民主與共同體：《接踵而至》的家國政治

Democracy and Community: The Family-State Politics in In the Wake

克瓏(Lisa Kron)的戲劇《接踵而至》(2010)描述了紐約市一對未婚夫婦與他們的朋友同居的家庭故事。本劇聚焦在女主角艾倫(Ellen)在二十一世紀的第一個十年中的親密關係和對重大歷史事件的反應。她作為民主政治和家庭信仰的熱情擁護者，最終失去了男友、女友和家人。為了說明為什麼艾倫的理想成為泡影，本文首先探討艾倫如何受挫於美國個人主義的悖論，以及她為何無法在家中實現激進民主，從而無法實現反抗小布希(George W. Bush)總統的聯盟。之後本文參考儂曦(Jean-Luc Nancy)和紀傑克(SlavojŽižek)的否定性思考來說明為什麼艾倫的家國理想破滅了。儂曦的無法運作的共同體解構了共同體和個人，否定共同體是艾倫所想像的家國，一個有著共同價值觀的群體。艾倫也忽略了資本會破壞她價值體系的一致性，而這正是紀傑克所發現的。本文認為，無法運作的共同體所暴露出的個人分裂，以及在國內和國際造成階級分化的資本流動，粉碎了艾倫對和諧家國的彩虹想像。

Lisa Kron’s play In the Wake (2010) describes the story of a cohabited family of an unmarried couple with their friends in New York City. The heroine Ellen is spotlighted in terms of her intimate relationships and responses to major events in the first decade of the 21st century. A passionate advocate of her belief in democratic politics and family, Ellen ultimately loses her boyfriend, girlfriend, and family. To illustrate why Ellen’s ideal becomes a damp squib, this paper first explores how Ellen is frustrated by the paradoxes of American individualism, as well as her failure to realize a radical democracy in her family, which makes her anticipated anti-Bush coalescence impossible. Then this article consults Jean-Luc Nancy and SlavojŽižek’s negative thinking to show why Ellen’s family/state ideal is disillusioned. Nancy’s conception of the inoperative community illustrates the deconstruction of the community and the individual, falsifying the community, as Ellen imagines in her family and state, to be a group based upon shared values. Ellen also ignores that capital can disrupt the consistency of her value system, asŽižek has found out. This paper argues that the individual splits exposed in the unworking of the community, as well as the flow of capital that creates class division in the domestic and international span, shatter Ellen’s rainbow-colored imagination of a harmonious family/state in this play.