Toronto as a Diasporic and Dialogic City: Dionne Brand's 〞What We All Long For〞

多倫多的離散與對話：布蘭德的《我們之所渴望》

10.6153/NTUSLL.2014.31.03

劉紀雯(Kate Chi-Wen Liu)

離散論述 ； 巴赫汀 ； 對話主義 ； 迪翁．布蘭德 ； 《我們之所渴望》 ； Diaspora criticism ； Mikhail Bakhtin ； dialogism ； Dionne Brand ； What We All Long For

NTU Studies in Language and Literature

31期（2014 / 06 / 01）

65 - 96

英文

《我們之所渴望》將多倫多呈現為既離散又具對話性的空間。在本書中多倫多被離散化，因為對兩代移民角色而言，它提供了多重位置、造成了不斷移位與定位（displacement and emplacement）的過程，而在此過程中都市和它的居民都因此不斷地改變。同時，在文本中多倫多也是一個對話空間，因為文本不但編織了一個空間實踐與回應的都市對話網絡，而且還呈現了巴赫汀所定義「複調」（polyphony）敘述，表達了許多居民的慾求與嚮往，而不獨尊於單一的聲音與慾望。此外，文本將「對話性」視為都市居民存在的形式：存在即對話，須回應和承擔它者的對話。在文本所編織的多元觀點中，角色們藉由不同的空間實踐表達他們的渴求，同時回應與承擔其所居住社會環境的要求。但是，這個都市對話與互動網絡其實有其匱乏：小說中的非法移民角色，奇，可能被殺害的結局即凸顯了多倫多的離散與對話空間其實隱含著既開放又排他的矛盾性。

Toronto is both diasporized and dialogized in 〞What We All Long For.〞 It is diasporized because it is, for the second-generation characters as well as for their parents, a space of multi-locality as well as multiple processes of displacement and emplacement, through which both the city and its city dwellers are transformed. Moreover, as the text weaves together a network of urban spatial practices and responses, Toronto is also presented as a dialogic space. More importantly, it is dialogized in the Bakhtinian sense because the text is polyphonic-expressive of many city dwellers' desires and longings-without privileging a singular character's voice or wants. Finally, the text posits dialogism as a mode of (urban) existence; i.e., to exist is to exist dialogically, holding oneself answerable to the address of the Other. In this matrix of perspectives and yearnings, the characters, expressing their longings through spatial practices, respond to and develop their responsibility (answerability) to their social contexts. This interactive network, however, is not without gaps or lacunae, as exemplified in Quy's possible death, which drives 〞home〞 far-reaching questions about a global city's contradictory openness and resistance to strangers.

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