童妮・摩里森《摯愛》和潔思敏．沃德《黑鳥不哭》中黑人的悲痛、失落與鬼魅纏繞

Abstract

本論文將童妮．摩里森的《摯愛》和潔思敏．沃德的《黑鳥不哭》視為非裔美國作家的南方志異作品，並企圖剖析這兩本小說如何揭露黑人從古至今被邊緣化的生命經歷，以及其所涉及的失落、悲痛與憂鬱政治。傳統上，南方志異是表達南方白人焦慮、愧疚和恐懼的一種文學形式；《摯愛》和《黑鳥不哭》則相反地重新運用南方志異文學傳統，勾勒出種族壓迫的歷史現實和持續纏繞著黑人的文化創傷與無以釋然的悲痛。本文藉由採用南方志異美學、雅克．德希達所提出之鬼魅纏繞的概念，以及大衛．恩和大衛．卡薩吉昂、朱迪斯·巴特勒與鄭安玲諸位當代理論家提出之後佛洛伊德的失落與憂鬱理論作為批判框架，企圖分析志異敘事如何作為美國黑人作家講述不可言說的歷史的文學形式，以及摩里森和沃德如何運用鬼魅纏繞的概念來闡明失落和無以釋然的悲痛之於黑人歷史、政治和種族身份形塑的意涵，並重新想像黑人能動性和韌性的可能。 第一章聚焦於分析摩里森如何在《摯愛》中以南方志異書寫描繪黑人被鬼魅糾纏的日常，以及個人和歷史失落對黑人的影響。我主張，摩里森運用鬼魅纏繞創造出一個被壓抑的歷史恐怖和難以釋懷的黑人悲痛相互交織的志異敘事，這不僅進行了批判性的記憶，另外還重塑黑人憂鬱為審視反黑種族主義的關鍵條件及創傷黑人主體抵抗歷史抹殺和重拾黑人主體性背後的驅力。第二章探究沃德呈現種族暴力恐怖的方式，並解析她如何結合美國黑人靈性傳統於南方志異的鬼魅敘事，探索黑人韌性和能動性的潛力。我認為，沃德使用鬼魂和黑人靈性傳統習俗與信仰中的元素，揭示種族悲痛和憂鬱的複雜性，並且凸顯黑人文化遺產能提供黑人另一種存在、感受和思考的方式來應對反黑情結，且能在遭遇失落和無法釋然的悲痛時，尋回被奪走的未來性。透過分析摩里森的《摯愛》和潔思敏．沃德的《黑鳥不哭》中的失落、悲痛和憂鬱的再現，我凸顯在反黑情結導致美國社會中僅有某些生命被認可為「人命」、某些生命的逝去是「值得為其悲傷、哀痛 」的情況下，黑人的憂鬱成為了一種抵抗姿態、記憶的倫理行為，以及在失落和回憶之間持續協商的動態過程。

This thesis reads Toni Morrison’s Beloved and Jesmyn Ward’s Sing, Unburied, Sing as black variations on the Southern Gothic and investigates the ways in which the two novels address the historically marginalized black experiences and engage with the politics of loss, grief, and melancholia. The Southern Gothic is a literary mode that traditionally works to express anxiety, guilt, and fear of the white southerners. Beloved and Sing, alternatively, rework the Southern Gothic to delineate the repressed historical realities of racial oppressions and the ongoing and shifting cultural wounds of racism and unresolved grief that haunt black people. Drawing on Southern Gothic aesthetics, Jacques Derrida’s concept of hauntology, and the post-Freudian theories of loss and melancholia formulated by David L. Eng and David Kazanjian, Judith Butler, and Anne Anlin Cheng as a critical framework, this thesis seeks to analyze not only the ways in which the Gothic works as a historical mode for black American writers to tell the story of the unspeakable history, but how Morrison and Ward enact hauntology to illuminate the implications of loss and unresolved grief for black history, politics, and racial identity formation and reimagine possibilities of agency and resilience for marginalized black people. Chapter One looks into the ways in which Morrison engages with the Southern Gothic to depict the haunted realities of black lives and the impacts of personal and historical loss on black people in Beloved. I argue that Morrison, through enacting hauntology and creating a Gothic narrative where repressed historical horrors and unresolved black grief entangle, not only performs an act of critical memory, but reframes black melancholia as a critical condition for interrogating antiblackness and a driving force behind the traumatized black subject’s resistance to historical erasure and reclamation of black subjectivity. Chapter Two probes into the ways in which Ward presents horrors of racial violence and explores potentials of black resilience and agency through a haunted narrative where the Southern Gothic and black spiritual traditions are fused. I contend that through invoking the haunting of ghosts and elements of black spiritual practices and beliefs, Ward not only discloses the complexity of racial grief and melancholia but suggests that black heritage could provide alternative ways of being, feeling, and thinking for black people to resist antiblackness and salvage their futurity amidst loss and grief. Through taking a closer look at the haunting of loss, grief, and melancholia in Morrison’s Beloved and Ward’s Sing, I show that under the condition that antiblackness in U.S. society recognizes only certain human lives as life and some losses as grievable, black melancholia morphs into a gesture of resistance, an ethical act of remembrance, and a dynamic process of constant negotiation between loss and recollection.