雙向的混雜性：論冷戰時期泰華小說中的「泰化」

Bidirectional Hybridity: ''Thaification'' in Cold War-Era Sinophone Thai Fiction

冷戰時期的泰國長期實施軍事獨裁統治，官方執行「同化」政策。在這段時期，泰華社群幾乎徹底斷絕與中國故鄉的重要聯繫，華文教育與媒體或遭嚴格限制，或被關閉。在這樣的情況下，「泰化」竟成為泰華文學新活力的基礎，而這種泰化以小說這文類最為明顯。隨著泰國歷史家在八○年代對於同化大敘事的調整，海外華文文學專家在冷戰時期結束後重新確定泰華文學的「兩種文化」特性，亦即其保留向來當作泰華社交語言的潮汕話之特色。在這樣的歷史背景下，本文分析兩篇冷戰時期泰華小說中「泰化」的社會政治語言文化的主要特點。由九位作家共同撰寫的接龍小說《風雨耀華力》（1963－64）和巴爾的小說《陋巷》（1979）不但彰顯當時泰文文學「為人生而文藝」（วรรณกรรมเพื่อชีวิต）的一些主題和風格，又呼應華泰作家摻雜潮州話之泰文小說中的語言揉雜，例如「牡丹」（โบตั๋น）的《寄自泰國的信》（จดหมายจากเมืองไทย，1969）。根據上述觀察，泰華文學的泰化與其說是「同化」的過程或「兩種文化」的狀態，不如說是「雙向的混雜性」。

The Cold War period in Thai history is marked by an official program of assimilation under a succession of military dictatorships. For the Sino-Thai community, this period not only entailed the near total severance of vital ties with ancestral villages back in China, but also the closure and severe restriction of Sinophone education and media. During this period, ”Thaification” became the basis for Sinophone Thai literature’s new vitality, exhibited most prominently in fiction. Coinciding with Thai historians’ revisions to the assimilation narrative in the 1980s, scholarship on Sinophone Thai literature in the post-Cold War era has reasserted this literature’s biculturalism, namely its preservation of the Swatow dialect of Teochew that served as a lingua franca of the Sino-Thai community for many generations. Against this historical backdrop, this essay analyzes the sociopolitical, cultural, and linguistic features of ”Thaification” in two Sinophone Thai novels from the Cold War Era: the multi-authored sequential novel ”Stormy Yaowarat Road” (Fengyu Yaohuali, 1963-64) and Ba Er’s Shantytown (Lou xiang, 1979). These works not only share thematic and stylistic features with Thai ”Literature for Life” (wannakam phua chiwit) narratives, but also complement the Teochew-Thai linguistic mixing of Sino-Thai novels in Thai such as Botan’s landmark work, ”Letters from Thailand” (Chotmai chak muang Thai, 1969). Based on such assessments, a more apt way to characterize the ”Thaification” of Sinophone Thai literature is neither assimilation nor biculturalism, but ”bidirectional hybridity.”