回歸想像／想像「回歸」：張婉婷電影裡的離散政治

Imaginations of Return: The Politics of Diaspora in Mabel Cheung's Films

本文分析張婉婷的兩部電影─《玻璃之城》（1998）與《北京樂與路》（2001）─以討論圍繞著九七香港回歸所衍生的複雜的回歸想像。將張婉婷的電影放在九七香港的脈絡來討論，本文指出這兩部電影表達了由民族主義的離散論述所激發，卻與之截然不同的離散政治。在這兩部電影裏，離散回返深刻地表達了對放逐與懷舊的反省，而這標誌了離散主體重建與重塑亞洲與美國關係的開始。對九七之後的中國而言，離散回返雖然呼應了後殖民憂鬱的說法，它同時也溢出這套現有的理論框架，並指向一個在後帝國情境中，更為複雜的妒恨結構。因此，透過何謂回歸，為何回歸的探問，本文強調亞洲應該是討論亞美主體性的主要場景，並呼籲批判性的亞美研究應「回到」亞洲再出發。

This paper analyzes Mabel Cheung's films-City of Glass (1998) and Beijing Rocks (2001)-as a way to discuss the complex imaginations of diaspora return evolved around the Hong Kong handover in 1997. By situating Cheung's films in the context of Hong Kong 1997, this paper argues that her films articulate a politics of diaspora that is contingent on, yet essentially different from, the nationalist discourse of diaspora. Cheung's films show that diaspora return signifies more profoundly as a reflection on exile and nostalgia that marks the beginning of rehabilitating and reshaping the Asian-American relationship by diasporic subjects. In the post-1997 Chinese context, diaspora return, while echoing the existing framework of postcolonial melancholy, also exceeds it by gesturing towards a more complex structure of ressentiment in post-imperial situations. Therefore, by asking what it means to ＂return,＂ for whom and for what, the paper foregrounds Asia as the primary site for examining Asian American subjectivity, and calls for a ＂return＂ to Asia for critical Asian American studies.