本論文研究爵士樂與童妮‧摩里森《爵士樂》之間的多重連結，並據此探討《爵士樂》如何藉由形式上的重複與差異塑造黑人身分認同。第一章對爵士樂的雜糅歷史及表演性質進行檢視，並試圖解釋我為何將《爵士樂》視為未定的黑人身分認同之表現形式。藉此，我以摩里森書中所運用的爵士樂技巧，證明她對黑人身分認同所持的非本質主義式態度。第二章運用爵士樂中的即興重複段，解釋《爵士樂》裡的重複如何即興演繹黑人身分認同。在我看來，循環出現的主題與反覆的節奏能使不同情境的主題呈現出多重樣貌，以及藉「衍異」產生個人身分認同的多種解釋。第三章研究《爵士樂》如何將聖經故事轉變為非裔美國人的爵士樂曲，使書中人物、敘事者、及讀者皆可在其中隨意即興演繹個人身分的意涵。藉由《聖經》跟《爵士樂》的比較，我企圖檢視《爵士樂》如何以重寫聖經裡的場景來建構黑人身分認同。總之，我詳細說明《爵士樂》中的人物宛如爵士樂演奏者般，經歷認同的過程且以多變的形式演奏出他們的身分認同。藉由分析爵士樂中的重複與差異，我將黑人身分認同詮釋為可藉演奏而重複的範疇。作為雜糅的產物，《爵士樂》允許自身被再製為「衍異」形式下的產物，且持續激發此本小說被嫁接到不同情境下的黑人身分認同之新詮釋。

This thesis studies the manifold connections between jazz and Toni Morrison’s Jazz and thereby explores how Jazz jazzes up black identity through repetition and differences. Examining the hybrid implications and performative nature of jazz, Chapter One attempts to justify my reading of Jazz as a manifestation of indefinite black identities. In this way, I attest Morrison’s employment of jazz to her non-essentialist attitude toward blackness. Chapter Two draws on riffs in jazz to explicate how the devices of repetition help improvise the meanings of identity in Jazz. In my view, recurring motifs and repetitive rhythms contribute to variegating a theme in different contexts and engender various interpretations of one’s identity through différance. Chapter Three investigates how Jazz transforms biblical stories into an African American jazz song, in which the characters, the narrator, and the reader are free to improvise the meaning of their identities. Through a juxtaposed reading of Jazz and the Bible, I wish to examine how Jazz, in rewriting certain biblical scenes, motivates the construction of black identity. All in all, I elaborate on how the characters in Jazz, like jazz performers, experience a process of identification and plays out their identities in a mobile way. Analyzing repetition and différance in Jazz, I interpret black identity as a repeatable category through performance. As a hybrid product, Jazz allows itself to be remade into différancial forms, and thus continues to jazz up new interpretations of black identity in the various contexts the novel is, and will be, grafted into.

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