柯溫愛《脈動》中的都會漫遊與記憶演示

A Flâneur and Her Memory Acts in Lydia Kwa’s Pulse (in Chinese)

華裔加拿大作家柯溫愛的《脈動》裡，女主角娜塔莉•謝彷若班傑明定義下的漫遊者，於漫遊途中一度在原地逗留、回盼過往。但正經歷的現實卻如旋風般驅使她前行，使得家成了一覽而過的風景。她受記憶所囿的身體也將隨著她的旅行、醫療行為等行動，演示出創傷。本文說明人物的活動與使用的物件如何標記出連結生理和心理的路徑。循此路徑，個人的創傷不僅演出並得以展示，從而與他人的創傷相互連結。敘事並置了多倫多與新加坡實體都會空間以及零碎模糊的個人記憶，除了凸顯現實與過去的衝突，兩者間的互滲也讓後者的輪廓更顯清晰。從都會漫遊到記憶演示，我們看到了跨越各式界限的行動，如何解構國族、文化與性別身分的中心，並在去中心的區域裡依個人需求重新劃界。

The female protagonist of Lydia Kwa’s Pulse can be read as Walter Benjamin’s flâneur who never arrives at her destination─home. It is nothing but a place she passes by since everything about home always seems static and frozen in time. Sometimes she would like to stay, to invoke her childhood memories. However, there is always a storm blowing from the present reminding her to act on the physical reality. The storm created by everyday objects would propel her into the future. In the novel, Natalie Chia earns to manipulate objects to act out her trauma. For instance, she uses needles to diagnose her own mentle illness or ties her partner with ropes when practicing BDSM techniques. The manipulation as an acting-out marks physical and psychological routes for her to trace out the haunted past. Moreover, once discovering that Selim, her ex-girlfriend’s son, is also a survivor of child abuse, Natalie finds herself a secondary witness with whom she shares the unspeakable pain. With an emphasis on their victimization related to their homosexual desire, Kwa presents a de-centralized world as oppose to the privileged patriarchal and heterosexual reality. In this world, national, cultural and gender identity are unsettled and the unsettlement of which could map out routes as required.