敘述「不重要」的人類世: 石黑一雄《別讓我走》中的時間與人類滅絕

Abstract

本篇論文探討當代小說如何敘述人類滅絕在人類世下作為克萊兒・寇布克所稱的 「更廣大的思維事件」。這樣的敘述尤可見於當代小說開始展現一種自我反射性的時 代意識，不僅抗拒「宏偉」的人類概念，更承擔起人類於新世紀糾纏存在的「粗」及 「深」的想像。然而，本論文主張即將迎來的人類世同時傳喚我們採取一種「存於差 異」的敘述模式。基於寇布克「存於差異」的理論，本論文闡述這種敘述模式如何重 新詮釋「差異」中的內建差別性，並視人類滅絕為一種去人類中心差異性的開放，進 一步迫使我們重新思考人類存在在地球上的意義。而這樣的敘述轉向首先必須要接受 其他非人類的時間。一旦能以非人類中心主義重新理解時間性，死亡的敘述將從基於 人類的脆弱性，轉而基於一種與非人類普世的共有性。本論文呈現石黑一雄的《別讓 我走》如何作為這種「存於差異」敘述轉向的一個意外但強而有力的例子。結合地層 時間、死亡為反實現化作用以及垃圾生態學，《別讓我走》展示了人類世下成為「不 重要」⎯意即反人類中心⎯的需求。藉由克隆人旁白的揭示，小說重新檢視當今人類 面對人類世下的自身存在，更挑戰對於人類滅絕過度重要的敘述關注。

This thesis explores the contemporary fictional engagements in narrating the impending human extinction as what Claire Colebrook calls, a “broader thought-event,” in the Anthropocene. The engagements can be particularly perceived in how contemporary fiction has begun to display a self-reflexive, epochal awareness, one that resists the “grand” notion of the human while taking on a “thick” and “deep” imaginary of humanity’s enmeshed status in the new epoch. Yet as the thesis would like to argue, the Anthropocene now also requires an “indifferent” mode of narrating that prompts us to rethink the significance of human existence on Earth. Building upon Colebrook’s notion of “indifference,” which reconceptualizes “difference” as destructive of intrinsic distinctions, the indifferent turn calls for the need to story human extinction as an opening to non-anthropocentric differences. It also suggests that the way to carry out such a storying is to first embrace other other-than-human times. Once we reconstrue time not in a human-centric sense, we can narrate our death no longer in terms of human fragility but in terms of a universal communion with the nonhuman. This thesis ultimately shows how Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go (2005) serves as an unexpected yet powerful example of engaging in such an indifferent turn by weaving together the notion of stratigraphic time, death-as-counter- actualization, and rubbish ecology. Through the narration of a human clone named Kathy H., the novel demonstrates the need of becoming counter-anthropocentric, or in Ishiguro’s word, “negligible,” in the Anthropocene. In doing so, it challenges our all-too-significant narrative preoccupation with human extinction today.