ABSTRACT Seeing the colonial adventures through the eyes of European conquerors, cross-cultural encounters often proved to be problematic experience, for, confined in an alien settlement without any familiar civilised artefacts nor social network to assist the daily remembrance of who they are, the colonialists often fell to the pray of cultural assimilation and end up as the exile-gone-native amongst the colonials. The resultant segregation posed a fundamental challenge to not only the Europeans, but also their half-casted offspring. For those who were born out of miscegenation, the invisible wall that divided the fixed ethnic identity became compromised yet not porous, as they were left in the wilderness to find where their allegiance should lie. The task to “know thyself” thus could be a life-long struggle to reach the elusive inner peace. This paper takes Nina Almayer, the character from Joseph Conrad’s Almater’s Folly, as an example. Drawing on Van Gennep’s concept of liminality, this paper will explores the journey Nina Almayer undertakes in forging a cultural and racial identity, analysing her negotiation of being and becoming as a process of crossing thresholds and undergoing transformation. Keywords: Cross-cultural Encounter, Identity, Liminality.
Yu-Miao Yang (Tue,) studied this question.