fear" and "Flight." Chapter Two continues to analyze the fourth part of the novel, "Fate," by demonstrating the considerable effect of Wright's political activity on the portrayal of his fictional characters. Chapter Three seeks to redefome the literary position of Wright in American literary history by clarifying his poetics. This section is primarily an exploration into the subtle an complex psychology of the discriminated Bigger Thomas and his folk in terms of Fanon's theory. These related issues would be better understood in this manner of separate discussion and would unveil a more complete picture of how native Bigger Thomas and Richard Wright are to America. The Conclusion will make a summary of the main arguments of my thesis as well as a brief reflection of how far America has advanced in the road to true egalitarianism. I hope that what I have to say about Bigger and Wright is offering a new and refreshed critical perspective. 　　For anyone who attempts to pursue the studies of Afro-Americans literature, Richard Wright's Native Son certainly can provide a thrilling and inspirational reading experience--thrilling because Bigger is so violent and bloody, and inspirational because it unmasks the Janus-face of America. Curiously, however, racism is never solely America's plague but has overwhelmingly stuck many other countries in the world for so long, especially in modern days when racism is viewed from the perspective of the people living in the Third World. This problem of segregation and discrimaination based on epidermal defference has vexed among many individuals in many subtle ways at any time and place in our daily lives. In spite of the fact that up till now the various disciplines devoted to the studies f human behaviors have greatly progressed in sophistication and precision, there is always an element in the human mind irrational and enigmatic enough for experts or scholars to fully grasp. That is why an anatomy of racism will never be exhaustive and is thus worth pursuing all the time.

碩士
國立中正大學
外國文學所
98
This thesis explores the Black masculine violence in Richard Wright’s Native Son. Chapter One examines how American slavery history affected the development of black males and how they survived under low economic status in the 1930s American society. How Bigger Thomas survived in a white society is the question. His violence becomes the only way for him to breathe. He puts on his mask and wavers between the two worlds. After he crosses the line into another world, he suddenly becomes a timid and weak chauffeur in Dalton’s house; however, he turns violent and fearless while living in black world. How much does “the invisible line” affect Bigger’s life? The major cause of Bigger’s double personality is to survive in the white world. All his sufferings result from the invisible pressure and endless racial discrimination. Chapter Two probes into the violence relationship between white and black people. Bigger’s violence is presented in Chapter One: Fear. Then he goes on the wrong track owing to the racial taboo, but his killing of Mary gives him a new conversion that he can challenge and conquer the fear of being a black male. The Black violence is mainly a physical one, but the White’s violence is mental and ideological, which means internalization. The white-dominated society gives a wrong idea that white race is superior to black. Wright especially presents Mr. Dalton’s hypocrisy, Britten’s deep-rooted hatred toward blacks, and Bigger’s being guilty of everything before he killed Mary. White invisible violence indeed affects blacks a lot. The “line” has severed the links between Whites and Blacks. Examining the relationship between the two races is a must.

碩士
淡江大學
英文學系碩士班
95
This thesis endeavors to explore the concept of construction of identity in Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God and Richard Wright’s Native Son. Two significant black writers in the first half of the twentieth century, Hurston and Wright both transmit their awareness of racial issue by adopting the theme of a quest for identity for the black people in their works respectively. Thus, in the thesis, a textual analysis of the way the black characters construct their subjectivity in terms of race, class and gender will be presented. In addition to showing how race, class and gender play an important role in the development of the black characters’ selfhood, this thesis further examines what causes these two black writers’ divergent views on the construction of the black’s identity in their works. Through delving into these two writer’s autobiographical information, this thesis will delineate how their different rearing and personal experience influence their writing: the way their protagonists construct their identity, their style and their characterization of the black people in these two novels. As a black female, born in an area rich in Afro-American oral culture, and trained in anthropology, Hurston stresses the relationship between the two sexes within a black community. Therefore, a portrait of the black female’s inner world within a context of black community and an adoption of vernacular black speech is evident in Their Eyes Were Watching God. By contrast, Wright was more aware of the racial conflict because he grew up in an oppressive surrounding. Later, his knowledge of Marxist thinking equipped him with the necessary tool to analyze the black/white collision from a socio-economic perspective. Without doubt, the emphasis of the relations between the two races and the depiction of the city as a strong force oppressing the black individuals can be seen clearly in Native Son.

碩士
國立中正大學
外國語文研究所
89
Both Richard Wright’s Native Son and Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun present conflict and reconciliation between black males and females. The male-female conflicts in the two works reflect a common African American cultural context, especially in the female-headed family structure and the sexual objectification of black women. At the end of both works, the male protagonists improve their self-knowledge and self-concepts through an at least partial reconciliation with the black women surrounding them. That male-female reconciliation contributes in part to the two male protagonists’ maturation signifies how acceptance of the black female plays a key role in the individual black male’s appropriate perception of himself and of his relation to the world. This thesis is divided into an introduction, two chapters, and a conclusion. Each chapter is further divided according to two perspectives. Chapter one uses an existential perspective and a social-historical perspective to analyze male-female relationships in Native Son. The existential perspective helps to distinguish Bigger Thomas’ struggle for self-identity from the black female characters’ submissive acceptance of white manipulation. The social-historical perspective helps to explore the African American cultural factors contributing to the male-female conflicts in the novel. Bigger’s reconciliation with the black female, though not as developed as Walter’s, is highlighted when he suddenly perceives that his family and Bessie are inseparable from and conditioned like him. This perception prompts him to reconsider his relation to the world and to arrive at a new self-concept. Chapter two uses black feminist theory to analyze male-female relationships in A Raisin in the Sun and to compare it to Native Son from the perspective of the oppression of black women and their resistance to that oppression. Black feminist theory enables us to clarify how the male-female conflicts in the play reflect the oppression imposed on black women by patriarchal society, both white and black. Analyzing black women’s resistance to oppression allows us to interpret black women’s strength and support for black men as a major factor in male-female reconciliation and the promotion of the black family’s collective progress. Walter Lee’s reconciliation with his women lies in his appreciation of his pride as a black man under their guidance and in his respect for their subjectivity. After reconciliation with their women, Walter enters manhood while Bigger merely begins to develop his humanity. Their differing extents of maturation may be attributed in part to Wright and Hansberry’s differing characterizations of black females. Hansberry’s black women possess much more human complexity and strength than Wright’s so that they are able to guide Walter to manhood and promote their family’s progress. In brief, a comparison of male-female relationships in the two works demonstrates how acceptance of the female improves the male protagonists’ self-concept. More importantly, this comparison illuminates the significance of female strength to the black community’s inherent strength and the importance of male-female reconciliation to black people’s liberation as a whole.

The works of the nineteenth-century American thinker Ralph Waldo Emerson continue to be inspiring particularly due to their empowering effect on the individual. It is especially Emerson's concepts of the sovereignty of the individual, the importance of self-definition, the view of life as a transitory flow, and the relationship between freedom and fate which can be practically and usefully applied in the life of an individual. It is possible, then, to understand and evaluate Emerson's works through the practical effects of his concepts, in other words through the prism of pragmatism. Emerson's empowering philosophy can be of use especially to disempowered groups such as African Americans. The Emersonian themes which are to be found in the works of various African-American non-fiction writers such as W.E.B. Du Bois, James Baldwin, Martin Luther King Jr. and Cornel West testify to the relevance of Emerson for this minority group. In Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man and Richard Wright's Native Son, two African-American novels, Emersonian principles are shown to be of utmost importance for the positive development of the protagonists.

MultipliCities: The Infrastructure of African American Literature, 1899-1996 explores intersections between black fiction and canonical sociology through two extended case studies focusing on the authors Richard Wright and Paul Beatty. The formation of disciplinary sociology in the early twentieth century had a profound influence on the production and reception of African American literature. Sociologists at the University of Chicago were among the first to teach black fiction and poetry in the academy, and institutionalized a social scientific framework for comprehending black culture. This framework, which assumes that black writing produces racial knowledge about black experience, continues to pressure contemporary African American authors through the demands of the publishing industry today. At the same time, though, African American authors throughout the twentieth century have resisted sociological expectations for their work and responded critically to the social scientific study of the black community more broadly. MultipliCities studies black writers whose fiction is specifically critical of sociological conceptions of black personhood and place. While Richard Wright's best-selling Native Son (1940) has been canonized as a type of sociological fiction, I read against this critical tradition for the ways in which his juvenile delinquent protagonist, Bigger Thomas, evades his production as a social scientific object. I locate further evidence for Wright's revision of sociological knowledge production in his final, posthumously published novel, A Father's Law (1960; 2008), in which the main character is a sociologist and a serial killer who violently deforms the mastery of the social scientific expert. In my second case study, I turn to contemporary novelist Paul Beatty's post-civil rights era novel The White Boy Shuffle (1996), which I read as a mock ethnography in its description of a postindustrial ghetto that exceeds the sociological imagination of the so-called "culture of poverty." Though rap music is often interpreted as evidence of the alleged impoverishment of inner-city black community, in my final chapter I read Beatty's "hip hop novel" as challenging the social scientific expectations for black popular culture that are part of the ongoing legacy of the canonical sociology of race.
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