在大與小之間：一座娃娃屋的空間、歷史與政治──論西西《我的喬治亞》

Between Big and Small: Space, History, and the Politics of a Dollhouse in Xi Xi’s My Georgian

西西的長篇小說《我的喬治亞》（2008）出版於香港回歸後十年，社會運動甚囂塵上之際。此書卻捨作者一直鍾愛的香港題材，以搭建一座娃娃屋為故事的中心。有論者視《喬治亞》為逃逸的輕巧之作，本文卻認為，輕重大小之界限正是作品所要質詢的；至於公共與私密之界線亦未始不可挪動。通過把《喬治亞》重新置於它出現的社會背景，尤其當時成為全城焦點的天星及皇后碼頭保育運動（2006－2007），本文視能夠隨時變化改造的玩具屋遊戲，為對保育行動的戲仿（parody），並分析作品裡，作為歷史標記的建築物如何被置換為一個溝通不同時空的「通道」；「私密」、「微型」的娃娃屋如何介入「公共」、「紀念碑式」的領域，進而挑戰我們對這些概念的二分及價值預設，並促使我們反省城市建築與空間的設計、歷史的再現，以及它們與文學藝術的關係。 Published ten years after the handover of Hong Kong, Xi Xi’s novel My Georgian (2008) appeared during a time when social movements were rampant. This work, however, abandons the author’s preferred topic of Hong Kong, and focuses instead on the story of building a dollhouse. Whereas some critics regard My Georgian as an escapist, lightweight work, this paper argues that the novel challenges the very boundaries between the common understanding of “important” and “trivial” and between “public” and “private.” By situating My Georgian within its historical and social context of preservationist movements, especially the social movements to preserve the Star Ferry Pier and Queen’s Pier (2006-7), this paper regards the playfulness of building a dollhouse as a parody of preservationist movements, and analyzes how Xi Xi’s work turns an historical building into a space-time “passageway” and intervenes in the “monumental,” “public” sphere through playing with a “miniature,” “private” dollhouse. This paper also posits that her novel subverts our presumptions of the hierarchical and binary opposition of these concepts and fosters critical reflections on not only the planning and design of buildings and spaces in the city, but also the representations of history, as well as their relationships to art and literature.