生存困境：从空间批评理论的角度研究《野草在歌唱》

gbelieves that the twisted interracial relation between Mary Turner and Moses becomes a carrier forwhite colonists to redeem their guilt in the post-colonial era.Wang also holds that it is becauseMary’s historical guilty lead to her tragic end.[7]Bill Schwarz in“The Fact of Whiteness:DorisLessing’s The Grass Is Singing-a Historian Book”analyses the conflict between the old colonists represented by Charlie and the new colonists represented by Tony.Then,Schwarz profoundlyconcludes that the white colonial regime of South Rhodesia colony eventually steps into ruin.[8]Faranak Kakanaeini claims that it is a novel filled with the various ideologies of white colonists in“Discourses and Ideologies of Whites:The Postcolonial Study of The Grass Is Singing”.Kakanaeini considers that white colonizers of South Africa are described as complacent andsuperficial images and South Africa is regarded as the hierarchical society with narrowness ofmind and discrimination of race.In addition,white colonizers not only exploit and enslave blacks,but also control their ideology and discourse.[9]

2 Theoretical Foundation

2.1 The Development of Spatial Theory

Since ancient Greece,Western understandings of“space”have shown rich ideologicalconnotations.Plato believes that space was an objective container without any characteristics.Plato’s interpretations on the“container”describes it as space,place and location.In other words,space is regarded as a being that could hold all forms and cannot be created or destroyed.Inheriting Plato’s thoughts,Aristotle gives his new interpretations on space,which mainlyconcentrate on Physics.Aristotle considers that space is a“limitation”,which is the form or shapeof material that determines the quantity and quality of each thing.In modern times,theinterpretations on space have emerged a new upsurge.Hegelgave gives a dual meanings to space:space should be non-perceptual perception and perceptual non-perception.Marxist philosophystates that time and space are objective and concrete existential forms of the moving substances,which dialectically connect time,space and substance together.Therefore,the spatial view ofMarxist philosophy establishes an ontological and dialectical trinity,which opens the possibilityfor people to understand the interaction between history,geography and social existence.

After 1970s,people gradually began to realize that space was not an immaterial concept,butthe embodiment of various social,political and cultural phenomena.In the process of redefining(social)space after reversing the traditional understandings of space,two French Marxist scholars,Henri Lefebvre and Michel Foucault,make great contributions to the development of space.Theynot only restore the status of space ontology,which has been degraded by philosophy since the 19thcentury,but also introduce space into their philosophical thoughts and theoretical researches,emphasizing the importance of space in the contemporary era.In terms of ontology,they try tosubvert the extremely stubborn thoughts of separating space and society,and stress the dialecticalconnection between space and society.In terms of epistemology,they believe that space is notnatural,closed,static and single,but variable,open,alive,multi-level and constitutive.In terms ofmethodology,they try to examine the production,operation and change of space from theperspective of relational theory to better grasp the structure and nature of society.

2.2 Lefebvre’s Spatial Theory

Henri Lefebvre is also a French philosopher and sociologist.In 1974,his The Production ofSpace was published,marking the formal formation of contemporary space theory.In this book,he irstly proposes that any space could be divided into a combined model of three interrelatedelements.The space generated by any society is composed of“spatial practice”,“therepresentation of space”and“representational space”.And the latter is considered as an integrationof these three elements.He believes that there are three types