戰爭；鐵漢定律與創傷倫理：派特‧巴克的《再生》

War, Warrior Myth, and the Ethics of Traumatic Awakening: Pat Barker’s Regeneration

當代英國女作家派特‧巴克(Pat Barker)在她的《再生三部曲》(Regeneration Trilogy)中，反覆凸顯並處理「英雄主義、男子漢作為、榮譽等議題」。在第一次世界大戰爆發前後，這些性別與倫理等議題更與國族主義結合，成為軍人自我規訓的內在律則，他們不可悖反的定然律令，更儼然形成不成文的「鐵漢定律」(warrior myth)。這篇論文則順此思考脈絡，藉由《再生三部曲》來探討戰爭機器對於男子氣概的規訓與操弄、「鐵漢定律」的挪用與闡連，「恐同」論述的生產、使用與其駭人的效應。質言之，巴克的《再生》帶領讀者探討何謂英雄，如何才是沙場鐵漢，而當男子漢心靈受創時，他們如何療傷止痛呢？是惱羞成怒，濫用暴力以重建受到質疑的男性雄風？還是失落在現實與理想的滑落中，不知所措，更無法言語？另一方面，面對這些受創的男子漢，社會又如何為他們療傷止痛呢？是要讓他們知所羞恥，鼓起勇氣，重回戰場，藉由殺戮來證明他的男子氣慨呢？還是要安撫他們受創的心靈，送他們回到後方母親的懷抱，讓時間消磨傷痛呢？巴克在《再生三部曲》中提出這些大哉問，先將鐵漢定律定位為西方文明的病徵，更是纏繞西方現代男性的幽靈，進而透過文字進行「哀悼」儀式，藉此與「鐵漢」告別，除此之外，巴克也挪引聖經中亞伯拉罕與以撒的故事，來勾勒出迥異於擅長殺戮的戰場「鐵漢」的男性形象。因此，在巴克筆下的鐵漢，雖是戰地英雄，卻是慈悲為懷的鐵漢，也是集結亞伯拉罕與以撒的特質於一身的悲劇英雄。整體而言，《再生》雖以戰爭為主題，作者也不諱言其反戰的態度，但巴克真正要批判的不僅是戰爭本身，而是導致戰事反覆發生的西方現代的陽剛文化，尤其是結合律法、暴力、欲望於一體的伊底帕斯情結，以及在現代情境下結合國族主義與現代情慾文化的鐵漢定律。

It is now a critical consensus that Pat Barker's novel, Regeneration, mainly deals 'with questions of heroism, manliness, and honor, and with the woundings of war.' This paper argues that Pat Barker writes Regeneration not only to examine the language of war, and the practices of warfare, but also to investigate how they join hands to perpetuate and romanticize the 'warrior myth' as the only legitimate means for young men to assess and perform their 'manhood.' Barker does this not by depicting the bloodsheds in the battlefields but by focusing on the traumatic 'regeneration' of shell-shocked officers in World War I. On the one hand, by giving a fictional account of the meeting at Craiglockhart war hospital of poets Siegfried Sassoon, Wilfred Owen, and anthropologist W. H. R. Rivers, Barker exposes the fictionality, or the impossibility, of 'regeneration,' while calling to the reader's attention the psychic processes through which the traumatized officers work through their traumas either by translating their memories of war into poetry or by engaging in the Freudian 'talking cure' with one another. On the other hand, Barker also includes into her novel the controversial Biblical story of Abraham's sacrifice of Isaac to intimate the imperative that those who do not fight in the war come to the traumatic awakening that the soldiers' traumas are as much the soldiers' as theirs. Unless the traumatic voices of the dead and shell-shocked soldiers are heard and their blind loyalty to the interlocking ideologies of war, manhood, and nationalism acknowledged and unraveled, Barker thus suggests, no trauma of war will be healed and no regeneration is ever possible.