如何延遲世界末日？－－經《一座島嶼的可能性》窺看《風暴之書》與《西夏旅館》中的後人類視域及重返生命之途

How to Delay the End of the World?: Posthumanist Vision and Re-connection with Life in Cyclonopedia and Hotel Western Xia via The Possibility of an Island.

在衛勒別克新近的小說《一座島嶼的可能性》中，他再一次的耍弄他對生存的曖昧態度，不但大肆的暴露愛情／性愛最終的虛無，甚至死亡的虛無，並經此呈現出一種由科技所造成漫無止境的末日景象。然而，衛氏批判後期資本主義體制不遺餘力，但似乎總缺臨門一腳。但若將另外兩本當代小說與之並置，則可揭露衛氏不足之所在乃是：無法感受到拉崗所言的「真實」或德勒茲所言的「生命」。這兩本小說其一是伊朗裔美籍作者瑞薩‧ 內加勒斯坦尼所著的《風暴之書》，另一是台灣小說家駱以軍所著的《西夏旅館》。雖然這兩本小說有濃重的啟示錄氛圍，但兩者所呈現的黑色視界都不缺對救贖的暗示。它們雖因與「真實」或「生命」這人類存在根柢處的生猛能量遭遇，而衍生近似末日的預言，但兩者都經此而了悟到將「象徵」與「真實」、「人域」與「非人域」重予協商的必要。唯有積極的探勘及運用「真實」或「生命」才能讓人類遠離虛無主義，進而避免將這個雖非完美但仍絕無僅有的世界徹底毀滅。

In Houellebecq’s most recent novel The Possibility of an Island, he once again plays with his ambivalence toward life by exposing the futility of love/ sex and for that matter death, thereby adumbrating a prolonged doomsday through a dystopic rendering of the cult of technology. But two other novels, Cyclonopedia by Reza Negarestani, an Iranian American writer, and Hotel Western Xia by Yi-jun Luo, a Taiwanese writer, help modify this vision by laying bare what is lacking in its foundation: an impossibility to feel the Real (as defined by Lacan) or Life (as defined by Deleuze). Apocalyptical though they both seem, these two novels present dark visions with hints of potential redemption. In approximating the doomsday prophecy even further because of their having had direct contact with the Real or Life, that raw force which underlies human existence, they both have arrived at the realization of the need to re-negotiate the Symbolic and the Real, the human and the nonhuman. Only an active engagement with the Real or Life can lead us away from a thorough nihilism or for that matter complete destruction of the world we have been living in, imperfect as it is.