毒鄉生存：論辛哈的《據說，我曾經是人類》中的毒物、暴力、與跨物質倫理

Toxicity Survival: Toxicity, Violence, and Trans-Corporeal Ethics in Indra Sinha’s Animal’s People

文學的功用之一，對於哈特曼（Geoffrey Har tman）而言，是幫助健忘的人們記憶起大災難事件（85）。辛哈（Indra Sinha, 1950-）的小說《據說，我曾經是人類》（Animal’s People, 2007）聚焦於名為「動物」的十九歲少男，以幽默詼諧、諷刺的口吻道出遭到化學工廠毒氣吞噬的印度小鎮人民對抗美國公司的環境正義議題，並以「動物」代表當地人民殘缺的身體、破爛的生活以及賤斥的第三世界。本文欲探討生存在毒鄉中的人民，其身體與所處環境是遭受怎樣的暴力對待？毒物如何從陳屍遍野的末世景觀演變成肆虐其日常生活的「毒物魅影」？希望藉由探討跨物質理論探討毒鄉的人民該如何自處與自保才能捍衛其基本生活權力，以在毒鄉中繼續堅強的生活。因此，本文主要以阿萊默（StacyAlaimo）的「跨物質性」（trans-corporeality）對物質與環境關係的看法，依照論文主題分為下列三個子題：首先探討小說中所呈現的毒物論述，以及毒物籠罩下的「地方」、「自然」的各種變形以及與身體的關係。繼而借用尼克森（Rob Nixon）的詞彙，討論毒物肆虐再加上政治、經濟糾葛的後殖民生態語境下所產生的「緩慢暴力」的關係。末節觸及在毒物所引發的緩慢暴力下，毒鄉中的子民該如何自我定位與繼續生存。本文主張，他們所聚集的環境正義力量正是阿萊默所主張的跨物質倫理的展現。

One of the functions of the literature, according to Geoffrey Hartman, is to help us “read the trauma” through the power of words. In this essay, I will “read the trauma” through the words of Mumbai-born British writer Indra Sinha’s novel Animal’s People (2007). Based on the Bhopal chemical plant disaster in India in 1984, the novel focuses on the life of a nineteen-year-old young boy named Animal and tells a story about how the people devastated by corporation’s power defy the global north and work to achieve social and environmental justice for their city and region. The novel reveals that after a lapse of twenty years, the residents of Bhopal (pseudonym Khaufpur) are still fighting the long battle with the US company (pseudonym Kampani). I analyze how Sinha reveals basic concepts such as “nature,” “place,” “body,” “animal,” and “human,” to mean quite different things after an apocalyptic event has occurred. The release of invisible chemicals sets off a “slow violence,” to use postcolonial critic Rob Nixon’s now famous phrase. Based on Nixon’s influential work and that of material ecofeminist, Stacy Alaimo, who proposes a theory of “trans-corporeality,” or the notion that invisible, but material entities, such as chemicals are free to pass among and through bodies, I focus on three key elements for this study: toxicity, slow violence, and transcorporeal ethics. The essay develops a discourse about toxicity, which explores how toxic places, toxic bodies and toxic life-styles are entangled in complicated ways. Then, I focus on the ways that Sinha dramatizes and politicizes the slow violence caused by the local government and the transnational chemical company in postcolonial ecologies. Finally, I ask how post-apocalyptical survivors, such as Animal, recognize a network of the political, economic, social, cultural, and ecological systems that position them outside harmful dualisms in western thought, such as human/animal, insiders/outsiders, profane/sacred. This will reveal the ways that Sinha is repositioning humannonhuman actors in a more just and ethical relation to social political and ecological systems.