The Sound of One Hand Clapping is a representative diasporic work by Australian writer Richard Flanagan. It recounts the heroine's departure from European culture and the diaspora into Australian, revealing the difficult efforts of the European diasporic immigrants in Australian culture to wrestle with multiple memory forces in a new land, construct identity and forge a unified emotion under the collision and integration. The author explores the possibility of reconciliation with history through the efforts of two generations. From the theoretical perspective of some postcolonial and postmodernity, this paper examines how the protagonist struggle through dynamic multiple memories to realize identity clarification and consciousness reconstruction. Starting from the deconstruction of the grand narrative discourses from the perspective of the mainstream group in the host country, the paper found that the process of re-establishing a coherent identity of the diasporic, marginalized group are subject to the interaction among different memories, the hybridity and becoming of symbolic identities, the reconstruction and rationalization of in-depth consciousness. Flanagan’s mutli-dimensional attempts are at ethnic equality in the contemporary global context.

Lin Xiaomeng. Memory, Identity and Consciousness in the Sound of One Hand Clapping—In a Diaspora Study. Academic Journal of Humanities & Social Sciences (2024) Vol. 7, Issue 8: 9-17. https://doi.org/10.25236/AJHSS.2024.070802.

[1] Clifford, J. (1994). Diasporas. Cultural anthropology, 9(3), 302-338.

[2] Xu B.(2023). Tracing back the origins of diasporic literature and the basic paradigm of human destiny community. Foreign Literature Studies, 45(1), 17-30.

[3] Marianne, H. (2012).“The Generation of Postmemory”: Writing and Visual Culture After the Holocaust. New York: Columbia University Press. 

[4] Whitehead, A. (2004). Trauma fiction. Edinburgh University Press.

[5] Flanagan, R.(2016). The Sound of One Hand Clapping. Australia: Vintage Books.

[6] LaCapra, D. (1999). Trauma, Absence, Loss. Critical Inquiry, 25(4), 696–727.

[7] Hassan, Ihab Habib. (1987). The postmodern turn: essays in postmodern theory and and Culture. Columbu: Ohio State University Press, p14.

[8] Hall, S.(2010). Research on Cultural Identity, Pang Li. Trans. Kaifeng: Henan University Press.

[9] Manuel, C. (2011).The power of identity. John Wiley & Sons.

[10] Shang, G. (2015). An Introduction to Interalogy. Philosophy Analysis, (06), 54-65+193.

[11] Cai X.(2023). On Chinese Poetics in Deleuze's Philosophical Literary Theory. Guangdong Social Sciences, (02):181-191.

[12] Cohen, R. (1997). Global Diasporas: An Introduction. London, UCL P.

[13] Duarte, F.(2005). Living in “the Betweens”: Diaspora Consciousness Formation and Identity among Brazilians in Australia”. Journal of Intercultural Studies, 26(4), 315-335. 

[14] Shohat, E. (1992). Antinomies of exile: Said at the frontiers of national narrations. Edward Said: A critical reader, 121-43.

[15] Nicolas, A. Torok, M. (1994) .The Shell and the Kernel: Renewals of Psychoanalysis, vol.1. University of Chicago Press, 

[16] Dayal, S. (1996). Diaspora and Double Consciousness. The Journal of the Midwest Modern Language Association, 29(1), 46–62.

[17] Lei F. (2019). Place and No Place. Liu Su, Xiang Xinyi, Trans. Beijing: Commercial Press.

[18] He, L. (2023) “Imperceptibility”: On Deleuze's Reflection on Existence and the Critique of Modernity. Foreign Languages and Literatures, 40(5), 88-98+135.

[19] Gupta, A. (1992). Beyond “Culture”: Space, Identity, and the Politics of Difference. Cultural Anthropology, 7(1), 6-23.