論李昌來《滿潮》的生命政治及死亡政治

Examining Biopolitics and Thanatopolitics in Chang-rae Lee's On Such a Full Sea

李昌來的小說《滿潮》是個移民故事，場景設在離今天大約一兩百年後的美國，訴說中國流民逃出受環境汙染的家鄉之後、漂泊到美國尋求庇護的遭遇。由於瘟疫肆虐，美國執行嚴格的生命治理，人民得居住在三個管區當中：「勞工區」住民的任務是耕種及養殖，確保農作及漁產不受汙染，小說主要的事件發生於一個以中國移民為主的勞工區「B摩」；「特區」圍以高牆，其間居住著隸屬不同族裔但都窮奢極裕的資產階級，倚靠勞工區提供的作物存活；「開放區」則是無人管轄的化外之地，作奸犯科、雞鳴狗盜之徒居住在深受汙染的環境裡，缺乏政府治理及律法保護。這幾個社會階層恰好將人分為三類，分別是B摩裡的「智人」、特區裡的「神人」、以及開放區的「牲人」。小說中人類霸佔並濫用環境，一心想征服瘟疫，奢望將自己提昇至神人的位階，結果卻是落入牲人的境地。本論文將從生命政治的觀點出發，以《滿潮》為主要研究文本，探究瘟疫時代下生命政治及死亡政治的操作，審視人類移動與環境的關係，以重新檢討我們對亞裔美國文學、瘟疫小說、惡托邦文學的評斷，以及這部小說對二十一世紀的生命政治可能提出的修正及建議。

Set in a future about 150 to 200 years from the present day, Chang-rae Lee's novel On Such a Full Sea (2014) features an immigration story where diasporic Chinese flee from anthropogenic hazards including water pollution and food contamination in China and find shelter in the US. Due to the pandemic outbreak of C-illness, strict biopolitical governmentality is implemented and people are forced to live according to a hyper-stratified system: labor colonies are for those who farm and fish to produce uncontaminated food, especially featuring B-Mor, one of the colonies inhabited by people of Chinese descent; Charter villages are walled districts where privileged people live on food supplied by B-Mor; and Open counties are an anarchic territory where dissidents live on neither governmental services nor protection against perils in the polluted surroundings. This societal stratification happens to place people into three categories: Homo sacer in Open counties, Homo sapiens in labor colonies, and Homo deus in Charter cities. However, as people monopolize and profit from the environment, their endeavors to be god-like and to defeat the pandemic simply deplete humanity and bring the world to the verge of annihilation. This paper departs from the perspective of biopolitics to analyze On Such a Full Sea, investigate how biopolitics and thanatopolitics are in power during the pandemic era, and examine the relationship between human migration and environment, for the purpose of re-evaluating Asian American literature, plague literature and dystopian literature, and exploring the execution of biopolitics in the twenty-first century.