美麗失敗者：論希薇亞•湯森•華娜《幸運先生的奇想》與《夏日將現》中的酷兒烏托邦與失敗政治性

Beautiful Losers: Queer Utopianism and the Politics of Failure in Sylvia Townsend Warner’s Mr. Fortune’s Maggot and Summer Will Show

本篇論文援用慕諾茲、鶴柏斯坦、阿蜜等所提出的酷兒烏托邦的論點，探討希薇亞‧湯森‧華娜的《幸運先生的奇想》（1927）與《夏日將現》（1936）。在這兩部小說中，「失敗」的涵意被豐饒地逆轉，與許多另類性做連結：對異質他者如種族、階級、性別差異的體悟；顛覆異性戀常模時間觀中將「成功」與征服他者、認識論確鑿、資本累積、家庭、生養後代劃上等號；同時，「失敗」也與幻想未來酷兒式的烏托邦息息相關。在《幸運先生的奇想》中，與異己遭逢的傳教士，並未選擇帝國主義式殲滅他者的賦權模式，而是放棄西方中心的基督教信仰，謙遜地臣服於他者的異質性。同樣的，在《夏日將現》中，人妻蘇菲與小三米娜的相遇，意外地促成一連串暈眩的出境經驗及情不自禁的出神狀態，甚至造成蘇菲批判自己的階級出身，最後決定與法外伶仃人站在同一陣線，為被剝奪者而戰。在這兩部小說中，華娜將她的主角們從直時間的死胡同解放，移轉入幻奇的狂喜時間，使日常看似不可行的情慾與政治欲望交揉的鍊金術變成可能。作為一個酷兒烏托邦信仰者，華娜堅持所謂理想的世界必須逃脫直欲望與其代表的時間性鎖鏈。她的幻奇風格承載了某種批判願景，邀請我們跳脫貧瘠的當下，進入一個象徵著對冒險、狂喜出神、與無法預見皆採開放態度的「他方」。

This paper examines Sylvia Townsend Warner’s two novels, Mr. Fortune’s Maggot (1927) and Summer Will Show (1936), through the critical lenses of recent works of queer utopianism by scholars such as José Esteban Muñoz, Judith (Jack) Halberstam, and Sara Ahmed. In these two novels, failure is productively linked to the awareness of racial, class, and gender variance; the refusal of heteronormative temporality that leads to the equation of success with mastery, epistemological certitude, capital accumulation, family, and child; and seeds for the not-yet-here utopianism. In Mr. Fortune’s Maggot, the missionary’s encounter with the exotic other does not move forward to an imperialistically incorporative self-empowerment but culminates in a defection from doctrine and a self-cancelling capitulation to the other. Similarly, in Summer Will Show, Sophia’s encounter with the exotic Minna unexpectedly precipitates a giddy loss of self-possession and cognitive mastery, even bringing her to reject her class to take a stand with the outlaw and fight at the side of the dispossessed. In these two novels, Warner transports her central characters outside the dead-end temporality of straight time and into an ecstatic time of fantasy in which the alchemy of the seemingly incompatible fusion of eros and political desire is possible. As a queer utopian, she insists that the ideal world must evade straightness and its time. Thus, her fantastic style carries a critical promise that invites us to step out from the impoverished present and into an “elsewhereness” that signifies an openness to risk, the ecstatic, and the unforeseeable.