重新銘刻帝國主義：閱讀潔西卡‧海格苳《夢叢林》

Abstract

潔西卡‧海格苳的小說《夢叢林》於2003年出版；此文本再現了美國和菲律賓之間的殖民主義和新殖民主義關係。小說描述在1970年代菲律賓的兩個事件：一個新發現的舊石器時代部落，以及美國劇組前來拍攝越戰電影。這兩個故事都改編自真實的歷史事件：1971年的塔薩代人「騙局」，及法蘭西斯‧柯波拉從1976年至1977年拍攝的電影《現代啟示錄》。忠於海格苳小說的格式，我選擇在第二和第三章中分別一次研究一個事件，這讓我有足夠空間來詳細探討這些事件和它們引申出的議題。透過「重新銘刻」概念，我凸顯出這兩個看似不同且不相關的主題，其實是相互纏繞和連接著。 研究塔薩代人「騙局」時，本論文關心的不是其真實性和身份認同的問題，而是各種形式的媒介媒體在整樁事件中的定位和責任，尤其是期間它們從炒作以致於最後推翻否定塔薩代人之間的運作。我依照Victor Li的論述，檢視出在整個塔薩代人事件中不斷浮現的一種原始主義。有鑑於此，本論文將塔薩代人在歷史中和小說中的故事理解為一個新原始主義的重演或體現。 我嘗試將看似無關的電影拍攝事件帶進討論時，引用了「重新銘刻」概念；愛德華‧薩伊德以此詞來表示一種抵抗，一種殖民主體將中心的敘事重塑和回應的一個過程。然而彼得‧赫爾姆(Peter Hulme)在著作中使用的「重新─銘刻」概念，卻是用來強調舊的和新的論述共存於不穩定的競爭關係中。因此，本論文的閱讀方式將著重於薩伊德所謂重新銘刻著作中並未解決的一些矛盾，以批判性的角度檢視一系列互相連結的文本；從約瑟夫‧康拉德的《黑暗之心》，法蘭西斯‧柯波拉的電影《現代啟示錄》，愛琳諾‧科波拉的紀錄片《黑暗之心：製片人的啟示錄》和《Notes on the Making of Apocalypse Now》，和潔西卡‧海格苳的小說《夢叢林》。我的論文指出，這些薩伊德式的重新銘刻反抗中同時不免包含了某種重新─銘刻，導致這一串的文本和它們所批判的論述之間無法切割，甚至淪為共謀，而海格苳也不例外。 在最後，本論文探討到選擇《夢叢林》此菲裔美國文本作為研究的挑戰，考慮到台灣與菲律賓之間的表面上的差距，近期兩國惡化的關係，但也指出兩方在意想不到的地方其實是互相連接呼應。王智明在近期探討了在亞洲研究亞美文學的議題，並呼籲重新檢視亞美研究以及建立跨太平洋地區之間的交流。本論文的研究定位可視為在嘗試著回應他的號召。

Jessica Hagedorn’s novel Dream Jungle, published in 2003, is a key literary text that re-presents the colonial and neo-colonial relationship between the US and the Philippines. The narrative in Dream Jungle follows two events in 1970s Philippines: the discovery of a supposedly Paleolithic tribe, and the arrival of an American crew to shoot a Vietnam War movie. Both of these fictionalized events are based upon actual historical moments in the Philippines: the Tasaday “Hoax” in 1971 and the shooting of the film Apocalypse Now from 1976 to 1977. Following Hagedorn, I have opted to focus on each of these events separately in Chapter Two and Three. This arrangement has allowed me to allocate the space to address these events and the questions that they provoke in a more comprehensive manner. At the same time, through the concept of reinscription, I have also endeavored to highlight the way that these two seemingly different and unrelated topics are in fact intertwined and connected with each other. In the study of the Tasaday “Hoax,” my thesis is less concerned with the questions of authenticity and identity, and more with the modes of representation that bears responsibility both for the formation and the disavowal of the Tasaday/Taobo story. I turn to the work of Victor Li to identify an attribute and ideal—that of primitivism—which has persisted throughout the Tasaday incident. Drawing upon Li, I argue that the Tasaday/Taobo story can be read as a re-enactment or embodiment of neo-primitivism. In my attempt to draw the seemingly unrelated film shoot into this discussion, I turned toward the titular “reinscription,” which is the term utilized by Edward Said to indicate a form of resistance, a way for the colonized subject to reshape and respond to narratives from the metropole. However, the “re-inscription” from Peter Hulme in Colonial Encounters, where it is used to highlight the way that old and new discourses co-exist in unstable competition, suggests a reading that takes account of unresolved tensions that may be unavoidable in the Saidian “reinscriptions”. Reading from this trajectory, my thesis critically examines a line of representations starting from Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now, to the documentary Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse and Notes on the Making of Apocalypse Now from Eleanor Coppola, and finally, Jessica Hagedorn’s Dream Jungle. In each of these texts, my thesis argues, the reinscription—the Saidian resistance—is shadowed by a re-inscription that marks them as ambivalent and complicit with the discourse they set out to critique, and Hagedorn is no exception. In the conclusion, I turn to the question of choosing the Dream Jungle—a Filipino-American novel—as a topic of research in Taiwan, the perceived gap between the Philippines and Taiwan, the recent strives that soured our relationship, but also the connections and parallels that link us in unexpected places. Drawing upon the recent works of Chih-ming Wang regarding the question of doing Asian American research in Asia, I position my thesis in this context as an attempt to follow Wang’s call for reconceptualization and dialogue between trans-pacific locations.