在浮世中尋覓詭異之家:石黑一雄小說中的陌生人

Abstract

當代日裔英籍作家石黑一雄向以其所創造的角色講述創傷的回憶，他的六部小說不僅揭示了陌生人在浮世中尋覓家園的過程，更呈現出浮世他者無處為家的蒼涼。本論文共分五章，除導論與結論外，其中主要三章分別檢視石黑式陌生人在浮世尋找家園而將過去難言之隱轉嫁他人的過程，並藉此指出錯置的他者如何掙脫命定窠臼，進而在似家非家的中間地帶覓得安身立命之處。第一章討論悅子與小野對家的回憶與想像，進而闡述浮世他者對家的願景。第二章處理班克斯與萊德這兩位孤兒透過回憶家在何處在浮世尋得詭異之家的過程。第三章則呈現達靈頓莊園總管史提文斯與複製人凱西在現世無家可歸的窘境。石黑一雄筆下的陌生人似乎都是獲得某種特別待遇並被主流文化接受的詭異他者，但他們還是無法避免被視為非我族類；在此情境之下，這些享受特權的陌生人仍有可能返回記憶中熟悉且能撫慰傷痛的家園。回家的旅程是否能夠到達終點，全憑他們是否能夠坦然面對過往創傷，並洞悉眼前這幾乎是家卻又非家的詭異經驗。A writer living in between two worlds, Kazuo Ishiguro creates narratives of memory to demonstrate the privileged strangers’ unhomeliness in a floating world. This dissertation examines the Ishigurean strangers’ search for a place of familiarity and familiality in an evanescent world in three specific manifestations contingent on the distinct location of culture Ishiguro fashions. Chapter One is treated as a Japanese duet, in which Etsuko’s and Ono’s memories of home are dealt respectively to elaborate on the unconsoled stranger’s vision of home. Chapter Two handles the orphaned Christopher Banks’s and Ryder’s recollection of home, while Chapter Three discusses Stevens’s and Kathy’s vanishing memory of home. For Ishiguro’s displaced protagonists, the definition of home is estranged by their encounter with new socio-political norms, and going back home, therefore, becomes an act of imputing past culpability to the other so as to recollect the memory of being-at-home. The strangers Ishiguro portrays are the stranger strangers who suffer from stranger forms of exclusion; they are destined, like the privileged and displaced Oedipus, to reside in the interim between homes. Although their claims of territorial propriety and cultural centrality are considered preposterous, there are still possibilities for the strangers to move beyond the concept of coming from nowhere to forge an accommodation in which they find themselves relocated, and then reconcile with their situation of now-here. All depend on how they recount their memories of the distorted past while facing their present experiences of being outcast as the unconsoled, the orphaned, or the remaining stranger strangers.