「南方以南」的時態：《潮汐圖》與「新南方寫作」的悖論

The Temporalities of the South: Tidal Atlas and the Paradox of New South Writings

在全球化語境中，如何思考文學「南方」的在地生產？對於當代中國文學而言，「南方」意味著什麼？本文通過細讀2021 年林棹的小說《潮汐圖》，參與近年在中國文學批評界與學界興起的關於「新南方寫作」的討論。「新南方寫作」的命名靈感來自於去中心化的跨國現代主義文學南方，分類邏輯卻源於強調向心力的疆域化文化治理，其概念內部的張力由此產生。本文由此張力出發，進入《潮汐圖》文本，考究其藉由敘事者巨蛙的非人視角對沿海疍民的生存處境的描繪，對帝國殖民陰影之下的外銷畫生產與博物學研究的再虛構，以及對南方自我再現及知識生成的反思。本文指出，《潮汐圖》迂迴於歷史與虛構之間，創造出屬於「南方以南」的「豐厚的當下」，從而挑戰了現有新南方寫作話語中的疆域化傾向及其指向「未來完成時」的戰略化想像，並重啟其批判潛力。

In the age of globalization, how should we approach a local literary production of the South? What does the “South” mean to contemporary Chinese literature? This paper engages with the recent academic and literary-critical discussions regarding the New South Writings in China through a close reading of Lin Zhao’s 2021 novel Tidal Atlas. The naming of “New South Writings” evokes the decentralized global phenomenon of literary modernism, and yet the conceptualization of this category has also been driven by a centripetal political impulse to govern China’s national literature. With this paradox in mind, I examine Lin’s exploration of the nonhuman perspective of the frog narrator, the marginalized community of the “fisher folk” in Southern China, and the colonial legacies of export paintings and natural history research, as well as her critical engagement with the self-representation and knowledge-making of the South. Tidal Atlas, I argue, challenges the territorializing tendency in the current conceptualization of the New South Writings, problematizes the “future perfect tense” in related discourses’ strategic calling for the future, and reinvigorates the concept’s critical potential via its engagement with “the thick present” of the South and a radical mixture of history and fiction.