بازخوانی گفتمان نژاد و قدرت در شعر «موضوع انشاء درس انگلیسی B» اثر لنگستون هیوز با تکیه بر نظریۀ انتقادی نژاد و گفت‌وگویی باختین

نوع مقاله : مقاله علمی پژوهشی

نویسنده

گروه زبان و ادبیات فارسی دانشکده علوم انسانی، دانشگاه دامغان، دامغان ، ایران

چکیده

این مقاله شعر «موضوع انشاء درس انگلیسی» از لنگستون هیوز، شاعر و داستان‌نویس سیاه‌پوست آمریکایی، را با تکیه بر سه چارچوب نظریِ پسااستعماری، نظریۀ انتقادی نژاد (CRT) و نظریۀ گفت‌وگویی باختین تحلیل می‌کند. این شعر، با قرار گرفتن در بستر تقاطع گفتمان‌هایی همچون سلطۀ نژادی سفیدپوستان، هویت سیاه‌پوستی و ساختار آموزش رسمی، به صحنه‌ای برای بازنمایی تنش‌های اجتماعی، سیاسی و هویتی بدل می‌شود. از منظر پسااستعماری، شعر هیوز را می‌توان نمودی از مقاومت در برابر هژمونی سفید در فضای آموزشی دانست؛ مقاومتی که به‌طور هم‌زمان، شکل‌گیری آگاهی نژادی، کنش انتقادی، و بحران بازنمایی خویشتن را به تصویر می‌کشد. نظریه‌های انتقادی نژاد و گفت‌وگویی نیز در این تحلیل بر تلاقی هویت‌های متقاطع، ورود صداهای ناهمساز به دیالوگ، و زیر سؤال بردن گفتمان غالب تمرکز دارند. در این چارچوب، سخن گفتن از جایگاه حاشیه‌ای، کنشی اعتراضی و تحول‌خواهانه است که به بازتعریف روابط قدرت منجر می‌شود. در نهایت، مقاله نشان می‌دهد که هیوز با بازآفرینی هویت سیاه‌پوستی و مفهوم آمریکایی‌بودن، فضایی میان‌فرهنگی و چندصدایی خلق می‌کند که چالش با ساختارهای قدرت را از محیط آموزشی به کل جامعه گسترش می‌دهد. این تحلیل، اهمیت شعر هیوز را در بازنمایی مقاومت فرهنگی و نژادی و بازاندیشی مفاهیم هویت و قدرت در جهان معاصر برجسته می‌سازد.

کلیدواژه‌ها

موضوعات


عنوان مقاله [English]

Revisiting the Discourse of Race and Power in Langston Hughes’s “Theme for English B”: A Critical Race and Bakhtinian Dialogic Perspective

نویسنده [English]

  • Reza Ghanbari Abdolmaleki
Department of Persian Language and Literature, Faculty of Literature and Humanities, University of Damghan, Damghan, Iran.
چکیده [English]

This article analyzes Langston Hughes’s poem “Theme for English B” through the combined lens of postcolonial theory, Critical Race Theory (CRT), and Bakhtin’s theory of dialogism. Positioned at the intersection of racial dominance, Black identity, and institutional education, the poem becomes a dynamic site for representing socio-political tensions and struggles over voice and identity. From a postcolonial standpoint, the poem functions as a subtle act of resistance against white hegemony within the American educational system. It simultaneously explores the emergence of racial consciousness and the complexities of self-representation in a racially stratified society. CRT deepens the analysis by foregrounding the systemic nature of racial inequality and the influence of institutional structures on the speaker’s identity formation. Bakhtin’s dialogism further enriches the reading by drawing attention to the polyphonic interaction between conflicting voices—the Black student, the white instructor, and the dominant cultural discourse. These voices do not merge into a single truth but remain in tension, revealing the multiplicity of perspectives embedded in the poem. ultimately, the article argues that Hughes redefines both Black identity and Americanness by constructing an intercultural, dialogic space. In doing so, he challenges dominant power structures and reimagines identity as fluid, contested, and relational within the broader context of race and nationhood.

کلیدواژه‌ها [English]

  • Langston Hughes
  • “Theme for English B
  • ” postcolonialism
  • Critical Race Theory
  • Bakhtin
  • resistance
  • dialogue
Ahmed, Salah Hassan, and Abdalla Ibrahim Abdalla Elaref. 2024. “Probing the Complexities of Cultural Identity in Langston Hughes’ Poetry: A Critical Discourse Analysis.” Frontiers in Literature Studies 6, no. 6.
Bakhtin, Mikhail Mikhailovich. 1981. The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays. Edited by Michael Holquist. Translated by Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist. Austin: University of Texas Press.
—. 1984. Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics. Edited and translated by Caryl Emerson. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Bell, Derrick. 1980a. “Brown v. Board of Education and the Interest-Convergence Dilemma.” Harvard Law Review 93, no. 6: 518–33.
———. 1980b. Race, Racism, and American Law. 2nd ed. Boston: Little, Brown and Company.
Bhabha, Homi K. 1994. The Location of Culture. London: Routledge.
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1984. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. Translated by Richard Nice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Crenshaw, Kimberlé. 1989. “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics.” University of Chicago Legal Forum 1989: 139–67.
———. 1991. “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence Against Women of Color.” Stanford Law Review 43, no. 6: 1241–99.
Delgado, Richard, and Jean Stefancic. 2017. Critical Race Theory: An Introduction. 3rd ed. New York: New York University Press.
Dimakopoulou, Stamatina. 2016. “Review of Lyric Encounters: Essays on American Poetry from Lazarus and Frost to Ortiz Cofer and Alexie, by Daniel Morris.” European Journal of American Studies 1.
Dorri, Najmeh, and Ahmad Pirooznia. 2019. “Exploring Common Themes in the Poetry of Shamlu, Éluard, and Hughes from the Perspective of Committed Literature.” Journal of Comparative Literature Studies 7, no. 20 (Summer): 108–29. [In Persian.]
Fanon, Frantz. 2008. Black Skin, White Masks. Translated by Richard Philcox. New York: Grove Press.
Ford, Karen Jackson. 1992. “Do Right to Write Right: Langston Hughes’s Aesthetics of Simplicity.” Twentieth Century Literature 38, no. 4: 436–56.
Foucault, Michel. 1977. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Translated by Alan Sheridan. New York: Vintage Books.
Gates, Henry Louis, Jr. 1988. The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of African-American Literary Criticism. New York: Oxford University Press.
Hall, Stuart. 1990. “Cultural Identity and Diaspora.” In Identity: Community, Culture, Difference, edited by Jonathan Rutherford, 222–37. London: Lawrence & Wishart.
Holquist, Michael. 2002. Dialogism: Bakhtin and His World. 2nd ed. London: Routledge.
hooks, bell. 1994. Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom. New York: Routledge.
Hughes, Langston. 2001. The Collected Works of Langston Hughes. Edited by Arnold Rampersad. Columbia: University of Missouri Press.
Jafari Qariyeh Ali, Hamid. 2024. “A Comparative Study of the Poems of Parvin E’tesami and Langston Hughes with a Focus on Subalternity.” Journal of Comparative Literature Studies, no. 71 (Fall): 46–73. [In Persian.]
Leonardo, Hendry. 2010. “Analysis of Themes of Langston Hughes’ Poems.” Undergraduate thesis, Universitas Kristen Maranatha.
Moqaddam Mottaqi, Amir, Moloud Khanchezard, and Masoud Bavan Pouri. 2020. “Postcolonial Thoughts in Mohammad Faitoury’s and Langston Hughes’s Poems.” Research in Contemporary World Literature 25, no. 1 (Spring/Summer): 317–42. [In Persian.]
Pinem, Andri. 2010. “The Portrait of Black People’s Optimistic Belief About a Better Life in America Based on ‘Theme for English B’ by Langston Hughes and ‘Still I Rise’ by Maya Angelou.” Master’s thesis, Universitas Bina Nusantara.
Retnoningsih, Endang. 2009. “Black Pride as Reflected in James Langston Hughes’s Poems (A Semiotics Approach).” Skripsi, Universitas Sebelas Maret.
Said, Edward W. 1978. Orientalism. New York: Pantheon Books.
Soja, Edward W. 1996. Thirdspace: Journeys to Los Angeles and Other Real-and-Imagined Places. Oxford: Blackwell.
Vice, Sue. 1997. Introducing Bakhtin. Manchester: Manchester University Press.