「歐美」與「我們」之間：從亞美研究看美－－亞的距離與傳會

Between “Euro-America” and “Us”: Asian American Studies in Asia/America Distance and Transference

本文以亞美研究在台灣的發展為例，思考台灣外文學門（暫稱「我們」）媒介西方文化思潮（暫稱「歐美」）的策略。論文從台灣學生與學者對亞美的認同（或誤認）談起，主張「亞美」雖然在名號上讓「亞」、「美」連體，移民與混血的過程在物質與身體歷史上讓「亞」、「美」難分彼此，亞美故事其實不斷延展與複雜化「亞」、「美」的距離和想像，亞美論述的發展，也從強調美－－亞連繫，轉而鋪陳「亞」與「美」之內與之間的離心張力與「反同」（anti-sameness）潛力。為了釐清「距離」與「反同」在論述建構上的意義，筆者挪用了精神分析「同」中延「異」的立論方法，特別是「傳會」（transference）在談話治療裡讓自我與他者互相傾聽創傷，開展彼此感知時空的概念，探索亞美研究在「美」、「亞」之間建構的「弱勢傳會」路徑：除了具體的亞美移民、遷徙、與離散經驗形構了「亞」、「美」個人情感聯結，亞美研究作為一個論述場域，還介入了「我們」與「歐美」競合及協商的過程，從美國研究的一支，逐漸延展與分化為亞際與跨太平洋認知網絡開展的介面。論文最後提出「創傷歐美」的想像，企圖將「歐美」從台灣外文學門的強勢他者，轉化為一個類似亞美的動態複元場域，思考「我們」與「歐美」在彼此的弱勢經驗中，建立傳會聯結的可能。

This essay takes the development of Asian American studies in Taiwan as an example for exploring the shifting role of Western cultures (tentatively generalized as “Euro-America”) in Taiwan’s foreign literary studies (tentatively generalized as “us”). The first part traces and unravels Taiwan academia’s “special affinity” toward Asian American studies. Though linking “Asia” and “America” in its name and contributing to racial mixture and cultural creolization, “Asian America,” as this essay suggests, does not necessarily bridge the distance, much less set up a point of convergence, between Asian and American cultures and histories. Instead, the increasingly diversifying Asian American population and their diverging itineraries cast into relief the centrifugal propellant and antisameness potential of Asian America. Drawing on the psychoanalytic dialogic model of transference that pushes open the affective contours of selves and others, this essay further probes the transferential time-space evoked by Asian America: not only do Asian American traumatic experiences of immigration, migration, and diaspora compel differentiations of selves through encounters with others but Asian American studies have intervened into the power hierarchy between “Euro- America” and “us,” forcefully generating unprescribed minor networking across Asia and the Pacific. This essay ultimately proposes a minoritizing transformation of “Euro-America”: to comprehend “Euro-America” not as a hegemonic and static entity but as a minor and centrifugal “other” that Taiwan’s foreign literary studies could possibly converse with through transferential affects.