王侯第宅的異時新主：奈波爾和拉希莉的印度往來與翻異

Differentiation of Differences in the Strangers of V. S. Naipaul and Jhumpa Lahiri

差異在印度乃屬常態，在國族論述上，越界與游移也不斷地滲透並顛覆這想像社群，致使安德生所謂的「想像共同體」難以形成。差異所衍生的形態學（extended morphology）不僅顯現在獨立、分裂與動亂，更在何謂印度文學的界說上爭辯。在海外，這股詭異的跨文化的書寫更被大量英語讀者消費，對日漸熟悉的詭異不但愛恨交織，甚至共謀演繹詭異姿態的生產與變形。英語創作遂是以子之矛攻子之盾的障眼法，當異質對類同的滲透始終未歇時，文化輸入應避免只愚昧地鋪設單行道，英語印度文學裡的「印度往來或非法勾搭」（Indian traffic）便是架築在此一難解的新舊仇恨的更迻上。

This study explores and conflates the two ends of Indian diaspora trajectory, namely, the ancestral and imaginary home to call attention to the left-behind home into critical consideration. One conclusion this study draws is that Jhumpa Lahiri's ＂Interpreter of Maladies＂ is never a sequel to ＂E. M. Forster's A Passage to India＂ in that postcolonial returns are heavily loaded with differentiated differences. It is precisely these (un-) comfortable positioning these postcolonial returnees find themselves in to plant crannies for these differentiated differences, as it were. The home returned to becomes indeed a site of conflicts. The writers discussed take up the overlooked home and call our critical and hermeneutic attention to such negligence. Lahiri demonstrates a postcolonial inversion to ＂Forster's A Passage to India＂ by infusing a disturbing dimension in that she telescopes histories to have her chauffeur-cum-interpreter engage in a dialogue with Forster in a marked difference, one that refuses easy leveling and calls for further differentiation. In differentiating differences in the strangers of Naipaul and Lahiri, it is not so much as value that matters as the conflicts arisen therein.