倫理的歸返、實踐與債務：黃錦樹的中文現代主義

Back to Ethics: Ng Kim Chew and His Sinophone Modernist Compatriots

本文試圖以黃錦樹所提出的「中文現代主義」作為起點，旁觸他所建構的抒情傳統、現代中國性、以及馬華文學等體系，試圖指出：在這些看似個別的研究個案之中，黃錦樹所試圖召喚的，正是那「不在」的中文幽靈。而這個既是缺席、卻又時時現身、干擾黃錦樹的論述及其研究對象的幽靈，將為我們指出黃錦樹本人的現代主義者身份，和他所列舉出的一整列「中文現代主義者」之間，其實正共享著同一個「離散華人－現代主義」的對等結構。這個結構體現在被二十世紀初的那場現代性驚爆所震散於各地的中文作家書寫當中，在行動的意義上，乃是呈現為對「中國」這一形上學意義的「父親」死亡後的反覆重寫。「中文現代主義」因此是一段戀父者歷經亡父後的彌留狀態：以父的屍身導向書寫的唯物論。而黃錦樹本人也在自身的小說場景裡，不斷重複實踐這一重寫式的唯物場景。本文試圖指出，現代主義之於黃錦樹，形式就是身份，而美學等同於倫理。黃錦樹作為一個離散華人作家，現代主義的形式姿態，將是他永恆的遙祭。而他所抗拒的國家文學認同，也將在在逼使他的書寫離開了「國土」概念的本質，以現代主義之「火」（形式），燎燒出一整片現代主義的「土」（倫理）。而這一向倫理回歸的實踐之道，也必然使他欠下之於美學的債務。

By taking the core concept that Huang Jinshu [Ng Kim Chew] has recently proposed ”Chinese Modernism: an Incomplete Project?” as a point of departure, this essay argues that a symmetric structure of diasporic Chinese Modernism is co-constituted between Huang the modernist writer and the group of Taiwanese writers whom he calls the Chinese Modernists. Such a structure has scattered in the works of Chinese modernist writers in all directions by the implosion of modernity in the early 20th century. In practice, their repetitive writings represented an image of China as a deceased metaphysical Father. Chinese Modernism thus manifests an Electra complex with prolonged mourning for the death of the Father, and consequently by his corpse a Materialism of writing is produced. Huang himself also repetitively applies the material scenes to his narratives. However, as a diasporic Chinese writer, will the gesture of Modernism be his eternal pyre? The national identity of literature that Huang objects is in fact a repression to forcefully distance his writing from the essence of the ”fatherland,” igniting an entire Earth (ethics) of Modernism by the Fire (form) of Modernism. This essay attempts to point out that what Modernism meant to Huang is form as identity and aesthetic as ethics. It is in this context that the evolution from Modernism to Postmodernism in the 1980s and 90s is endowed with a new ethical meaning--it is an extremity of form and simultaneously it is evident that identity shifts from a dispersed subject to language. Hence the return of a new ethics.