人類世敘事: 以 《Something New Under the Sun》的文體、規模、與非人類的能動性為例

Abstract

人類的各種行為會造成不同規模的影響是人類世的標誌性概念。為了更加了解這個時代，許多作家都在嘗試透過編纂故事來尋找什麼樣的敘述才切合人類世這個主題。Alexandra Kleeman 所著的《Something New Under the Sun》描寫了瞬息萬變的人類世對於我們來講有多難以理解。我希望透過專注於分析這本小說的敘事以及讀者反應來探索作者對於人類世的描寫。我的分析有三個要點：其一，小說採用了不同的敘事形式。這部小說一開始是一部寫實小說，後來融入了偵探小說的元素，並且隨著故事的發展變得越來越偏向近未來小說。小說中不同的文學形式代表了人類世中與規模相關的不同議題。其次，我認為不同的角色各自代表不同的想像系統，而不同的系統又代表不同文體（Genre）。各個角色對於環境議題有著不同的反應，而這些不同讓我們知道，想要解決人類世中的問題，是很難找到正確答案的。其三，小說中出現各種插敘手法來描寫非人類，這是作者為了打亂以人為本的敘事，提醒我們除了人類世界之外還有一個更大的世界在運作著。Alexandra Kleeman 透過《Something New Under the Sun》透過描寫人們想像力的限制，將人類世描述為一個充滿混亂的時代。The Anthropocene marks the acknowledgement that human actions always operate on different levels apart from the self-proclaimed human world. The search for narratives suitable for the Anthropocene is the endeavor to go beyond acknowledging human impacts by forming an understanding of the age with the help of storytelling. By exploring Alexandra Kleeman’s novel Something New Under the Sun with a focus on narrative and its effects, I intend to inspect how Kleeman draws attention to the difficulties of grasping the ongoing changes in reality. For one, the novel plays with different narrative forms. as the novel sets out as a realist novel, goes on to incorporate elements of a thriller, and gets increasingly speculative as the story goes on. The different literary forms represent the different problems related to scales in the Anthropocene. Secondly, the characters act out in different genres according to their imaginative systems. The varying responses the characters give in relation to their surroundings shows the difficulty of finding a proper response to the Anthropocene. Lastly, by disrupting the human plot with nonhuman agencies, Kleeman reminds us of the larger world operating in the background of human activities and its inseparable ties and influence on human lives, and ours on it. Alexandra Kleeman’s Something New Under the Sun shows the Anthropocene as an era of chaotic occurrences with the focus on the limitations of human imagination.