美國本土裔作家杰拉德·維茲諾作品在反映印第安文化與民族身份特點的同時具有閾限性特征:即作品寓意呈現模糊、混雜又界限不明但有跡可循的介于多種維度之間的臨界狀態。臨界性、異質性,混雜性和矛盾性是文學中閾限性的哲學維度,體現文學與文化實踐中的思想敏銳度,探討身份話語建構問題。這種文學閾限性能夠在無限的文化差異上實現某種有限接合,從而彌合二元對立之間的各種不可調和張力;這也是閾限性用以闡釋與解構維茲諾作品的動力之一,以此探索美國本土裔作家在沉重民族歷史背景下走出生存困境、沖破世界主義與民族主義藩籬的表意突破。本文以小說《自由之魔法師:一個荒野貴族的部落后裔》為例,在深入文本解讀基礎上闡釋維茲諾作品的閾限性特點以例證文學閾限性的主要理論特征。

Native American writer Gerald Vizenor’s works possessed an essence of literary liminality which is ambivalent, hybrid and borderless but traceable and dimensional. Criticality, heterogeneity, hybridity and ambivalence are the main dimensions of literary liminality which reflects the thinking acuity in literary and cultural practices and probes into the problem of identity construction. The theoretical reference of this liminality enables kind of limited mending in unlimited cultural differences and bridges various unbalances and contradictions between the two opposites. Thus, it would compensate diverse incompatible tensions. The literary liminality is one of the dynamics to analyze Gerald Vizenor’s works and it may become a kind of meaningful breakthrough in the hedge between cosmopolitanism and nationalism. This essay interprets Vizenor’s The Trickster of Liberty: Tribal Heirs to a Wild Baronage(1988) and deconstructs literary liminality in particular text.