「胯下慾火」如何是好？論那博科夫《蘿莉塔》中精神分析式倫理之乍現

Abstract

弗拉基米爾．納博科夫的小說《蘿莉塔》向來被視為一部詞藻華美但內容醜陋、爭議性十足的英文小說，而這樣的一部作品在讀者以及評論家之間激盪出難以數計的紛見與評論。迄今絕大部份關於小說中可議內容的論述皆以其道德與否作為評論與剖析的出發點，而本文希望在此基礎之上將問題的重心稍作轉移，透過拉岡精神分析中對於慾望，以及奠立於其之上對於倫理的詮釋，來評析小說男主角杭伯特．杭伯特的不當行為。 為此，本文首先將企圖勾勒出精神分析中慾望以及倫理之間的理論架構關係。由此架構，本文將接著聚焦男主角杭伯特，並企圖闡述（１）在道德良知所規制的範疇之外此一角色如何以一個精神結構非變態的主體展現其慾望的運作，（２）這個角色所體現的各種僭越傾向不僅具有其倫理面向，更透過其作用凸顯出看似價值系統與其大相逕庭的社會道德體制之運作模式在結構上著實也有著相同的僭越要素存在其中，（３）此角色面對蘿莉塔所真正碰觸到的倫理難題並非源自於其自身的性癖好或者其荒誕的幻想，而是由於其未能有效遵循的禁令式律法之功能，過度接近其客體所致。由杭伯特的不倫理性，本文將進一步審視在小說後半段的幾個重要章節中，此一角色在與分隔多年的蘿莉塔再次重逢時所展現的倫理乍現，爬梳此乍現是如何透過蘿莉塔作為結構上「不全」的女人、她在此結構位置所展現出的屹立不搖的慾望、以及此慾望所帶有的美的向度以及昇華效果的作用下，方得以實現，並觀察杭伯特對於愛的認識如何由此產生變化。最後，本文將檢討此倫理乍現稍縱即逝的特質，以及是否可能將此小說本身視為一昇華產物，將閱讀與參與思考的過程視為一個慾望反覆重新建構的倫理乍現之契機。

Vladmir Nabokov’s Lolita has been, and very much still is, deemed a controversial English novel whose combination of undeniably elegant prosaic style and inflammatorily scandalous content has inspired highly diverse opinions in readers and critics alike. Developing upon but diverging from the general critical tendency of situating and elaborating the problematics thereof in terms of morality, this thesis aims, by means of Lacanian psychoanalysis, to investigate and identify the misconduct of the criminal antagonist, Humbert Humbert, in terms of desire and a conception of ethics founded thereupon. To this end, this thesis shall first set down the theoretical framework of the relation between ethics and desire as is understood in psychoanalysis. It shall utilize this framework to first engage in an analysis of how Humbert, above and beyond his questionable moral code, can in fact be viewed as a non-structurally-perverse subject whose desire is for the most part functional, whose transgressive character is not only at least in part ethically driven but is structurally more similar to rather than different from that of the society of propriety and normativity against which his desire ostensibly appears to be diametrically opposed, and whose true conundrum in his relation to his love-object, Lolita, stems not from his outlandish predilections and dark fantasies but rather from his compromised, indeed unethical proximity to this object at the expense of the Law of the paternal no by which his subjective desire is sustained. It shall then endeavor to delineate the ethical moment at which Humbert eventually arrives upon his reencounter with Lolita towards the end of the novel as achieved before the unyielding desire of Lolita, whose structural position in this moment as a not-whole woman functions as the image of the beautiful and by whose sublimating effects Humbert is able to recognize as such, to assume anew his ethical duty to, the unfathomability at both the heart of his desire and that of the Other that is Lolita, and to reconfigure the basis of his conception of love. It shall finally conclude with contemplations on the transient nature of ethicality and the conjectural possibility of reading this novel as itself a sublimated text through the reiterative engagement in which the reader also arrives at an ethical moment at which desire can be thought anew.