行政院國家科學委員會專題研究計畫 期中進度報告
惡與真實：後現代的轉折(1/3)
計畫類別： 整合型計畫 計畫編號： NSC91-2411-H-002-048-BG 執行期間： 91 年 08 月 01 日至 92 年 07 月 31 日 執行單位： 國立臺灣大學外國語文學系暨研究所 計畫主持人： 廖朝陽 報告類型： 精簡報告 處理方式： 本計畫可公開查詢中
華
民
國 92 年 5 月 29 日
行政院國家科學委員會專題研究計畫期中進度報告
惡與真實：後現代的轉折 (1/3)
計畫編號：NSC91-2411-H-002-048-BG
執行期限：91 年 8 月 1 日至 92 年 7 月 31 日
主持人：廖朝陽 國立台灣大學外文系
一、中文摘要 惡是無法根絕的存在本質的一部份，還是外在環境偶然因素造就的特殊現 象？這是哲學史、宗教史上不斷引起爭議的難題。自歐洲出現猶太滅族屠殺之 後，這個問題因為涉及自由與責任的倫理判斷（被動接受命令的殺人者是否有 道德責任），尤其累積了許多深入的討論。本計畫將檢討晚近文化理論對這個 問題的辯論（特別以康德晚年提出的「根本惡」觀念為中心），作為探討邊緣 主體在處理傷痛、暴力、壓迫，重建歷史、記憶的過程中如何選擇政治行動的 理論基礎。計畫將從 Hannah Arendt 的立場出發，整合晚近學界的意見，並進 一步援引 Lacan 在第十一次講座中對迪卡爾主體的闡發以及第七次講座根據 真實 (the real) 來討論「心理分析的倫理」的立場，釐清其中涉及啟蒙、迪卡 爾主體、身體與符號的牽連等問題，希望找到一種 Walter Benjamin 所謂「美 學政治化」的可能性。研究過程中除了整理前人所見、整合理論框架，也將延 續主持人最近提出的後現代「層次塌陷」說，特別考慮在後現代（包括全球化、 危機化）的特殊情境下相關的思考如何離開（或進一步徹底化）現代模式，形 成種種轉折，從而突顯惡與真實對美學分析的重要性，揭示文化研究應該正視 惡的問題，回歸真實的立場來分析邊緣經驗的文化呈現。 關鍵詞：惡、後現代、全球化、邊緣、真實、主體 Abstr actIs evil an ineradicable part of being, or something contingently determined by external forces? This is an old question which one can safely assume to have been unsolved by endless philosophical and theological debates. In particular, the Holocaust brought home the urgent need to ponder such issues to come to grips with problems of freedom and responsibility— if an ethical act must be a free act, then how can we hold those who kill while following orders? This project will examine recent debates (centered on Kant’s concept of “radical evil”) as a source of insight in the search for a theory of political action which will enable marginalized subjects to better deal with violence, repression, and other traumatic experiences in the ongoing reconstruction of subaltern history and repressed memory. Using Hannah Arendt’s works as a convenient focal point, a review of relevant positions will be undertaken,
and Lacan’s rethinking of the Cartesian cogito in Seminar XI as well as the account of the “ethics of psychoanalysis” from the position of the real in Seminar VII will provide further theoretical grounding to develop an understanding of relevant issues, especially the connection of evil with enlightenment, the cogito, and the distinction (or the possible collapse thereof) between the body and the symbolic. Ultimately our findings should point what Walter Benjamin calls a “politicization of aesthetics.” Beyond a review of scholarship and an attempt at theoretical generalization, the project will also develop what I proposed in a recent paper as the “collapse of differentials” in the newest phase of postmodernity. It will be my major concern that the thinking of evil and the real should be done in full cognizance of such postmodern vicissitudes (globalization, the emergence of risk society, etc.) so as to engage fruitfully with contemporary aesthetic analysis. It will be shown that such rethinking is indispensable in the representation of the marginal.
Keywor ds: evil, postmodernity, globalization, marginality, the real, subjectivity
二、緣由與目的 本計畫希望探討惡與真實等觀念在後現代新階段開始後顯示出的轉折。所 謂後現代的新階段，指的九○年代以來的後現代理論由美學形式轉而重視特殊 偏執與普世倫理分離演證的新階段。在九一一美國遭受恐怖攻擊事件發生前， 後現代理論早已有許多跡象顯示文化轉折的累積即將突破臨界點。九一一事件 發生後，文化理論本身也受到巨大衝擊而必須重新審視前一階段許多定型化的 基本的理論觀念，使之前形成中的轉向取得更明顯的時間標示。以惡的問題而 言，其實百年來真正重要的轉折是見是納粹德國屠殺猶太人的行為，九一一攻 擊的規模與嚴重性都無法相比。但是從後現代的角度看，九一一所以形成重要 的轉折正是因為雖屬局部事件，卻在日常生活細節的層次匯集了複雜程度不下 於納粹的惡與倫理、責任的問題。這是後現代狀況下文化意義運作原則的徹底 化，而這樣的轉折下傳統哲學、宗教對惡的討論是否可以轉向新的思考，以及 惡的問題是否與後現代文化的其他問題有更密切的關連，就是本計畫想探討的 重點。 本計畫將以「真實」的觀念為中心，由真實與災難、創傷的關係申論「惡」 的討論，就普遍倫理與宗教、民族認同、「文明衝突」等文化偏執之間的關係 提出檢討，希望對了解後現代文化的走向以及因應全球化時代社會文化的變局 提出人文觀點的看法。使用心理分析的真實來切入惡的討論，是因為在康德的 倫理學裡，善惡與自由是分不開的，而自由被視為是身體（拖累意志的外力） 的反面，所以與迪卡爾式的唯心立場有關，從而也就關連到心理分析理論討論 的符號層 (the symbolic)。康德晚年提出「根本惡」(radical evil)的觀念，碰到 的難題是身體雖然拖累意志，卻無法根除，甚至可能是觀念真正的決定者，這 就與 Lacan 理論裡符號層與真實層的關係顯得相當接近。從這個類比出發， 我們很容易可以把惡與倫理的討論帶入 Lacan 心理分析的框架，並且進一步 探討 Lacan 在第七次講座裡討論的真實與倫理的關係。從 Hannah Arendt 對 惡的立場看，符號化的公共意義雖然也可能落入虛妄，卻是成立倫理責任的必 要條件。這樣的立場接近 Lacan 在第十一次講座正面肯定迪卡爾主體的必要 性。有了心理分析的框架，我們可以進一步發展符號、真實與公共性之間的關 係，除了從新的角度來掌握惡的問題，也為檢討文學藝術的再現（也是符號層 的一部份）與倫理責任的關係打開新的可能。 三、結果與討論
Marginality may be conceived in more than one ways. By far the most common practice is to define the marginal as unjust exclusion from social norms: “Social exclusion is about the inability of our society to keep all groups and individuals within reach of what we expect as a society. It is about the tendency to push vulnerable and difficult individuals into the least popular places, furthest away from our common aspirations” (Power and Wilson 2000: 1) Although this definition comes from a problematic specifically informed by issues of economic and social policy, there is no doubt that it also sums up many accounts of marginality in literary and cultural studies. The aim in studying marginality, on this account, is to bring about conditions under which marginalized or marginalizable groups or individuals would be able to given more inclusion within some normative “center,” de jure if not de facto.
There has been, of course, other accounts of marginality, at least some of which prefer to see some advantage in it, most often along lines similar to the Hegelian dialectic of master and slave. I propose to examine Li Ang’s recent novel, Autobiography: A Novel (1999), which will point to a different way to conceive marginality.
To understand this alternative approach, we have to bring up the problem of evil and its connections with the study of marginality. According to the thesis of unjust exclusion, marginality is doubly evil: it is evil to the marginalized people, tends to cause evil (e.g. raise crime rates) among them, and in various ways associate them with evil. In the first chapters of Autobiography, it is made very clear that such moral evil is paled by a more fundamental kind of evil. The scary stories and wise cracks of the almost comically stereotypical “third uncle” who loves to preach “women should know their place” is depicted with some (ambivalent) loving memory. In fact, his life is “full of peculiar behaviors” (Li 1999: 1) and obviously he has never accomplished much. The stories themselves are misogynic and oppressive, but the palpable evil invoked by them (and by the storyteller’s death) is of a more metaphysical kind: “knowing that something would happen, but not knowing what,” “a feeling of waiting to be violated,” “endless terror” (Li 1999: 13, 15).
The distinction between moral evil and radical evil immediately comes to mind. Moral evil “refers to actions undertaken to harm or exploit others in contravention of accepted moral principles or statutes within a society,” while radical evil “applies to immoral behavior so pervasive in a person or a society that moral scruples and constraints have been utterly abandoned” (Shattuck 2001: 50). From the very beginning, Autobiography makes it clear that, although women and misogyny are the main themes of the novel, the problematic of marginality would not be limited to simple issues of exploitation or injustice, but would tackle evil of a more radical and pervasive kind. Oppression and injustice are certainly not nullified, but would be complemented by a more comprehensive view of history and the human condition.
For Kant, radical evil refers to the “insurmountable wickedness” in the heart of humanity (1960: 66). Where does such wickedness come from? Ž ižek invokes Shelling to pinpoint an “abyss of primordial freedom” which leads to a “passage
from the infinite to the finite, from eternity to the temporal reality of finite entities,” which, instead of being a “fall” (for us, into the margins of divinity), marks an “ascent,” “the process by means of which God endeavors to ‘find Himself,’ to regain his mind by curing Himself of the rotary motion of drives, of His ‘divine madness’” (1996: 7f). Thus, for Schelling, evil is an inverted way for a finite creature to retrace this “passage” and rejoin the infinite (14). In this sense, evil is insurmountable because it is part of the freedom which passes from the infinite to the finite, and which is “freedom for Good and Evil” (15).
Bearing such interpenetration of freedom and evil in mind, we can read Autobiography as an attempt to grapple with the presence of radical evil in human history (in the form of residual evil). Positing an “abyss of primordial freedom” to account for the unknown dangers of traditional misogyny will allow provide us with an interpretive framework to solve several problems: the ambivalent depiction of the “third uncle,” the obsessive preoccupation with graphic depictions of sexual scenes, the formation of narrative continuity by intercutting different focalizations (mainly on Xie Xuehong, the heroine, and the narrator), and the eventual merging of such focalizations into a prototypical Woman marking the Good regaining of the infinite. 四、計畫成果自評 本計畫所屬整合型計畫「邊緣再思：文化、傷痛、再現」於 2003 年 3 月 15 日在中興大學綜合教學大樓舉行本年度研討會。本報告「結果與討論」一節即 為研討會中發表的論文的一部份。此論文正在擴充、改寫以供發表。 本年度計畫成果將納入這篇論文中，因此本計畫進度也將配合做部份調 整：原計畫於第二年度進行的李昂小說〈自傳的小說〉將提前用在本年度的分 析對象。其餘理論部份則不變動，並將結合作品分析，納入論文中。本年度計 畫除分析作品變更之外，大致可以達成。 在研究進行過程當中，新的可能性不斷出現。本計畫在第二年度希望納入 新的理論架構，結合後人類、工徑 (ergodic)文學、御虛文化 (cyberculture)、 分配認知 (distributed cognition) 等理論 (主要為 Espen Aarseth, Katherine N. Hayles, Donna Haraway 等所倡)對科技、身體、知識體系的檢討，從全新的角 度來探討惡、倫理與自由的關係。第二年度將繼續以〈自傳的小說〉為分析對 象，但也考慮納入電影 The Silence of the Lambs (原定為第一年分析對象) 、 Minority Report, Ninth Gate 等相關作品。如能成功，將另闢一個開拓性的研究 方向，為第三年的總結作好準備。
五、參考文獻
Aarseth, Espen J. 1997. Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press.
Haraway, Donna. 1991. “A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century.” In Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. London: Routledge. 149-181.
Hayles, N. Katherine. 1999. How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics. Chicago: Chicago Univ. Press.
Kant, Immanuel. 1960. Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone (1794). Trans. Theodore M. Greene and Hoyt H. Hudson. New York: Harper and Row.
Li Ang. 1999. Autobiography: A Novel (Zizhuan no xiaoshuo). Taipei: Huangguan. Power, Anne, and William Julius Wilson. 2000. “Social Exclusion and the Future of
Cities”. CASEPaper 35. London: Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion. http://sticerd.lse.ac.uk/dps/case/cp/CASEpaper35.pdf
Shattuck, Roger. 2001. “Narrating Evil: Great Faults and ‘Splendidly Wicked People.’” In Jennifer L. Geddes, ed. Evil after Postmodernism: Histories, Narratives, and Ethics. London: Routledge. 45-55.
Ž ižek, Slavoj. 1996. “Selfhood as Such Is Spirit: F.W.J. Schelling on the Origins of Evil.” Joan Copjec, ed. Radical Evil. London: Verso. 1-29.
