農民工與中國夢：《城市夢想》的文化情感政治

Rural Migrant Workers and the Chinese Dream: The Cultural Politics of Emotion in My City Dream

本文分析中央電視台財經頻道實境節目《城市夢想》所勾勒的當代農民工文化想像，如何藉由「逐夢者」身分重新定位過往被大眾文化視為社會苦難化身的農民工，置換農民工向上流動「失敗」的不滿與憤怒，改寫此群體的底層身分認同，重新擁抱晉升小康階層的中國夢。聚焦於《城市夢想》所描繪的農民工個人生命危機與向上流動的勞動／情感結構，本文挪用並拓展學者柏蘭特（Lauren Berlant）與阿曼德（Sara Ahmed）分別在《殘酷的樂觀主義》（Cruel Optimism）與《幸福的承諾》（The Promise of Happiness）兩部作品中所探討的情感與情緒—樂觀與幸福，探究代表官方論述的《城市夢想》如何轉化與重新形塑農民工的文化情感結構，使其成為體現、在地化與開創當代中國夢的新主體，並且進一步探討夢想敘事所蘊含的文化情感政治。本文主張《城市夢想》正體現了官方敘事對底層勞動群體所進行的情感改造工程，以內在情感的重塑來建立社會大眾對於農民工的新身分認同與文化想像，重新將農民工群體納入向上流動的中國夢，但卻同時又因為喪失了集體變革的可能性，使得農民工更進一步遠離了中國夢所承諾的美好生活。

With a focus on the intersection between labor, migration, and affects, the paper explores how the narrative of rural migrant workers in China shapes and defines the making of a new cultural feeling toward China’s rural migrant workers. By looking at how the pursuit of happiness and the good life orchestrates and recalibrates rural migrants’ biopolitics and social relations, the paper studies the linked relation between migrant workers’ upward mobility and the discourse of the Chinese dream, interrogating how the workers’ failure unfolds other possibilities and associations with the nation’s promise of happiness. Focusing on CCTV’s reality show, My City Dream, the paper examines how the TV show narrates the tension between rural migrant workers’ aspiration for a better life and their struggles to survive, and how rural migrant workers’ life experience and social discourses compete to write and rewrite the cultural feelings pertaining to the underclass in contemporary China. Specifically, by looking at how My City Dream transforms rural migrant workers’ from “victims/losers” to “dreamers,” a transition that puts emphasis on the remaking of the worker’s feelings and interiority, the paper unfolds the cultural politics of emotion in recalibrating the relations between the individual and the social. Borrowing from and extending what Lauren Berlant and Sara Ahmed have shown in Cruel Optimism and The Promise of Happiness regarding how immigrants play as a key figure in our understanding of affects related to the vision of the good life, upward mobility, and happiness, the paper shows how the narrative of China’s rural migrant workers as “dreamers,” embodies, localizes, and invigorates the Chinese dream.