摘要：The impact of colonial educational system or colonial cultural discourse on the cultural identity of the colonized is a prominent theme of postcolonial studies. According to Said Orientalism as a discourse recognizes an "ontological and epistemological" distinction between the East and the West. Consequently, for Said anyone who thinks, works and acts based on the existence of such a distinction is an orientalist. This paper argues that V. S. Naipaul’s Half a life illustrates the workings of this imaginary distinction that European cultural discourse finds between the Orient and the Occident on the formation of the cultural identity of the colonized people as they become subject to colonial cultural discourse. In Half a Life we observe Willie, the anti-hero of the novel, gradually losing his faith in the ingredients of his own cultural identity replacing them with the material served in the menu of colonial educational system to adopt himself with the requirements of being a colonial individual living on scholarship in the metropolitan London.
其他摘要：The impact of colonial educational system or colonial cultural discourse on the cultural identity of the colonized is a prominent theme of postcolonial studies. According to Said Orientalism as a discourse recognizes an "ontological and epistemological" distinction between the East and the West. Consequently, for Said anyone who thinks, works and acts based on the existence of such a distinction is an orientalist. This paper argues that V. S. Naipaul’s Half a life illustrates the workings of this imaginary distinction that European cultural discourse finds between the Orient and the Occident on the formation of the cultural identity of the colonized people as they become subject to colonial cultural discourse. In Half a Life we observe Willie, the anti-hero of the novel, gradually losing his faith in the ingredients of his own cultural identity replacing them with the material served in the menu of colonial educational system to adopt himself with the requirements of being a colonial individual living on scholarship in the metropolitan London.
