空間／歷史的多重論證與「地方」的後邊陲追尋：讀姬蘭．德賽

The Problematic of Space, History, and Place: Kiran Desai's 'The Inheritance of Loss'

本論文試圖挪用後現代主義與人文地理學的「空間」與「地方」理論，剖析姬蘭．德賽（Kiran Desai）《繼承失落的人》（The Inheritance of Loss 2006）小說中地理的複數書寫，探索空間／歷史的辯證，檢視中心與邊陲的邏輯。《繼承失落的人》的敘述來回貫穿印度東北噶倫堡與全球矚目的大都會紐約。雙重文本、雙重敘述，場景跳接，視角轉換，展演出跨國空間。晚近，「空間」與「地方」的議題，引發人文地理學者與後現代理論學者多重發問、多樣表述。如何看待不同空間的接觸也引起諸多討論與不同的思考。本論文以蒲瑞特（Mary Louise Pratt）「接觸區」（Contact Zone）與瑪西（Doreen Massey）的「並列」（interrelations）觀點，詮釋這兩場域的「互相鑲嵌」與「互相組合」，以不同地方「並聯」產出的論述動能與批判視野，穿梭「中心—邊緣」界限，牽引地方的「後邊陲」追尋。本文並論證「地方是過程」，「地方」是「歷史的偶然」，「地方」是「事件」，其特徵是開放和改變，而不是界線和永恆。據此凸顯當代多元文化擴展中的地理漸層光譜，標舉全球不同文化的差異區辨，以履踐「空間」理論與「地方」研究於文學批評中。

This article reads Kiran Desai's ”The Inheritance of Loss” alongside the theory of space, history, and place as proposed by scholars, critics, and theorists of human geography and postmodernism. It engages a spatial speculation in investigating the Desai's literary cartography, space and senses of place as she creates against the backdrops of historical moment of upheaval in Kalimpong and the hybrid momentum of global migrants in the metropolis of New York City. It then argues that the seemingly polarized representation of two geopolitically antithetic locations is not a promotion of center-periphery logics, but rather a contestation of its inefficacy as rubric in elucidating politics of place or space. In contextualizing two sites, ”The Inheritance of Loss” orchestrates elements of South Asian and American socio-cultural complexities while offering a renewed understanding of place, which should be defined and approached according to its mobility and ongoing transformation. The way the two places are intersected in the novel is as such explored through a prism of ”contact zone,” ”a series of translations” and ”a nexus” of parallel worlds. By evaluating the spatial dimension of ”The Inheritance of Loss”, this article intends to foreground the multiple layers of meanings embedded in geographical imagination and to highlight the complicating theorization of place and space when applied to literary criticism.