災難與希望：從〈古都〉與《血色蝙蝠降臨的城市》看政治

Catastrophe and Hope: The Politics of "the Ancient Capital" and The City Where the Blood-Red Bat Descended

廖朝陽(Chao-Yang Liao) ； 王智明(Chi-Ming Wang)

《台灣社會研究季刊》 43期 (2001/09) Pp. 1-39

https://doi.org/10.29816/TARQSS.200109.0001

摘要

班雅民認為「後延性」是一種分開現實存在與轉化提升兩個層次的歷史力量。這兩個層次的分離同時也帶出一個烏托邦面向，透過時間的顛倒來辨認過去記憶中所含的，未來的希望。安德生延續班雅民的想法，認為民族國家的產生是以後延性消失，成立「性質統一，內容空白」的時間觀為前提（這樣國家才不會因為過去的魅影不斷入侵現在而向其他時間轉化）。本文希望重新檢討這個問題，並透過時間異態的掌握來推演趙剛提出來的「民主民族」主張，指出民主民族如何在過去與現在、普世性與獨特性之間找到平衡點。
在二十世紀末，台灣出現了兩個小說作品，總結了近數十年來的台灣經驗，描寫現代性走向倒錯病理所造成的災難，並且各自以不同的方式，展演了班雅民現在與過去互參的歷史觀。朱天心的中篇小說〈古都〉用寧靜悠閒的京都來對襯陷入失憶狀態，不適人居的台北，透過個人的回憶與歷史反覆的規律來建立否定現狀的欲望。在這裡，對過去的執戀表達出參與現在的要求。重演過去意思不是要得到一個堅固不變的基點，而是要建立過去與現在相互更新的可能。宋澤萊的長篇《血色蝙蝠降臨的城市》則結合在地法術與歐洲魔鬼傳說，為社會腐敗、政治失序的災難尋找出路。故事裡的撒旦雖然永遠存在，但是災難既然總是以新事件的形式，在現在發生，其中其實也暗示了拯救的希望也是一種過去參與現在的翻轉動作。這兩個作品似乎都肯定經驗跳接的價值，認為過去切入現在可以為面對危機，走向滅亡的共群帶來新的識見。
本文認為，我們可以從上述文學作品的表現觀察文化認同的定位，也可以進一步從新民族轉變、形成的大框架來觀察相關問題。這樣的觀察可以幫助我們了解，民主民族的根本意義可以怎樣開展。回歸「傳統」在這裡當然不可能是將一個開放的過去變成有內容，對現在施力的「固定標簽」。另一方面，布洛赫早就告訴我們，一味否定人含納於特殊性、過去時間的事實，任由法西斯思考加以撥用，同樣不是辦法。在全球化資本主義加速擾動世局的時代，回歸特殊性是防止真實災難的有效手段，但更要緊的是，回歸特珠性也要求時間與空間的距離必須維持，留下緩衝的空間，以免歷史「撞上時間的牆壁」。這樣的虛擬比電子通訊更徹底，卻也是一種形體的翻製，具有消除愚形，透過符號化來緩和經驗跳動的效果。也只有透過這樣的虛擬，文化傳統才能免於僵固化、形體化的限制，重新獲得開放性，成為不斷更新的一種方式。

關鍵字

民族 ； 時間 ； 災難 ； 希望 ； 記憶

並列摘要

Walter Benjamin's conception of history appeals to nachtraglichkeit as a historical force which separates immanence as conformance with the existent from transfiguration as pursuit of the true. This separation, in turn, points to a utopian dimension, an underside of time where futuristic intimations of hope inhere in memories of the past. This conception is taken up by Benedict Anderson who claims that the modern nation-state is made possible by the emergence of a sense of events happening in ”homogeneous empty time,” which, presumably, would free the nation in principle from the possibility of transfiguration through catastrophic intrusions of the past into the present. This paper begins with a wish to reconsider this question and, through a better understanding of the alterity of time, to rethink how the idea of the ”democratic nation,” as proposed by Zhao Gang, may make possible the reconciliation between the past and the present, the particular and the universal.
Toward the close of the 20th century, when two works of fiction from Taiwan attempts to sum up decades of experience with the perverse aberrations of modernity in local society and politics, each recapitulates in its own way the Benjaminian theme of a constellation between past and present. ”The Ancient Capital” juxtaposes a serenely classical Kyoto with a fallen Taipei, calling forth personal recollections and patterns of historical recurrence to constitute negating desire. The clinging to the past here expresses a need to participate in the present; the past is reclaimed not as some frozen image or immutable world to return to, but as the possibility to enter mutual renewal with the present. The City Where the Blood-red Bat Descended invokes an alliance between local magical practices and European demon lore to confront the catastrophic consequences of social and political corruption in contemporary Taiwan. Although Satan is described as permanently present, the novel affirms that, since catastrophe strikes only in the present, in the form of the totally new, there is always a sense in which any hope for redemption will point to the past as a possible model of reversal which would present the old as intervention in the new. Thus both works seem to value shock, in the form of the intrusion of the past into the present, as a way to bring about new insights into a worsening community, a world on its way to predictable catastrophe.
Guided by such literary assessments of the status of cultural identity and placing them in the context of an ongoing nation-building project, we may be in a better position to see how the idea of a radically democratic nation may be developed. In this context, of course, a return to ”the traditional” cannot mean the hardening of an open past into a non-empty ”rigid designator” of the present. But, as Ernst Bloch pointed out long ago, neither can we abandon such human embeddedness in the particular and in the past to fascist appropriation. A return to particularity would be an effective way to prevent real catastrophe in this hectic world of globalizing capitalism, but only if a distance, both temporal and spatial, is maintained, so that history would not be ”smashing into the wall of time” but would provide a breathing space, a virtuality more radical than that of telecommunications, in which cultural heritage would be freed from fixated embodiment and regain its openness, becoming a way to out-new the new, to disembody and symbolically manage real shock by producing its mimetic replica.

並列關鍵字

nation ； time ； catastrophe ； hope ； memory

參考文獻

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Anderson, B.(1991).Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism.London:Verso.

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Bauer, Otto(1996).Mapping the Nation.London:Verso.

Benjamin, Walter(1977).The Origin of German Tragic Drama (1963).London:NLB.