劉慈欣《三體》三部曲中的技術、時間與主體性

劉慈欣的硬科幻代表作《三體》三部曲不僅展現了作者對技術細節的精湛描寫，背後更是蘊含對「技術」這一概念的深切探究，其中涉及倫理、知識論、現象學、存有學等各個層面。雖然少數學者已開始關注小說中的「技術」問題，但至今為止仍未見任何對於該問題的專題討論。有鑑於此，此篇論文旨在藉由貝拿爾．斯蒂格勒 (Bernard Stiegler) 於其著作《技術與時間》第一卷中的理論架構，探討在《三體》中，劉慈欣如何呈現以及思考「技術」這一概念。此篇論文的中心論述包含兩個部分。第一部分聚焦於時間與技術的關係，主張語言及技術物透過「預期」(anticipation) 這一概念，在形塑整部小說的時間性中扮演了關鍵角色。這一部分除了處理「時間」這一較少談及的的主題，同時也關注劉慈欣將人類語言視為一種技術的特殊性，以及小說中對人類語言的戲劇化呈現，如何連接到科幻作為一種文學類型的中介性 (liminality) 這一重要議題。接續第一部分「技術即時間」(technics-as-time) 的理論基礎，第二部分聚焦處理主體性問題，主張《三體》透過演繹人與技術共同演化，提出「技術存有」(the technical being) 作為一種新的主體性。此篇論文進一步主張，在後人類論述的脈絡下，「技術存有」的特殊意義在於其復甦人文主義 (humanism) 之動機，在試圖重新找回人類能動性的同時，盡可能消解傳統啟蒙時代人文主義的種種限制，包括理性主義、本質主義以及人類中心主義。

關鍵字

劉慈欣；技術存有；時間；技術；人類能動性

並列摘要

Often categorized as hard science fiction, Liu Cixin’s Remembrance of the Earth’s Past (REP), also known as the Three-Body trilogy, not only is a work brimming with technical descriptions, but also serves as a probing inquiry into the manifold implications of technics, including the ethical, the epistemological, the phenomenological, and the ontological. Though a few critics have noticed that technics in the novel merit more attention, no substantial research has been done so far. To fill this critical gap, this study seeks to explore how technics is depicted and contemplated in the novel by drawing on Bernard Stiegler’s formulations in his work Technics and Time 1: The Fault of Epimetheus. The central thesis of this study contains two parts. The first part focuses on the relationship between time and technics and argues that language and other depicted technical objects play a crucial role in shaping the temporality of the entire trilogy through the thematic of “anticipation.” This line of inquiry is especially productive in that it not only tackles the understudied theme of time, but also draws attention to Liu Cixin’s dramatization of human language as a peculiar technology, a critical issue especially relevant to SF given its liminal state as a literary genre. Based on the groundwork laid by the first part on the notion of technics-as-time, the second part problematizes the concept of subjectivity and argues that a new kind of subjectivity called the “technical being” is revealed in the novel through enacting the course of technical co-evolution based on a model of “adoption” rather than adaptation. In engaging with the posthuman discourse, this study further contends that the significance of the technical being lies in its endeavor to attain a revitalized version of humanism that seeks to restore human agency while resolving several proven limitations of traditional Enlightenment Humanism, including rationalism, essentialism, and anthropocentrism.