Dystopian Prophecy and Survival in a Hybrid Space in Sherman Alexie's ＂Distances＂

謝爾曼．阿列克謝的〈距離〉中混合空間中的反烏托邦預言和生存

池潘新(Mahdi Sepehrmanesh)

Ghost Dance ； Hybridity ； Separatism ； Survival ； Vanishing Indian ； 鬼舞 ； 混雜 ； 分離主義 ； 生存 ； 消失中的印度人

興大人文學報

64期（2020 / 03 / 01）

67 - 87

英文

The reservation, in Sherman Alexie's stories, is a space in which he addresses the problems of the Indians, such as poverty and alcoholism. He deploys contemporary popular culture rather than the stories of the past manipulated by European ideology. In his alternative history, ＂Distances＂, Alexie depicts an imagined dystopian society that arises as the result of the fulfillment of the Ghost Dance prophecy in which a flood and resurrected Indians from the past destroy the contemporary white people and their culture to establish their own exclusive authentic Indian culture, which seems an inevitable task since their culture is so saturated with white ideology and technology that it is impossible to escape its internalization and impact. Alexie addresses and criticizes the strong belief in purity and authenticity of Indian blood as the product of colonial ideology, which rather than creating hopeful possibilities, destroys both whites and the Indians themselves by segregating them from one another. Despite separatism and the destruction caused by the fulfillment of the prophecy, complete annihilation is impossible because of the internalized need and desire for aspects of ＂white＂ culture by the Indians and the already eroded cultural spaces where a hybrid culture is created. In this hybrid space there is always a promise of survival, regeneration and production of cultural identiy despite violence and devastation caused by the false belief in the authenticity of the past rooted in the ＂vanishing Indian＂ myth of Indian primitiveness and self-destruction propounded by colonialism ideology.

謝爾曼．阿列克謝（Sherman Alexie）的故事預留了他對印第安人貧困和酒癮問題的討論空間。他採用當代流行文化，而不是歐洲意識形態的手法來呈現過去的敘事。在他非主流文本〈距離〉中，阿列克謝描繪了一個想像的反烏托邦社會，實現了「鬼舞」預言。在該預言中，洪水般從過去復活的印地安人摧毀了當代白人文化，從而建立了他們自己獨有的印地安文化。這似乎是必然的；他們的文化充滿著白人意識形態，而似乎無法逃脫其已內化的影響。阿列克謝評論了印第安人血統中對真實性的信念，這是殖民意識形態的產物，這不僅非為充滿希望的可能性，更是以彼此分化的方式摧毀了白人和印地安人之間的關係。儘管因分離主義而起的預言油然而生，然而，完全毀滅這樣的關係是不可能的，因為白人與印第安文化已經侵蝕了個人的內在需要和慾望，其中混合文化的文化空間從而創建。僅管「消失的原始印地安神話」和自我毀滅的殖民主義導致了對於過去真實性的錯誤信念，在這個混合空間總有一個生存和再生的永續性。

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