Dancing into Life: Affective Ontogenesis in Philip Roth's The Human Stain

Philip Roth's 2000 novel, The Human Stain, is widely considered a novel about racial passing. However, such a view assumes that Coleman Silk, a light-skinned African American who lives most of his life as a white Jew, is the sole protagonist of the story at the expense of Zuckerman, who, as the narrator and self-proclaimed author of The Human Stain, is no less important than Coleman to the novel. The novel details how Zuckerman abandons his self-imposed seclusion and becomes reintegrated into human relationships after a spontaneous dance with Coleman. Granting equal importance to Coleman and Zuckerman will reveal that Roth's concern in the novel is not only the historical phenomenon of racial passing but subjectivation in general. To understand the instances of ontogenesis in The Human Stain, this essay proposes an affective materialist perspective, one that, instead of focusing on the macro-level of social structures, as previous criticism on the novel has done, turns to what can be considered the quantum level of pre-perceptual matter. Such a perspective is provided by affect theory, for which subjectivity is always embodied and subjectivation is galvanized by active, creative matter. This paper argues that the 19-year-old Coleman's racial passing and Zuckerman's self-imposed seclusion, based on a mixture of the modern humanist concept of self-invention and the postmodern belief in the body as text, exemplify an idealist conception of ontogenesis that is destined to ossification and sterility. In contrast, the 71-year-old Coleman's unexpected transformation after meeting Faunia and Zuckerman's revitalization through the dance with Coleman illustrate that embodied subjectivation through affection is the truly productive ontogenesis, which leads to continual openness and creativity.

關鍵字

Philip Roth ； The Human Stain ； affect ； embodiment ； ontogenesis

並列摘要

菲利普羅斯(Philip Roth)於二○○○年出版的小說《人性污點》(The Human Stain)被認為是一部關於種族變身(Racial Passing)的小說。然而，這樣的觀點假設了柯曼席爾克是故事的唯一主角，而忽略了敘事者納森祖克曼的重要性。這部小說除了種族變身的主題外，另一個重點是祖克曼如何在與科爾曼跳了一支舞之後，拋棄隱居的生活型態，經歷個體轉變而重新融入人際關係。因此，羅斯在《人性污點》中要探討的，不僅是種族變身這個歷史現象，而是個體生成(Ontogenesis)這個更深層的問題。為理解小說中的個體生成現象，本文提出身動力理論(Affect Theory)的物質主義觀點，強調主體的體現性(Embodiment)，認為個體再生源自於物質本身的創造性。本文認為，科爾曼十九歲時的種族變身和祖克曼的山中隱居，都是根基於現代人本主義自我創造的概念和後現代的身體文本化，如此去身體化的主體轉變使生命失去創造力。相較之下，七十一歲的科爾曼在遇見弗妮雅之後的生命轉變，以及祖克曼在與科爾曼跳舞後，重新與他人連結的新生過程，可說是體現性的、源自身動力的個體再生，能夠持續產生開放性和創造性。