The Empire Cooks Back: Cultural Hybridization in Timothy Mo's "Sour Sweet"

逆煮帝國：論毛翔青《酸甜》之文化混雜

王景智(Ching-Chih Wang)

酸甜 ； 文化混雜 ； 毛翔青 ； 陌生人 ； 道地性 ； sour sweet ； cultural hybridization ； Timothy Mo ； stranger ； authenticity

東吳外語學報

38期（2014 / 03 / 01）

1 - 19

英文

本論文以食物為文化符旨，檢視毛翔青《酸甜》（1982）一書中的文化混雜策略。我以食物的酸甜滋味結合陳氏家庭仿效主流文化時所使用的巧妙烹煮手法，探討他們逆煮帝國中心的企圖及欲達成之目標。此外，在處理陳氏一家對於適應性的需求及渴望的場景時，我探討中國菜的指涉意涵，說明為何不道地的酸甜料理不僅能滿足英國人的味蕾，且有助陳氏一族面對甚至釋懷自身的窘境－住在倫敦郊區的陌生人。在處理全球化情境下陌生人既內且外窘境的議題時，我將以羅柏森及費瑟斯通對於全球權力分配這個議題的論據，開啟我個人的理論架構，藉此闡釋陌生人對家園吊詭渴望的論述。一方面渴望返鄉，另一方面則希望在異鄉落地生根，陌生人最後發現自己面臨一個兩者皆非但卻又兩者皆是的窘況。再者，在我闡明陌生人是如何逆煮且顛覆主流文化對於異國風味既排斥但又喜聞樂見之時，魯格尼與帕特爾以美乃滋的製作過程解釋混雜論述的策略運用，對本論文的「逆煮帝國」觀點是相當具有啟發性的，因為在製作美乃滋的過程中，酸甜的用量相當多變，就如同混雜論述所引申出的開放性與獨特性。將食物視為文化混雜的開放式象徵物，蘊含於毛翔青故事中居住於倫敦的中國移民家庭，我希望藉由閱讀移民作家挑戰「道地性」的創作，在各文化彼此含混交換的全球時代，對「生產原初／原創」（the making of originality）提出個人新解。

This paper explores the aesthetic value of treating food as a signifier to demonstrate the stranger's politics of hybridization in Timothy Mo's ”Sour Sweet” (1982). I will conflate food with the Chen family's subtle device of mimicking the dominant culture, that is, their strategies of cooking back to the imperial center. In addition, when reading the scenes of the Chens' need and desire for adaptability, I focus on the referential meaning of the Chinese food to explain why the inauthentic sweet-sour dish can cater to British taste buds and help them struggle against the crisis of being strangers in outskirts London. To lay a theoretical framework for the stranger's politics of cultural hybridization, I will begin with Roland Robertson's and Mike Featherstone's arguments on the issue of the global distribution of power, upon which my discussion of the stranger's paradoxical desire for home depends. Longing to return home on the one hand and wanting to found roots in a foreign land on the other, the stranger finds him trapped in the tug-of-war of neither-nor and both-and. Moreover, as I shed light on how the stranger cooks back to subvert the dominant culture's rejection and attraction to the exotic flavor, Maria Lugones's and Geeta Patel's translating the discussion of hybridity into the making of mayonnaise is illuminating in detecting the variable consumption of the sweet-sour sauce. Employing food as an open signifier to examine Mo's narrative of roots, I wish to contribute to the making of originality while reading novels created by immigrant writers as inventions of authenticity.

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