Cold War Orientalism: Asia in the Middlebrow Imagination, 1945-1961, and: Embracing the East: White Women and American Orientalism (review)
Cold War Orientalism: Asia in the Middlebrow Imagination, 1945-1961, and: Embracing the East: White Women and American Orientalism (review)
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冷战东方主义：中产阶级想象中的亚洲，1945-1961，以及：拥抱东方：白人妇女和美国东方主义（评论）
DOI：
10.1215/00029831-76-3-619
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发表时间：
2004
影响因子：
0.5
通讯作者：
Seung Hye Suh
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Seung Hye Suh
根据汉德利的说法，“只预示着麻烦”(18)。汉德利阅读了《与美国民族主义有关的浪漫和婚姻的麻烦细节》(24)，得出结论认为，在西方文学中，相互冲突的婚姻“往往是分离的，即使它们参与了爱情和国家之间的双螺旋，成为一个失败的国家统一的寓言，在这个地区，许多美国人希望找到共同的身份”(34)。在《婚姻、暴力和国家》一书中，汉德利挑战了西方的牛仔神话，但他没有提供另一种范式，而是明确和含蓄地探索了创造文学意义的复杂行为及其与历史现实的关系。在汉德利看来，我也同意，受欢迎的西部片，甚至是套路西部片，都是“意识形态复杂的”，而且非常注重富有想象力的分析，而不是简单化的否定(225)。汉德利断言，文学必须给任何仔细阅读它的人提供的是文学表达本身所要求的、不可避免的模棱两可和疏远的影响。他通过对重要的、至今仍被广泛阅读的文本的详细和创造性的阅读来证明这一点。最有价值的是他将这些读物运用到一个更大的问题上，即文学和历史之间的关系，“这种关于表现的主张和对‘现实’的主张之间的两难”(230)。在一篇探讨《[西方]历史学家和文学批评家之间的僵局》(227)的争议性后记中，汉德利主张《回到文学的复杂性》(233)。这两本好书令人信服地证明了汉德利的观点，即“现实是可叙事可塑性的”，并支持他的论点“理解叙事如何以及为什么继续重要”(232)。
and, according to Handley, ‘‘only betokens trouble’’ (18). Handley reads ‘‘the troubled particulars of romance and marriage in relation to American nationalism’’ (24), concluding that the conflicted marriages ‘‘in the literary West so often separate, even as they participate in, the double helix between love and nation, becoming allegories of a failed national metaphor of unity in a region, where many Americans hoped to locate common identity’’ (34). In Marriage, Violence, and the Nation, Handley challenges the myth of the ‘‘cowboy’’ West, but rather than offering an alternative paradigm, he explicitly and implicitly explores the complex act of creating literary meaning and its relationship to historical reality. In Handley’s view, and I agree, popular westerns, even formula westerns, are ‘‘ideologically complicated’’ and richly reward imaginative analysis rather than reductive dismissals (225). ‘‘What literature has to offer anyone who reads it closely,’’ Handley asserts, ‘‘is the demanding, unavoidable ambiguity and estranging effect of literary expression itself’’ (230), and he demonstrates this point in detailed and inventive readings of important and still widely read texts. Most valuable is the way he brings these readings to bear on a larger question of the relationship between literature and history, ‘‘this dilemma between the claims of representation and the claims of ‘reality’ ’’ (230). In a polemical afterword exploring ‘‘the impasses between [western] historians and literary critics,’’ (227), Handley advocates a ‘‘return to literary complexity’’ (233). These two fine books convincingly prove Handley’s point that ‘‘reality is narratively malleable’’ and support his argument ‘‘for understanding how and why narrative continues to matter’’ (232).