Historiography, Communal Identity and Feminine Jouissance-On Toni Morrison's Paradise

歷史書寫、社群身分與陰性暢感：論童妮．摩里森的小說《樂園》

蔡佳瑾(Chia-chin Tsai)

ideological historiography ； communal identity ； constitutive outside ； non-historical kernel of historicity ； feminine jouissance ； 意識形態歷史書寫 ； 社群身分 ； 建構性外在 ； 非歷史性核心 ； 陰性暢感

歐美研究

38卷2期（2008 / 06 / 01）

161 - 209

英文

Toni Morrison's Paradise (1998) exposes the hazard of forming a communal historiography as an ideological narrative founded on racial purity. In light of Lacanian psychoanalysis and its application to the critique of ideology, this paper aims to explore how the communal identity is hinged on the ideological historiography and how a non-historical kernel that resists historicization is displaced onto the fantasmatic ＂Out There,＂ a constitutive outside that simultaneously constitutes and destabilizes the socio-symbolic system of the all-black community. ＂Out There＂ is also embodied by the Convent women, who stand for the Other whose self-sufficiency is demonized as debauchery in Ruby's patriarchal fantasy. Moreover, Morrison renders ＂Out There＂ a place where healing and redemption reside. The constitutive outside which the town's self-enclosing patriarchal socio-symbolic system expels is precisely the locus where its hope for change is located; to put it in light of the Lacanian concept of sexuation, this constitutive outside is none other than the domain of the feminine logic, where Lacanian psychoanalysis considers being the chance for cultural change. The magic-realistic rendition of the disappearance of the bodies of the Convent women insinuates a possibility of salvation figured by the vision of a door and a window leading to a place ＂out there＂-a feminine, non-historical domain where a traumatic encounter occurs to redeem historical failures. In contrast with the fantasmatic earthly ＂paradise＂ always founded on exclusion, this domain, symbolized by Piedade's songs, is the home and paradise Morrison has in mind.

有鑒於《樂園》呈現歷史書寫成為強調膚色血統的意識形態論述之後所產生的危險，本篇論文援引拉岡的精神分析理論以及此理論於意識形態批判方面的應用，以分析本書中的歷史書寫在形塑社群身分時如何將非歷史性核心轉置於幻象中的「外界」（Out There）與享受暢感（jouissance）之大對體（the Other）。此「外界」正是一具封閉傾向的父權社會符號體系所排斥的「建構性外在」，同時也是促成此一體系改變的契機與醫治之所在。此外，本文指出，書末所出現的「外界」顯示一陰性、非歷史性的領域，隱含著歷史失敗得以被救贖的契機，此領域才是真正的樂園以及家鄉的所在。

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1. Tsai, Chia-chin(2010)."But the Greatest of These Is Love": Desire for the Father and Agape in Toni Morrison's Love.同心圓：文學與文化研究,36(1),217-241.