流動的疆界：莫辛．哈密的《離開西方》中之生命政治治理再現

Moving Boundaries: Representation of Biopolitical Governmentality and Imagination of Global Community in Mohsin Hamid' Exit West

張懿仁(Chang, Yi-Jen)

《發展與前瞻學報》 30期 (2020/12) Pp. 27-43

https://doi.org/10.6737/JDP.202012_(30).02

摘要

近年來，全球難民被迫離鄉與各國反難民的風潮下，移動與拔根的創傷已然成為當代人共感的經驗。非自願離鄉除了被反覆再現為不可磨滅的記憶遺失與傷痛、身份認同的抹除、承接在地者的敵意凝視外，能否替全球難民開啟新生？或開啟想像新的全球社群的可能？而這即是巴基斯坦作家莫辛．哈密在其最新的小說《離開西方》（Exit West）所試圖探討的議題之一。哈密在小說中的難民圖像正如越裔美籍小說家阮越青在紐約時報為小說所寫之書評中所說：「哈密的小說所透露的故事不僅是發生在現在，更是當遷移成為常態的未來。」 阮越青甚至進一步指出小說暗示著閱讀小說當下的每個讀者都可能在未來某天成為難民。若如此，我們又怎麼能對難民關上他們通往另一個可能的「門」？哈密以魔幻寫實之手法不僅讓筆下難民藉由神秘之「門」逃往世界各地，也讓眾多「在地」居民透過「門」而重塑了他們的生命經驗。「門」不僅是希望與新生、同時也是生命政治與治理所部署的場域。「門」猶如另一種國家疆界（boundary），是以生命之名生產出各種排他的暴力的「人類學機器」壓縮難民的生存空間。難民淪為非人，成了國家主權隨時可棄置的裸命。在生命政治治理之下，難民猶如動物般生存，他們要如何去應對國家安全和全球流動下產生的國族焦慮的夾擊之下以及思索安身立命的可能？本文的關懷在於試圖透過小說的再現去探究難民、疆界、生命政治治理與國家主權的碰撞之下產生的對於難民政治的全面生命政治化的危機。

關鍵字

疆界 ； 難民 ； 全球社群 ； 拔根 ； 創傷 ； 生命政治 ； 治理 ； 人類學機器 ； 非人

並列摘要

In recent years, in the climate of forced evacuation of global refugees and the anti-refugee movement around the world, the traumatic experience of moving and uprooting have been witnessed and shared by the global citizens. Would it be possible that involuntary moving away from home can serve as a rebirth for global refugee other than its repeated representation as indelible loss of memory and trauma, elimination of identity, encounter of the hostile gaze from the residents? Or would it be possible that there could be a new global community out of the forced movement? This is one of the issues addressed in Pakistan writer Mohsin Hamid's latest novel Exit West. Refugees mapped in Hamid's novel echoes the comments made by the Vietnamese American writer Viet Thanh Nguyen in the book review for The New York Times, ＂Hamid's novel reveals itself to be a story not only of the present but of the future, where migration will be the norm.＂ Nguyen further writes that the novel implies reader of the novel could highly likely become a refugee one day. If so, why should ＂doors＂ be closed to refugees if they can take them to a possible future? The mysterious ＂door＂ in the novel is a manifestation of Hamid's magic realism that make it possible not only for the refugees to escape, but for the local to reshape their life experience. The ＂door＂ not merely symbolizes hope and rebirth, but it also is the site upon which biopolitical governmentality and management of life operate. As if it is an alternative national boundary, the door functions as an anthropological machine that actively produces exclusive violence to crush the survival space of refugees in the name of life. Refugees then are regarded as bare life, that can abandoned at the sovereignty's disposal. Living like animals under the biopolitical governmentality, how could refugees cope with the attack from the need of national security and the national anxiety from the global movement to think about the possibility of settlement? The main concern of the paper aims to explore the danger and risks from the boipoliticization of refugee politics in the clash of refugees, boundaries, biopolitical governmentality and sovereignty through the reading of Hamid's novel.

並列關鍵字

boundary ； refugees ； global community ； uprooting ； trauma ； biopolitics ； governmentality ； anthropological machine

參考文獻

Hamid, Mohsin. Exit West (New York: Riverhead Books, 2017).

Nguyen, Viet Thanh. “March’s Book Club Pick: ‘Exit West’ by Mohsin Hamid.” The New York Times, 10 March 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/10/books/review/exit-west-mohsin-hamid.html. Accessed 8 July 2020.

Ahmed, Sara. Strange Encounters: Embodied Others in Post-Coloniality. New York: Routledge, 2000.

大衛．米勒班著，李祐寧譯，《救援：難民與政治智慧的挑戰》，台北：天下出版，初版，2018年 8 月，頁 10。

https://www.unhcr.org/globaltrends2019/