Superhero Comics and Everyday Heroics-Michael Chabon’s ＂The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay＂

麥可．謝朋在他獲得普立茲小說獎的小說《卡瓦利與克雷的神奇冒險》中，使用通俗的超人漫畫為敘事框架，來思索生命中自由、規訓、逃逸、救贖、創傷等與生命政治相關的課題。小說以二次大戰為時空背景，藉由超人神話來彰顯超人的獨一無二，也批判「例外法則」的排他性與潛在暴力。藉由演繹超人神話，小說彰顯面對政治對於生命的無限制制約與掌控，被動的屈服與主動的反擊都落入當代政治的例外法則的窠臼中，只有懸置例外，「自然」而「自在」地生活在當下，才能捉住由超人神話「逃」出，而成為「生活在當下」的「平民英雄」。此篇論文援引桑德勒的說法來解讀這本小說。論文大致分成三部分，第一部分先檢視隱藏於超人神話之後的「例外」邏輯，並說明此邏輯之自我矛盾。第二部分則由小說主人翁的成長故事出發，勾勒他們由英雄迷思逃逸而出的不同取徑。第三部分則討論小說如何翻轉「逃逸」為「困局」，而解構英雄迷思，並以「平民英雄」的概念取而代之，而以流變與協商回應倫理的兩難困局。

關鍵字

逃逸；超人敘事；平民英雄；例外法則

並列摘要

In his Pulitzer prize-winning novel, ”The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay”, Michael Chabon uses superhero comics as a structuring principle to question what conditions lead to redemption from the biopolitical seizure of life by the logic of exception. Set in World War II, the novel dramatizes how the logic of exception places Jews in a double bind in the face of the Holocaust; it locates the possibility of redemption, and freedom from the double bind, in neither submitting to the power of the State, nor in resistance of it, but in ”living in the midst of life” and in practicing ”everyday heroics.” This essay brings together a diverse set of discourses about escapism-or lines of flight-including Eric L. Santner's notions of the ”deanimation of the undead” and the ”blessings of more life,” to propose that Chabon's novel celebrates neither escapism nor nihilism; instead, the essay suggests that only in Joe and Sam's circuitous and tango-like movement around the tensions between the repetitive cycle of life constituted by their efforts both to ”escape from” the contingencies of everyday life and to ”escape to” the surety of teleology can they be ”shocked” by love, by the miracles of the unexpected, and by the magic of what Chabon calls in the novel our ”everyday heroics.”

並列關鍵字

escapism ； superhero narrative ； everyday heroics ； logic of exception

參考文獻

Behlman, L.(2004).The escapist: Fantasy, folklore, and the pleasures of the comic book in recent Jewish American holocaust fiction.Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies.22(3),56-71.

Google Scholar

Berger, A. L.(2010).Michael Chabon's the amazing adventures of Kavalier and Clay: The return of the golem.Studies in American Jewish Literature.29,80-89.