群島思想：關於菲律賓自翻英文小說中的越界現象與精神分裂理論的反思

Abstract

「群島思想」探索的是以碎片化狀態而進行的思考方式。在那些用單語英文寫成的文學作品裡，有一些並非如表明所呈現的單語，而是多語寫成，導致其中的多元性被單語的外表所掩蓋。這就意味著，文字在產生之時已然呈現「被翻譯」的狀態。多元的語言被以單語進行單一化的呈現，或許反映了與此相對應的國家認同。本論文援引Deleuze& Guattari的精神分裂分析理論來剖析菲律賓的自翻英文小說，即Gina Apostol的 The Revolution According to Raymundo Mata。有些讀者認為該小說頗具趣味性，但在一些讀者眼裡，該小說的閱讀體驗並非如此。後者認為閱讀該小說易產生暈眩感，如同閱讀菲律賓的（後）殖民歷史。由於該小說以消失的Mata原手稿的譯文呈現，導致讀者最終也無法辨別孰真孰假。歷史和國家敘述的混亂和分裂狀態在該譯文中被掩蓋的同時，也被揭示出來。 透過引人入勝的敘事方式，作者揭示了傳統觀念裡認為「缺乏」的「分裂」和翻譯其實並不「缺乏」，反而希望能夠藉此激發讀者立體多元的想像力。

“Thinking like an Archipelago” explores what it is to think from fragments, and the complications that arise in speaking from such a location. In literatures that are written in monolingual English, despite the evident plurilingual experience of what is being written of, the multiplicity of speech is concealed and repressed, “translated” during its production into a coherent unity that might approximate a corresponding national identity. This thesis draws from Deleuze and Guattari’s conception of schizophrenia and schizoanalysis to unpack one (of many) instance of self-translation in Philippine literature: Gina Apostol’s The Revolution According to Raymundo Mata. A jovial reader would call it playful, and a more serious one would find that it exhibits the condition of being in the throes of a most vertiginous (post)colonial history (though the two characteristics are definitely not mutually exclusive; it is both at the same time). The novel presents itself as a translation of the missing Mata manuscript, and in the end one finds that all narrators are unreliable, and that the mess and fragmentation of historical and national narratives are both simultaneously concealed and revealed by this translated manuscript, through which both the reader and other characters access the text. In her compelling narrative style, Apostol reveals that the state of fragmentation and speaking in translation do not imply a lack, as convention would have it, but rather as those that allow for a greater capacity to imagine others in ways beyond a singular identity, political or otherwise.