石黑一雄《別讓我走》中的死亡、記憶與哀悼

Abstract

本論文援引法國理論家德希達關於死亡、記憶與哀悼的哲思，試圖探討日裔英國作家石黑一雄小說《別讓我走》中的倫理意涵與希冀。小說中第一人稱的敘事可被視為哀悼工作的文學再現，其中傳達出關於生與死、今與昔、自我與他者等等關係的哲學關懷。本論文分就「死亡」、「記憶」與「哀悼工作」等三個相互關聯的主題進行分析。首先，小說傳達出死亡是形塑生命的力量。生之狀態開展於對於已逝摯愛的不斷再現過程。其次，小說敘述者對於記憶的執念成為她當下生命的撫慰。過往記憶累積成為現今生命的狀態。最後的主題分析是關於如何看待他者對於自身生命的影響痕跡，而哀悼工作突顯出如此的反思過程。小說敘事者重新審視他者在自身中所遺留下的銘刻。透過肯定他者對於自身的形塑痕跡，受到社會排拒的複製人敘事者實則表達出對於自身生命的肯定。綜觀以上三個主題探究，《別讓我走》肯定了他者性(otherness)在主體建立過程中的關鍵重要性。透過另類歷史(alternative history)的想像方式，石黑一雄的小說隱含著對於當代社會倫理關係的反省，並且希冀著一個對於他者性更為包容的未來世界。

This thesis aims to explore the ethical implications and aspiration in Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go (2005). Inspired by Jacques Derrida's discussions on the subject of reckoning with the dead other, the research project comprises three correlated thematic investigations into the novel: death, remembrance and the work of mourning. The first-person narration of the novel is treated as a literary work of mourning, manifesting ethical concerns about the relationships between the living and the dead, between the present and the past, as well as between self and other. The first thematic analysis on loss in the novel concludes with the philosophical connotation that the force of death is a ubiquitous gaze cast upon the living. The second part of this research project suggests that the novel treats the narrator's remembrance of past lives as an art of living in the present. The theme of the third part focuses on the manners of reckoning with constituent traces of otherness. With her autobiographical reckoning with the dead others, the clone narrator of Ishiguro's novel is going through a process of self-reckoning vis-à-vis an egoistic society's rejection of its clone members. In sum, all of the thematic investigations reveal otherness as constituent and productive in the formation of individual or collective subjectivity. Both a tale of alternative history and a literary work of mourning, Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go reckons with modern memories in an imaginary way, refracting ethical concerns about the social situation in the contemporary world as well as an ethical aspiration for a more tolerant future.