瑪格麗特．愛特伍《末世男女》中的語言、真相和歷史

Abstract

[[abstract]]邁格里．邁可曾在其書中指出，當今所有作者都必須面對由後現代理論與思想所引發的再現危機。此危機乃指，由解構所強調的差異與延異現象的去中心化思想，已使得當今作家很難維持像傳統寫實人文思想那樣對絕對意義、主體與真相的追求。邁可指出，在這種後現代文化認知下，一些堅持社會、政治參與的作家(譬如女性主義作家)所採取的再現策略是，一方面凸顯後現代相關思維與敘述技巧， 另一方面並不對一些社會價值與主體做激進徹底的解構，以便可以讓社會批判與社會政治參與獲得某種程度的維繫基礎。這也就是說，這類作家基於某種社會、政治關懷，不可能完全拋棄寫實的敘述傳統與人文精神。其重要的論述基礎是用呈現一般讀者可以辨識出的“熟悉”材料來建構其所謂的真實此一基礎。本文認同邁可的觀察，將瑪格麗特．愛特伍列入此類後現代作家，並以其《末世男女》中的某些文本內容為例，輔以愛特伍的相關論述與訪談內容，來探討愛特伍如何應對上述的再現危機。文章的探討主要在證明愛特伍的作品一方面彰顯了後現代的相關思維與敘述技巧，另一方面也保留了傳統寫實人文對人性和社會的關懷與參與。就探討語言、真相和歷史這個議題與角度來說，上述兩種看似自我矛盾的並置，其實可說是具體展現了愛特伍對此相關議題的基本看法。對愛特伍而言，看待真相或真實的角度並非只能選擇一種來依循。與此相關的語言、宗教、藝術、人性和歷史等相關議題都會牽涉到我們看待所謂真實或真相的角度。其文本呈現出來的並置面向其實展現了愛特伍多向度的人文思考與關懷。

[[abstract]]As Magali Cornier Michael points out, there has been a crisis of representation facing “all contemporary authors”: “a crisis brought on by the theoretical and philosophical undermining of the subject, reality, language, interpretation, representation, history” (10). This has to do with the postmodern (or poststructuralist) emphasis on decentering, difference and deferral, making meaning as essence or self- identity impossible. This paper will attempt to show how Margaret Atwood, in her novel Oryx and Crake, copes with this representational crisis by combining two different sides or dimensions. The first is her postmodern sense of language as primarily a form or medium of construction, and the resultant indeterminacy of meaning and truth insofar as these are mediated through representation. Atwood’s other dimension is her humanistic concern with people’s actual needs and with conventional values such as love, meaning, and social bonding, for as Michael says, postmodern writers who maintain certain social and political commitments must still depend on conventional ideas of realism and of meaning as representation. The paper then argues that for Atwood, truth and reality can be defined in more than one way, they are not one-dimensional: the issues of truth and reality cannot be separated from human desires and human needs, themselves set in certain social and historical contexts that are universally recognized as being real and true.