在場的缺席者：解讀作為一則政治寓言的小說《可愛的仇人》

The Present Absences: Reading the Novel Loveable Rivals as a Political Allegory

作為日本殖民時期台灣最具指標性的一部通俗小說，《可愛的仇人》這部作品對於相關研究者的價值顯然是不言可喻的；儘管如此，內蘊於《可愛的仇人》中豐富的政治意涵，經過既有研究成果的挖掘後尚有更進一步解析的餘地。藉由涉及地理政治及國族政治面向的觀察，本文試圖將《可愛的仇人》這部作品中男女主角的個人處境，解讀為一則表徵台灣∕台灣人在日本殖民時期政治處境的寓言。在地理政治的面向，本文聚焦於《可愛的仇人》前半部為何將故事中的具體地名「高雄」代之以英文字母、又於後半部捨棄此種字母代號，並將這種表現手法解讀為理想中地理空間歸屬感建立過程的反映，而地理空間上的歸屬感正是在被殖民處境下個人經常會感到欠缺的；在國族政治的面向，本文則聚焦於小說中為何會有兩個名字裡帶有「華」的角色，在本身的缺席之下能分別對男女主角的行動造成關鍵性的影響力，並將這兩個缺席的人物解讀為對殖民時期的台灣而言政治上被迫缺席的中國因素。由此，本文指出《可愛的仇人》確實將台灣本島人菁英集體意識當中富有政治意涵的一個側面，經由文學加工有效地傳達了出來。

Being acknowledged as the most iconic popular fiction in Taiwan under Japanese colonial rule, Loveable Rivals is obviously a valuable text to academic research; however, there is still a large amount of political significance within Loveable Rivals waiting for further analysis after many researchers have done their work. By observing both the geopolitical and nationalist political aspects of this novel, this paper seeks to read Loveable Rivals as a political allegory, in which the male and female protagonists' personal situation could be seen as the metaphor of Taiwan/Taiwanese's political situation under Japanese colonial rule. In the aspect of geopolitics, this paper focuses on the question of why several letters of English alphabet serve as the substitute for the distinct geographical name ＂Kaohsiung＂ in the first part of Loveable Rivals and why such substitute is abandoned in the second half. It then reads such performing strategy as a represent of the process of constructing the sense of spatial or geographical belongingness, which is always conceived as the very lack of many individual minds under the condition of colonial rule. In the aspect of nationalist politics, this paper focuses on the question of why two of the absent characters with the word ＂hwa＂(華) in their names are capable of influencing vitally the male and female protagonists respectively across the board, and reads these two absent characters as the political Chinese factor which has been forced to keep absent from Taiwan under Japanese colonial rule. Based on the above evidences, this paper argues that Loveable Rivals, through its literary devices, effectively speaks for a dimension of Taiwanese elite islanders' collective consciousness which is rich in political significance.