來自地底的笛鳴：科森．懷特黑德的地下鐵路再想像

Abstract

受史蒂夫．派爾的《真實的城市：現代性、空間與城市生活的幻影》對資本主義的反思啟發，本文從階級區隔的角度切入，探討科森．懷特黑德的《地下鐵路》（2016）對美國內戰前的祕密結社「地下鐵路」的再想像。筆者將書中逃奴之旅途經的多時相景觀讀作經濟寓言，望能揭露懷特黑德虛構之形似地鐵的交通系統所隱含的，根植於黑人行動主義的社會改革主張。緒論中，筆者將再想像後的地下鐵路置於前人的新奴隸敘事曾使用的干涉線性時間觀的修辭技巧之下，以做進一步的鑽研。正文第一章聚焦在逃奴主角途經的抽離真實時空的美國各州，加以理論化各站所發生的，種族化的駭人暴行。改編自真實歷史事件，小說中一幕幕怵目驚心的場景指出種族主義跟資本主義的經濟要素密不可分，持續為禍當今的美國。第二章涉及逃跑女奴蔻拉及奴隸獵人里啟維所依存的對立的社會進步模式。從地下交通網分別激起剝奪感及對烏托邦的想望，死敵之間信念的碰撞將決定地下鐵路及其子民的未來。總結全文，筆者企圖凸顯懷特黑德筆下縮時時空中的階級形構，彼同晚期資本主義的大環境下激增的新奴隸敘事著作視為一整體，實多有共鳴。

This thesis investigates Colson Whitehead’s reimagination of the antebellum abolitionist network in The Underground Railroad (2016) with a Marxian approach inspired by Steve Pile’s Real Cities: Modernity, Space, and the Phantasmagorias of City Life. Reading the multitemporal landscapes unfurled by the fugitive journey as economic allegories, I hope to disclose the black activist advocacy for social reform underlying Whitehead’s fictive subway-like transit system. The introduction of my study places the reimagined Underground Railroad among the time-disturbing literary devices in previous neo-slave narratives for exploration. Chapter One focuses on the alternate states the fugitive protagonist travels through, with a theorization of the racialized horrors at each stop. As adaptions of real historical events, the appalling scenes in Whitehead’s novel signal racism as inseparable from the economic factors of capitalism, which still plagues America nowadays. Chapter Two concerns the confrontational models of social progress Cora the runaway woman and Ridgeway the slave catcher live upon. Respectively eliciting the feelings of deprivation and utopian aspirations within the subterranean transit network, the nemeses determine the future of the railway and its people in the clash of their credos. Summarizing the entire thesis into a brief conclusion, I want to underline the epochal changes of class formation Whitehead captures, which resonate through a body of neo-slave narrative writings proliferating in the late-capitalist milieu.