「歌唱的痛」論童妮•莫里森小說《爵士樂》中的凝視與聲音

"Singing Pain" Gaze and Voice in Toni Morrison's Jazz

蔡佳瑾(Chia-Chin Tsai)

《英美文學評論》 16期 (2010/06) Pp. 123-153

https://doi.org/10.6711/REAL.201006_(16).0005

摘要

童妮•莫里森(Toni Morrison)的作品《爵士樂》(Jazz)以其具爵士樂風的即興敘事手法受評論者矚目，在小說中有一性別與身分不詳的匿名敘事者主導小說的進行，而其他小說人物的聲音時而與其互爲應和，形成爵士樂曲的結構。在一次訪談中，莫里森指出本部作品的敘事乃以爵士樂的韻律、多重聲音與相互應和的模式所寫成；緣此，有些評論者將爵士樂視爲本書之匿名敘述者。本部小說乃莫里森繼《寵兒》(Beloved)之後所完成之歷史三部曲中的第二部，以黑人於1920年代從南方遷移至北方紐約市（在小說中僅被稱爲「城市」）的一段歷史爲背景，當時哈林(Harlem)剛發展成一都會離散區(urban diaspora)，以爵士樂這種具非裔文化特色的曲風聞名。本書富有視覺與聽覺意象，敘述者將城市呈現爲一個視域(scopic field)，以視覺性(visuality)爲基礎形塑種族身份，也暴露隱藏在文化景觀中的凝視所具有的閹割作用；此外，城市中詠唱的樂音也比擬小說主角在此城市中所進行的追蹤／狩獵(tracing/hunting)，此追蹤宛若逃離具閹割效果的白人凝視(gaze)的游牧式遷移(migration)，卻又同時是種尋根之行。本文旨在以拉岡(Jacques Lacan)學說中的小對形概念(objet petit a)探討書中即興式的敘事聲音與黑人離散身分之間的關連性；有鑒於小對形在主體身分形成過程中扮演重要角色，筆者援引此理論概念以期深入解說聲音與凝視這兩個愛欲物件在此具音樂性的敘事中與黑人離散身分認同之間的糾結。
齊傑克(Slavoj Žižek)在其論文〈我以眼聽見你〉(”I Hear You with My Eyes”)中指出聲音與凝視的相反作用；聲音「催生」(vivify)而凝視｢促死」(mortify)，因爲聲音屏障(screen)了真正的聲音物件(vocal object)使得主體得以逃避「靜默之音」(muteness)這個閹割狀態，而凝視的出現卻是對主體的否定（閹割）。因此，相對於隱藏在此全觀(all-seeing)城市的凝視，本書如爵士樂般的敘事聲音「催生」了黑人離散主體，救贖其脫離白人種族主義論述中黑人靜默的黑色身體所表徵的空缺狀態(blankness)，因爲此敘事的聲音帶出現存感(presence)並且將那聽不見的聲音物件阻擋在安全距離之外。然而，此即興式的敘事方式卻又暗示主體身分形成的偶然性(contingency)，儘管爵士樂似乎推動非裔文化身分的形成，正如此樂風遊走在呼與應、音與靜之間，此書的敘事也兜轉於文化／種族身分之存在與缺席狀態之間。緣此，筆者在此篇論文中將指出此敘事聲音所透露的不確定性與破綻正呈現巴芭(Homi Bhabha)所謂的離散狀態的「居間性」(in-betwenness)。

關鍵字

爵士樂 ； 聲音 ； 凝視 ； 離散 ； 身分認同

並列摘要

Toni Morrison's Jazz is renowned for its jazz-like, improvisatory but enigmatic narrating voice. An anonymous narrator, whose gender and social identity is not revealed, dominates the development of the plot even though the other voices emerge on and off. In an interview, the author admits that the narration is modeled on the rhythms, the multiple voices and the call-and-response pattern of the jazz performance. In this regard, jazz itself is even assumed by some critics to be this anonymous narrator. Following Beloved as the second novel of her historical trilogy, Jazz accounts the history of the migration from the South to Harlem during 1920s, then a fledgling black urban diaspora known for this musical performance characteristic of African-American culture. The novel, full of visual and auditory imagery, deals with the problematic issue of the formation of the black diasporic identity. The improvising narrating voices account, on the one hand, the ”traces” in the scopic field of the City that constitute the racial identity founded on visuality and, on the other, recite the protagonist's tracing/hunting in the City as a sort of nomadic migration from the castrating white gaze and also a trace back to his origin. This paper aims to explore the fluidity of the improvising voice, commingled with the migration and the traces of identity, in terms of the Lacanian conception of objet petit a, which plays an important role in the formation of the subject's identity, so as to shed light on the affiliation between the narrative musicality and black diasporic identity and to construe the interweaving of this identity with the two love objects in the Lacanian theory-the voice and the gaze.
According to Žižek in his ”I Hear You with My Eyes,” voice as that which screens silence pointing to the lacuna qua objet petit a ”vivifies” the subject, whereas gaze ”mortifies” the subject because, as Lacan points out in the anecdote of Petit Jean in Seminar XI, the gaze manifests that the subject is ”out of place” in the scopic field; music as a form of human voice, for instance, enables the subject to grasp the ”being” castrated in the process of symbolization. In contrast with the ”mortifying” gaze concealed in the all-seeing City, the narrating voice/jazz veils the muteness qua lack, i.e. the locale of the objet a, and functions to ”vivify” the black subject, redeeming it from the ”blankness” embodied by the mute black body represented in white racist discourses since the recounting voices invoke the presence and keep the absence, the ”inaudible object voice” where the subject emerges, at bay. The jazz rhythm, as a cultural feature of African-American people, seems to turn the narration into a site for cultural identification. As a counter narrative resisting any white-centric racist narrative which functions to ”symbolically” interpolate the black subject as a ”nigger,” the apparently feminine, free-floating jazz performances of the stories in the City display a discourse of the desire for the mother. The spontaneous musical narration reflects the male protagonist's traces for the root of his racial identity-his mother, a woman figuratively named ”Wild.” However, the traces end up with nothing but the trace itself, just as the protagonist's name reveals, Joe Trace. The absence of the mother turns out to be the traumatic core that evokes the drive-like tracing. The improvising style of the narration also implies the contingency of the identity formation that jazz seems to propel since just as jazz performance in its improvisation oscillates between call and responses, voices and silence, so the narration plays with the presence of cultural/racial identity and the absence where the subject is. In this regard, the author would argue in this paper that the indeterminacy and ruptures revealed by the narrating voices actually lay bare the diasporic ”in-betweenness” that Homi Bhabha points out in The Location of Culture.

並列關鍵字

jazz ； voice ； gaze ； diaspora ； identity