Journal of Northeastern University(Social Science) ›› 2019, Vol. 21 ›› Issue (5): 545-550.DOI: 10.15936/j.cnki.1008-3758.2019.05.015

• Linguistics and Literature • Previous Articles    

Truth About the Identity of the Other: Naipaul's The Enigma of Arrival and Its Cognitive Mode

ZHANG De-xu   

  1. (Foreign Studies College, Northeastern University, Shenyang 110819, China)
  • Received:2019-03-25 Revised:2019-03-25 Online:2019-09-25 Published:2019-09-25
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Abstract: The Enigma of Arrival showcases Naipaul's persistent seeking for truth about human identity at a specific historical juncture of English multiculturalism. Through the migrant protagonist's cognitive acts toward England and its people, the novel reveals to us two kinds of truth. On the one hand, the novel suggests that the epistemic violence inflicted through the British colonial discourse leads to his continual misjudgment of England and its people; on the other, it breaks away from the commonplace “self vs. other” dichotomy inherent in a typical postcolonial reading by deploying the protagonist's heuristic cognition of local British personages, thereby laying bare the ideology in the notion of a unified national identity promoted by the Thatcher government in the early 1980s.

Key words: V.S. Naipaul, cognitive mode, Other, national identity, The Enigma of Arrival

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