破碎的家庭與噤聲的個人主義：臺灣都會家庭暴力和女性反抗策略

Failed Families and Quiet Individualism: Domestic Abuse and Women's Strategies of Resistance in Urban Taiwan

個人欲望與家庭需求之間的緊張關係，可見於任何社會之中。在臺灣，強調犧牲個人以成全家庭的現象比許多西方國家更明顯。在本文中，筆者分析五份臺灣家庭暴力事件，探討家庭責任如何導致嚴重的個人犧牲。這些在臺灣絕非常見，但卻比平常家庭出現較顯著的個人需求與團體義務間的衝突。儒家傳統強調父系中心主義，女性在其間只能充當配角。本文發現，儒家思想同樣對女性造成巨大的道德與心理影響。女性們為家庭而自我容忍的程度，令人驚訝，然而，她們的故事也同時述說了即便在極端的家庭控制中，個人仍可達成最大之所欲及所需。這即是我所稱的「噤聲的個人主義」，而它正可用來相對於西方啟蒙時期盛行之顯形於外的個人主義。總之，臺灣都會女性個人試圖維護自己利益的同時，亦兼顧了維持儒家所盼家庭大於個人利益的實踐傳統。

The tensions between individual desires and the needs of the family exist in any society. Yet in Taiwan there is a greater rhetorical emphasis on self sacrifice for the needs of family than in many Western nations. In the following pages Ⅰ will draw on several interviews and closely examine five in depth interviews of domestic abuse in Taiwan in order to explore just how far individual sacrifices can be demanded in the name of familial responsibility. These are by no means common cases in Taiwan but they highlight tensions between individual needs and group obligations in starker clarity than average familial relations. Confucianism is so male oriented that its effects on women are understudied. The following pages will demonstrate the tremendous moral and psychological force that Confucianism has also had on women. The extent to which the women in these accounts have suffered for their families is shocking, yet their stories also highlight the fact that even in the most extreme cases of familial abuse, individuals still maneuver to fulfill their own wants and needs to the degree that it is possible. This demonstrates what Ⅰ have called Quiet Individualism, as opposed to the more overt Western Enlightenment form of Individualism, in that individuals attempt to protect their own interests while maintaining an ideological commitment to Confucian precepts that familial concerns outweigh individual interests.