生死交界－－《慰安婦》中的鬼魅他者與哀悼倫理

Between Life and Death: The Spectral Other and the Ethics of Mourning in Nora Okja Keller’s Comfort Woman

本文旨在探討韓裔美籍作家凱樂（Nora Okja Keller）著作之小說《慰安婦》（Comfort Woman），關注殖民與戰爭暴力下，歷經性壓迫之逝者與倖存者。小說透過一對母女平行的敘事，揭露二次大戰期間韓國婦女被迫成為日本殖民政府軍隊的性奴隸，在此暴力壓迫中死去的冤魂糾纏著敘事者／母親／倖存者，令她回應其需求，而敘事者／母親／倖存者也因此成為召喚亡魂的靈媒，跨越生死交界。當母親去世之後，另一敘事者／女兒透過逝者／母親遺留下來的錄音帶，藉由已逝母親的聲音，得知其曾是慰安婦的經歷，而女兒的哀悼可視為對逝者／母親的回應。本文挪用德希達對於死亡、逝者、哀悼的討論，將德希達的哀悼論述與小說文本並置，檢視小說中鬼魅他者與哀悼的倫理意涵。一方面小說文本呼應德希達之「不可能的哀悼」，卻又是必要的責任與回應，因之如何理解逝者與鬼魂之無限差異，如何在哀悼中挪出空間以包容死亡帶來之無限差異，成了小說中哀悼者的倫理課題。另一方面，小說文本亦指出不同的鬼魂樣貌與哀悼軌跡，鬼魂不僅是不可知的他者，亦可能具備行動力；而哀悼之中，生者不全然企圖將逝者納入自我的記憶，反而釋放自我的意識，走向逝者／他者之境。

This paper analyzes Nora Okja Keller’s novel, Comfort Woman, which focuses on the dead and the survivors of the colonial and sexual violence in Korea during World War II, by applying Jacques Derrida’s discussions on the act of mourning and the alterity of the dead. In Comfort Woman, the narrative alternates between the ex-comfort woman, Akiko, and her daughter, Beccah. After the traumatic experience of sexual violence as a comfort woman, Akiko has been haunted by the dead and becomes a shaman, reckoning with death and responding to the demands of the dead. Likewise, after her death, Akiko’s daughter Beccah learns, through Akiko’s voice recorded in a tape, to mourn for Akiko’s death and is called to fulfill her responsibility to her dead mother. While mourning is a necessary responsibility, how to understand and respond to the infinite alterity of the dead becomes a duty facing the survivors, and according to Derrida, it is also a question of “hospitality without reserve” to harbor the dead. However, the text of Comfort Woman also indicates an alternative picture of the ghost, which is not merely an unknown other but also an agent, with a different trajectory, which the work of mourning follows; that is, in the act of mourning, my conscious “I” should yield to the dead, the other, instead of keeping the dead alive within my memory.