Traversing the Boundary: (Dis-)placement and (Re-)location in Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man

• Main Authors: Mei-chin Fan, 范美琴
• Other Authors: Chun-san Wang
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 1999
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/40588139093210754224

碩士 === 國立中興大學 === 外國語文學系 === 87 === Abstract Racial inequality in American society often manifests itself in the hegemonic power’s demarcation of boundaries between cultures, races, and spaces. This thesis studies the black-and-white relationships in Ellison’s Invisible Man by delving into the problematic of space in the novel. In this thesis, my study is focused on examining the protagonist-narrator’s dis-placement and re-location. As a Southern black youth, he is mis-placed and dis-placed in the racist society. Physically, he is kept moving from place to place; socially, he is rejected and dis-located, unable to fit in the white men’s world. This thesis includes an introduction, a main body of three chapters, and a conclusion. In light of Lefebvre’s spatial theory, I analyze the relations of whites and blacks in the novel through an investigation into the three modes of spatial assembly that produce space. Its main argument is about how the white’s hegemony and supremacy over blacks are embodied on various forms of spatial practices, representational spaces, and representations of space. Chapter One proposes a synthetical reading of the spatial theories of Henri Lefebvre, Michel Foucault, Edward W. Said, and Abdul R. JanMohamed, providing a theoretical framework on which my study and interpretation of Invisible Man are based. Chapter Two demonstrates that the white’s production of space aims to confine blacks and thus entails the problems of racial inequality and racial conflicts. Through an analysis of the modes of spatial assembly in the novel, the physical and social space of blacks and how they are produced are laid bare. In Chapter Three, by applying Foucault's theory of heterotopias, I interpret the protagonist-narrator’s movement down to the underground as an act of revolt by which he inverts the white’s space and turns it into a space of his own. By this spatial practice, he becomes an intellectual in exile who speaks truth to the white. His spatial practice transforms the hole into a representational space that not only subverts the original representation of space imposed on the hole, but also challenges the totalizing and valorizing spatial practice of the white world. Thus, he re-locates himself in a space of “worldliness-without-world and homelessness-as-home” and becomes, in JanMohamed’s terms, a specular border intellectual.