「你的身體總讓你驚訝連連」:奧特維亞．巴特勒《莉莉絲的後種》中的情動政治與後人類倫理

本論文試圖透過情動研究的角度閱讀奧特維亞．巴特勒《莉莉絲的後種》中的後人類倫理。此論文將身體動能視為後人類倫理的重要關鍵，並藉此分析主體的身體如何應對新的本體關係產生時的不協調性。為了更清楚的理解身體動能和此不協調性的關係，第一章將回顧幾位重要情動理論家，包含史賓諾賽、德勒茲、德勒茲與瓜塔里、馬穌米、柏蘭特等人的理論。透過回顧這些討論，第一章試圖帶出身體面臨不協調性所產生的兩種截然不同的可能:面對此不協調性，身體可能不受主體控制地重複以前的生活模式，以維持身體對主控權的需求；但此不協調性的正向動能也可能改變主體的生活模式，並激發不再以主控權為底的身體潛能。據此，本論文的第二章與第三章處理將《莉莉絲的後種》如何透過我稱之為「無主身體」的敘事手法去呈現主體身體面對此不一致性的兩種可能。第二章探討主體如何因為無主身體的限制，使得他們在面對小說中的新本體關係時仍舊無法改變。當主體的情動能力被過往的生活節奏與對主控權的需求所限制時，他們只能重複過去的生活模式，以寄望在感覺層次上能抗拒新世界中的各種不協調性。第三章則是透過討論三個相互關聯的主題（性／同意權、時間性、關係性）轉向分析無主身體的可能性。此章將分析小說如何透過性和時間性的描寫，以改變以主控權為底的主體，並讓主體的身體動能和倫理關係建立在和本體的解離關係上，讓主體得以承受不斷進行差異化的本體關係。

關鍵字

奧特維亞．巴特勒；《莉莉絲的後種》；情動研究；後人類倫理；無主身體；不協調性

並列摘要

This thesis reads the posthuman ethics in Octavia Butler’s Lilith’s Brood through the lens of affect theory. By situating the augmentation of bodily capacity as the core of the posthuman ethics, this thesis focuses on subjects’ embodied relations with the inconsistency that people encounter when the emergence of new ontological relations marks the need for new visceral formations. To better understand people’s visceral relations with inconsistency, Chapter One examines how affect theorists – Baruch Spinoza, Gilles Deleuze, Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Brian Massumi, and Lauren Berlant – conceptualize the affect to grasp people’s (in)consistent existential relations with the ontological connections. Chapter One proposes two possible results of people’s embodied relations with inconsistency: on the one hand, they might be propelled to rehabilitate their previous worlding to deny inconsistency; on the other hand, inconsistency might be an affirmative force that not only changes people’s way of living but also develops the bodily capacity to attune to inconsistency. Accordingly, the following chapters address how Lilith’s Brood represents these two contrasting situations through the narrative strategy of what I term “the nonsovereign body.” Chapter Two investigates people’s inability to change their living rhythms when they are constrained by their nonsovereign embodied relations with the new world of Lilith’s Brood. As characters are affectively conditioned by their previous living patterns and their need for sovereignty, they are compelled to restore their sovereignty by living the old lives to disavow the inconsistent changes of the new world. Chapters Three turns to the potentiality of the nonsovereign body through examining three interrelated topics – consent/sex, temporality, and relationality. By exploring these three topics, this chapter analyzes how Lilith’s Brood changes the subjects’ bodily formations on sovereignty through a unique depiction of sex and temporality, and how it further proposes dissociation as both characters’ bodily pattern and the modality of ethical relationality that enables subjects to bear the ever-changing heterogeneity of the world.

並列關鍵字

Octavia Butler ； Lilith’s Brood ； affect studies ； posthuman ethics ； the nonsovereign body ； inconsistency

參考文獻

Ackerman, Erin M. Pryor. "Becoming and Belonging: The Productivity of Pleasures and Desires in Octavia Butler's "Xenogenesis" Trilogy." Extrapolation, vol. 49, no. 1, 2008, pp. 24-43.

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「你的身體總讓你驚訝連連」:奧特維亞．巴特勒《莉莉絲的後種》中的情動政治與後人類倫理

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