重讀〈狂人日記〉與「狂人」：殘障政治視野的提問

Rereading Lu Xun’s “Diary of a Madman” and Its Madman from a Disability Studies Perspective

本文從晚近「殘障研究」（或譯「障礙研究」）新興領域所提供的洞見，重新閱讀魯迅（1881-1936）〈狂人日記〉（1918）及其小說主人公「狂人」。主要關注點是「瘋子」的再現及閱讀政治，而非魯迅其人其文之思想或藝術成就。魯迅以其現代醫學知識，設定小說主人公狂人為「迫害狂」，本文將〈狂人日記〉與其他材料（如報紙新聞、傳記回憶等）並讀，發現小說以外的材料對於瘋狂的再現，傳統氣息較為濃厚，瘋子通常是鄉村鄰里親友；對照閱讀之下，本文分析了〈狂人日記〉小說敘事如何為「非瘋狂」的讀者設計了閱讀框架，將狂人讀成隱喻，尋求與現實瘋子本身無關的象徵意義，而忽視小說中已經描述得相當具體的瘋疾者所遭遇的社會排斥與汙名。〈狂人日記〉中「狂人」這個虛構的角色，在創作與閱讀中被認同、被象徵、被隱喻，也被「寫實」，在小說中依西方醫學範疇被診斷為「病人」，又被中醫診治，不論在小說本身或其後的解讀中，都經歷著「再現的勞務」，承擔了溢出的意義。小說透過「寫實」的狂人賦予象徵的功能，以批判中國傳統禮教的暴力（禮教「吃人」），這個現代文學的設計，恰恰是將現代對於瘋疾的暴力「吃」進現代文學，構成「寫實」現代性的一部份。

Focusing on the representational politics of insanity, this paper rereads Lu Xun’s (1881-1936) “Diary of a Madman” (1918) and its madman protagonist in light of emerging insights and perspectives from Disability Studies. Drawing on his state of the art medical knowledge, Lu Xun presents his madman protagonist as diagnosed with “persecutory delusion.” In this paper, I juxtapose Lu Xun’s story with other contemporary materials, such as newspapers and memoirs, which on the contrary present a more nuanced traditional attitude toward the madman as familiar neighborhood type. This paper analyses how the fictional narrative devises a framework for non-insane readers to read madness as metaphor and seek a symbolic significance unrelated to actual madness while ignoring the social exclusion and stigma of mental illness already depicted in great detail in the narrative. I demonstrate how the madman in “Diary of a Madman” has been identified, symbolized, metaphorized and “realized” during the ongoing processes of writing and reading. I also analyze how the fictional madman as a “patient” diagnosed according to western medical categories and treated by Chinese doctors has experienced “the labors of representation” and taken on excessive meanings, both in the fiction itself and in the readings thereafter. I argue that, as the modern literary device criticizes a traditional Chinese moral violence (depicted as “eating people”) via a realistic madman who also functions symbolically, the actual violence toward the madman was eaten by modern literature as part of its “realistic” modernity.