英文摘要 |
In their writings on 〞Empire,〞 Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri propose an ontological way of addressing 〞the political〞 in the current global system. Globalization, according to them, refers to an all-encompassing historical condition without an outside; any resistance to globalization (what they term 〞biopolitics〞) will have to take place from within, in the form of production. If productivity substantiates contemporary life politics, how are we then to go about minority politics? Are those who reject identity politics-those who refuse to produce identity-eventually to be denied access to the collective biopolitical body? Moreover, even if conventional dialectics is rendered invalid and irrelevant in the global system, do we have to discard 〞outside thinking〞 outright, as Hardt and Negri have insisted? Is there any inside/outside imaging that is effective for our ethical configuration of globalization without necessarily serving the teleology of the dialectical logic? This paper will examine Foucauldian ethics and expand his notion of 〞techniques of the self,〞 a notion centered on the formation of the subject's moral conduct, into an ethical attitude towards the other(s). I argue that ethics is imperative because of the ontological finitude and epistemological limitations of the 〞I〞, and that contemporary ontological politics cannot bypass this aspect of the biopolitical multitude. This paper then turns to Tien-wen Chu's 1994 novel, Notes of a Desolate Man, to advance the thesis developed from my reading of Foucauldian ethics. Chu's novel, I argue, instantiates the ontological finitude that grounds ethics: the exposure of the 〞I〞 to the finitude of others renders 〞my〞 being exigent as 〞my〞 alterity is exposed, too. Ethics is 〞that which cannot be thought and yet must be thought〞 (Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari), the always-already-ness of the outside in any 〞inside (global, universal) thinking.〞 |