快照吳爾芙•驚嚇現代性

Snapshocking Virginia Woolf

本文從英國作家吳爾芙的晚期作品＜過去的素描＞切入，企圖提出一個新的字詞與理論概念「快照驚嚇」（snapshock），來捕捉吳爾芙在文本中所言「存有瞬間」作為一種「突如其來的猛烈驚嚇」之所能彰顯的獨特時間性與感官性。在傳統的用法中，「快照」凸顯的是曝光時間短暫的「瞬間成像」，而「驚嚇」凸顯的是感官強度的過於猛烈，但當此二詞組合翻轉成「快照驚嚇」時，就不僅只是凸顯瞬間成像的感官強度而已，而是思考「快照」作為一種現代性科技與「驚嚇」作為一種現代性感官，如何相互穿刺改寫，如何讓視覺、觸覺、聽覺相互翻轉折疊，更是思考「快照」作為「思考－影像」、「思考－事件」的可能。
而本文擬對「快照驚嚇」所進行的理論建構，將分成二個部份加以開展。第一個部份回到吳爾芙的傳記資料與書寫文本，探究「快照」在其書信日記與創作中所扮演的曖昧角色以及其遲遲未能發展理論潛力之關鍵，再帶入現代性中對「瞬間」作為感官強度的探討以及班雅明的「驚嚇美學」，如何有助於我們重新切入吳爾芙文本中所不斷蹦現的「存有瞬間」。第二部份則將回到「快照」在西方哲學論述中的曖昧位置，不僅思考「攝影」與「電影」之間的可能異同，更欲探究「攝影」之內「攝影照」與「快照」在時間感性上的巨大差異，並經由繞徑柏格森與德勒茲，重新回到＜過去的素描＞，發展「快照驚嚇」作為吳爾芙生命影像哲學的可能。

By taking ”A Sketch of the Past” written in 1939 as a point of departure, this essay attempts to theorize a new concept of ”snapshock” to capture the singular temporality and sensibility of the ”moments of being” described as ”a sudden violent shock” in Virginia Woolf's text. While ”snapshot” in the traditional usage refers to the picture taken in a short time of exposure and ”shock” testifies the overwhelming sensation, ”snapshock” as a neology points not only to the momentary intensity and bodily sensation of picture-making, but also to the creative linkage established between ”snapshot” as a modern technology and ”shock” as a modern sensation, to the intertwinement among the visual, the tactile and the auditory, and further to the possibility of taking the ”snapshock” as a shock to ”thought-image” or ”thought-event.”
Therefore, this essay will be divided into two parts to explore the theorization of ”snapshock.” Part I will trace back to Woolf's writings and biographical document to foreground the ambivalent positioning of the snapshot as both an old metaphor for Victorian realism and a new technology for modernist aesthetics. It will then move to the under-developed possibility of taking ”the moment” of the snapshot as the intensity of bodily sensation by bringing in the ”aesthetics of the shock” in modernity elaborated by Walter Benjamin. Part Ⅱ will further contextualize the ambivalent positioning of the snapshot in the Western philosophical discourse. It will try to map out the similarity and difference between photography and cinema, to explore the differentiation within photograph and snapshot, and finally, by detouring through the philosophical thinking of Henri Bergson and Gilles Deleuze, to take the ”snapshock” as the major concept and affect of Woolf's life-philosophy emergent in ”A Sketch of the Past.”