從跨族裔談起：《野草花》之日美遷徙營敘事和「新墾民」身分建構與生態批評

Narrating Cross-Racial Construction of Pioneer Identity and Eco-Critical Subject in Cynthia Kadohata's Weedflower

常丹楓(Tan-Feng CHANG)

《英美文學評論》 37期 (2020/12) Pp. 147-169

https://doi.org/10.6711/REAL.202012_(37).0005

摘要

本篇論文探究日美遷徙營敘事中「新墾民」身分建構作為環境批評的經濟脈絡。本文藉由遷徙營中的「拓荒者」身分建構，勾勒出一段鮮少人知的亞裔西部拓荒史，再透過這塊文化版圖的重建，說明日美遷徙營的論述如何突破地理空間和種族差異的桎梏，編織出跨國／越族邊境的文化想像，活絡長久以來侷限於單一族裔政治的遷徙營敘事。論文首先拆解日美遷徙營在二戰記憶中振興美國經濟和國際形象的角色。在官方口號的渲染下，日美遷徙營不單單是囚禁的牢籠，反倒成為戰時農業革命和糧食供應的重要場域，象徵著美國民主國家的實踐。本文援引學者有關亞美族群「新懇民」（settler）主體形塑的見解和批評，點出日美遷徙營的歷史並非屬於單一民族的想像，而是與美國原住民被殖民和驅逐的歷史有著環環相扣、錯綜複雜的關係；同樣面臨遷徙和離散的日裔族群，看似重蹈原住民被剝奪土地的覆轍，卻在戰時農業改革和環境改造運動的推波助瀾之下與土地建立起不一樣的情感，發展出自成一局的「拓荒者」文化論述。最後，筆者借重日美「新懇民」的視角閱讀日裔美國作家角畑（Cynthia Kadohata）的小說《野草花》，透過小說對日美遷徙營居民和當地印第安「原住民」之間紛擾的描繪，思索遷徙營敘事在跨族群想像的可能與限制。

關鍵字

日美遷徙營敘事 ； 拓荒者 ； 農耕革命 ； 生態批評 ； 跨族裔研究

並列摘要

This article considers the articulation of a pioneer identity in the Japanese American internment narrative as part of an eco-critical practice amid the genre's antiracist and decolonization efforts. It first probes into the underpinning of the internees' pioneer identity through their claim to an Asian American agricultural citizenship, thereby delineating an understudied Asian American frontier history that recounts Japanese Americans' representation as colonial farmers who destabilize the racial norms and hierarchy of the twentieth-century US setter state. Specifically, this article approaches Cynthia Kadohata's 2006 novel Weedflower as an exemplary interracial narrative, which highlights the tension and juxtaposition between the history of Japanese internment and that of Indian Removal. Thus, rather than merely a location of confinement, the internment houses become a site for the official-national mobilization of agricultural force for the purpose of renovating the desert land and creating a diverse society out of the colonial frontiers. In this way, the work of Japanese internees idealizes the myth of ＂democracy＂ at the cadre of US settler colonialism that seeks to translate minority capital into political capital. Furthermore, this article draws upon several US settler colonialism critics, including Candace Fujikane, Iyko Day, and Jodi Byrd to rethink the formation of Japanese subjects as the historical embodiment of ＂settlers of color＂ who engaged in colonial plantation economy and triangulate the relationships among the white master, Asian alien, and Native people. It complicates Weedflower as any easy national allegory aiming for economically including yet politically excluding ethnic minority into US national body. Ultimately, the novel's representation of Japanese internees' propensity to agrarian work problematizes the idea of their inclusion, and their identification with the land enables a cultural as well as economic shaping of their subjectivity, which transforms them into indigenized citizens and anticipates an environmentalist shaping of Japanese-Indigenous connectivity, further opening up the space for cross-racial dialogues and anti-colonial solidarities between Japanese Americans and American Indians in global contexts of American national remaking.

並列關鍵字

Japanese American Internment Narrative ； Pioneer Identity ； Agrarian Revolution ； Ecocriticism ； Cynthia Kadohata

參考文獻

陳福仁、游素玲。〈重繪美國西南：從空間詩學探討日裔美國文學裡的集中營書寫〉。《中外文學》35卷1期（2006 年6月）：頁41-57。

李秀娟。〈歷史記憶與創傷時間：敘述日裔美國遷徙營〉。《中外文學》41 卷 1 期（2012 年 3 月）：頁 7-44

Addison, Joseph, and Richard Steele. The Spectator. Ed. Daniel F. Bond. 5 vols. Oxford: Clarendon, 1965. Print.

Adachi, Nobuko. Japanese Diasporas: Unsung Pasts, Conflicting Presents, and Uncertain Futures. London and New York: Routledge, 2006. Print.

Burton, F. & Farrell, M. & Lord, B. & Lord, W. & Kashima, Tetsuden. Confinement and Ethnicity: An Overview of World War II Japanese American Relocation Sites. Seattle: U of Washington P, 2002. Print.