Cultural Contact and Responsibility: Tayeb Salih's Season of Migration to the North

文化接觸與責任：薩里的《北徙季節》

10.29737/SJFLL.200803.0006

許綬南(Shou-Nan Hsu)

化約 ； 慾望 ； 他者 ； 暴力 ； 責任 ； reduction ； Desire ； the Other ； violence ； responsibility

東吳外語學報

26期（2008 / 03 / 01）

141 - 170

英文

本文從文化衝突的角度探討薩里〈Tayeb Salih〉以新獨立的蘇丹為背景的《北徙季節》〈Season of Migration to the North〉，研究作者如何從文化接觸的議題找出方法，同時處理國內南北文化差異所造成的暴力衝突，以及蘇丹獨立建國後所必須迫切面對的文化認同問題。在建立列維納斯〈Emmanuel Levinas〉有關倫理的論述與《北徙季節》的關連復，本文指出薩里在本書透過村落中人對異國風味人仕一廂情願的扭曲與佔有，以及英、蘇人仕之間相吸又相斥的愛情及其挫敗，強調和平、互益的深刻文化接觸，前提在於接納他者的優先性，以及籍由為他者負責而形成自我主體的必要。

In Season of Migration to the North, with the newly independent Sudan as backdrop, Tayeb Salih offers his answer to the cultural conflicts between the north and the south in Sudan and to those between the newly independent Sudan and the West. By establishing the relevance of Emmanuel Levinas's views on ethics to this book, this study examines how Levinasian responsibility works as a model for cultural contact. Season of Migration to the North unfolds as the unidentified Sudanese narrator's learning process. Through his endeavor to help himself and his people, he gradually sees the need for a different conception of responsibility. In the book the southern Sudanese people's fear of the northerners' forceful imposition of Arabization and Islamization and Sudan's difficulty in constructing its identity in its dealings with the West find their parallels in the Sudanese characters' fascination with the culturally different and in the characters' inability to meet the culturally different without murderous reductions and subsequent conflicts. Through the unidentified narrator's reluctant recognition of his uprooted culture, his shared desire for the culturally different, and his inescapable responsibility for the other people, Salih shows his people the desirability of being responsible for the Other. In addition to the establishment of unique selfhood through service rendered to the Other, Levinasian responsibility makes contacts peaceful and beneficial to all the parties concerned. Without people's ability to take responsibility for the Other, cultural contacts, whether between nations or between two human beings, remain superficial, murderous, and suicidal.

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