Surviving a Thousand Deaths: The Father's Looking Glass in Kathryn Harrison's Exposure

窺視鏡的它端：凱瑟琳‧哈莉森《曝光》中的創傷主體與分裂文本

10.29737/SJFLL.201103.0002

林熒嬌(Ying-Chiao Lin)

受虐童年 ； 創傷主體 ； 父女關係 ； 自戀人格 ； 分裂人格／文本 ； 倒置 ； childhood abuse ； traumatic subject ； pathological narcissist ； perversion ； father-daughter relationship

東吳外語學報

32期（2011 / 03 / 01）

25 - 50

英文

凱瑟琳‧哈莉森在她的許多作品中的主題，皆包含女兒對父親的強烈依賴，包括《曝光》(1993)一書。該小說描述女主角安因為對父親執著的愛，在她幼齡之時，任由父親踐踏她年輕的生命－充當攝影師父親裸體女童模特兒達數年之久。在文中，表面上第三人稱的平鋪直敘式倒敘故事與第一人稱斜體字形所陳述內心對其父之獨白交叉出現，彰顯女主角既抗拒又恐懼父親的矛盾情結，此種分裂之文本形式，反應出女主角潛意識下被迫產生之分裂主體／人格。本文分別探討《曝光》中攝影師父親的自戀人格、自殺行為，以及女主角之心靈受創經驗於日後產生的倒置(perversion)反應，如何表現在嚴重的強迫行為中，如：嗑藥、偷竊和自殘等；並嘗試以心理學中的理論，對書中父親角色其病態式追求完美的自戀症人格、窺視心理和嚴重的憂鬱作探討，女主角部份則以其受創後症狀研究為主，並分析其分裂人格之特色與其分裂式之敘述方式的關係。 在敘述技巧方面，此小說呈現了兩個世界：一是標有日期，呈現描述一般生活內容的第三人稱敘述模式，另一種則是以斜體字形出現的第一人稱敘述，此部份是安對身亡父親的內心對話，這種雙重進行的敘述模式，平行類比了安的分裂精神狀態。安的內心獨白呈現一種情緒層面－控訴其父的傷害與冷漠，描述的正是安揭露內心一張張痛苦的照片，並相對於其父之冰冷的藝術照片。成人後的女兒安，同時過著正常規律與叛逆自虐的雙重生活內容。《曝光》一作之主要內容，雖呈現一悲慘現代版的古典戀父情結劇（如同Electra一般），但透過安對周遭愛的付出，她昇華於無數次在父親照片中“死亡”的經驗之上。

Kathryn Harrison's compulsive need of her father has after all been a crucial theme in many of her works, including Exposure (1993), in which the girl protagonist/narrator is obsessed with her father's love and allows him to invade her physical and psychological territory with his lifeless camera. Underneath the surface expression of desire for the father, the girl narrator's monologues ”with” him reveal both a sustained feeling of repulsion and resistance and an irresistible fear of paternal loss. This paper, then, centering on the overt exercise of paternal authority and its impact on the young girl's life and personality formation, seeks to clarify the pathological father-daughter relationship presented in Exposure by looking at the photographer-father's narcissistic personality, his suicide, the girl victim's psychic responses to her experience of posing nude for her father at a young age, her compulsive acts (drug addiction, kleptomania) and self-mutilation in adult life, and the possibility of her recovery, as well as Harrison's narrative techniques that are directly tied to the destructive father-daughter bond. Though Exposure was a national bestseller, criticism on the novel is quite limited. This study is grounded in psychological theories of the narcissistic and ”perfectionist” personality, voyeurism (the father's photography), and post-traumatic disorder symptoms as observed in the traumatized daughter-model. With the simultaneous movement forward of the two narrative lines Harrison creates a kind of aesthetic equilibrium, with the objective and omniscient point-of-view on past events balanced by the subjective revelations of a daughter who never allowed herself to speak so directly to the father when he was alive. The gradually surfacing subjective story line of the daughter's memories and her reflections on them, which allows us to understand her compulsive and self-destructive behavior, develops from amore shrill, outraged and accusatory tone toward a freer, more relaxed and self-confident one. She has come to see her own personal trauma as a detached discourse that can threaten her no more.

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