- 學位論文
當代英文小說的啟蒙思想及環境反撲
The Enlightenment and Environmental Discontent in Contemporary Anglophone Novels
摘要
在這本論文中，本人提出所討論的英文小說的生態批評研究。 這些小說皆指出今日地球受到的啟蒙思想禍害，我從不同的生態理論觀點來研究這些小說所提出的解決之道。第一章探討三本小說，第一本為知名美國小說家戈馬克‧麥卡錫《血色子午線》描繪淒涼反啟蒙的美國帝國及生態征服美國西部的曠世巨作。第二本小說為澳洲作家蒂姆‧溫頓《淺灘》的生態思想小說，與阿崗本的動物概念與“人本機器”形成對比。第三本小說也是溫頓的《呼吸》，探討人與物質世界各種關係的可能性。第二章從生態女性主義的觀點討論美國原住民知名作家琳達‧霍根兩本小說《太陽風暴》與《靠鯨生活的人》。這兩本小說描寫主要角色試圖掙脫西方啟蒙傳統的傷痛，雖然有些仍然功敗垂成。 第三章主要集中分析英國巴基斯坦裔小說家納迪姆‧阿斯拉姆2004年名著《失去戀人的地圖》，探討在英國北部的巴基斯坦移民社區所面臨的空間、地方以及氣候的改變。第四章則探討美國科幻小說家保羅‧巴奇加盧比代表作《曼谷的發條女孩》，認為小說展現了氣候暖化將摧毀環境，因為毀滅許多人居住的「全球化」生態社區，這本小說寫提出後人類在啟蒙人文主義的「人類之後」將會是一條死胡同。第五章將以兩本科幻小說─伊恩‧班克斯的《氫奏鳴曲》與查爾斯‧斯特羅斯的2006年《加速》─作為結論。本人將分析以生態的觀點探討人本主義、後人類、人與非人動物的關係、並且提出人類特殊主義將挑戰傳統人與動物的階層關係，帶入人工智慧取代人類的複雜挑戰。
並列摘要
In this dissertation, I provide ecocritical readings of a range of contemporary Anglophone novels. These novels highlight unfortunate legacies of the Enlightenment in our world today. I examine each of the novels from a different lens to see how the text responds to an ecocritical perspective. Chapter One deals with three novels. The first novel, Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian, presents a bleak anti-Enlightenment vision of the imperial and ecological conquest of the American West. The second novel in Chapter One is Tim Winton’s Shallows, which is mainly discussed in contrast with Giorgio Agamben’s ideas about the animal and what Agamben calls the anthropological machine. The final novel of Chapter One is Tim Winton’s Breath: the characters in this novel present different possibilities for the relationship between the human and the material world. Chapter Two discusses two novels by Linda Hogan, Solar Storms and People of the Whale, from an ecofeminist perspective. Both novels have characters attempting to move on from trauma caused by Enlightenment traditions, although not all characters succeed in that quest. Chapter Three focuses on Nadeem Aslam’s novel Maps for Lost Lovers, and examines how that novel deals with interactions between space, place, and climate change for a Pakistani diaspora community in northern England. Chapter Four looks at Paolo Bacigalupi’s novel The Windup Girl in two main ways. First, the novel demonstrates how climate change is upending the environment and thereby destroying the “globalized” ecological niche inhabited by many of us today. Second, The Windup Girl presents interesting ideas about posthumanism in the literal sense of “after the human”—Enlightenment humanism is a dead end, and it is unclear if there is a path forward for humans. Chapter Five concludes the paper with two science-fiction novels, Iain M. Banks’s The Hydrogen Sonata and Charles Stross’s Accelerando. This chapter focuses on ecocritical ways of looking at the singularity, posthumanism, and our relationship with nonhuman animals, and how ideas of the singularity upend traditional hierarchies of human and nonhuman animal life—with the added complication of artificial intelligence presenting a new form of life, perhaps placing itself above the human in those hierarchies.