帝國的錯位——王昶雄《奔流》中的游移認同

The Dislocation of Empire:
An Identity Paradigm of Colonial Displacement in Wang Chang-hsiung’s A Raging Torrent *
帝國的錯位——王昶雄《奔流》中的游移認同

李育霖,

Lee, Yu-lin

Abstract

Fifty years of Japanese rule over Taiwan provided a context not only for the development of a colonial apparatus but also for the elaboration of patterns of resistance by the colonized. Guided by its assimilation policy, Japan attempted to integrate the island into the Japanese empire through zealous educational and cultural campaigns. The process of cultural assimilation and subordination, however, produced sentiments of displacement on the part of the colonized subjects. This paper examines Wang Ch’ang-hsiung’s novella A Raging Torrent, a representative work of “imperial literature” by native Taiwanese authors, showing how the cultural and subjective ambiguity inherent in such counter-discourse indicates displacement in the elaboration of a colonial identity. The I-narrator of the novella, caught between the colonizer and the colonized, presents an emblem of the paradoxical ambiguities of colonialism. Hunted by a confusion of identity, the narrator reveals a self which negotiates the cultural and subjective codes of the colonial encounter. The constant negotiations between the colonized self and the colonizing other strongly suggest the dislocation of the colonizer’s discourse and produce a text that expresses an identity paradigm of ambiguity and multiplicity of the imperial subjects.

Keywords: identity, displacement, assimilation, Wang Chang-hsiung, komin literature


摘要

日本五十年的台灣殖民統治不僅促成了日本殖民機關的發展，同時在殖民地也形成了特殊的反抗論述。透過語言教育及其他文化政策，日本殖民政府努力將台灣織入帝國版圖，將台灣人民變成帝國的臣民。然而在一連串的同化過程中，在被殖民者身上展現的卻是游移與疏離。本論文鎖定皇民文學代表作之一——殖民地作家王昶雄的《奔流》，探討潛在於反抗論述中文化與主體的模稜兩可如何在殖民認同的謀劃中展現游移的特質與樣態。《奔流》中的敘述者「我」夾在殖民者與被殖民者之間，呈現了殖民主義中特有的弔詭與模稜兩可。小說陳述殖民遭遇中自我與他者之間的協商過程，而此不斷協商過程所展現的，正是帝國殖民論述在殖民地的錯位，以及殖民地臣民本身模稜兩可與多重的認同書寫模式。

關鍵字：認同，游移，同化，王昶雄，皇民文學

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