毒瘡與瓦片：威廉・布雷克《約伯記插畫》中的激進物質性

The Boils and Potsherds: Radical Materiality in William Blake’s Illustrations of the Book of Job

威廉・布雷克為舊約聖經《約伯記》所繪製的一系列插畫乃是其晚年的一大巨作。根據目前學界的共識，這組插畫體現了布雷克思想中獨特的基督教神學架構，同時也是一齣內在的人性心理劇場。本文另闢蹊徑，納入法國哲學家喬治・巴代伊的「低賤物質主義」概念，嘗試論證《約伯記插畫》中的激進物質性，如何劇烈地抗拒唯心式的昇華。本文指出，布雷克巧妙地融合了圖像和文字，以高度異質性的美學手法強化了物質與身體的存在，揭露出基督教中的神義論觀點與神聖性，其實很弔詭地奠基於巴代伊所言之「低賤物質」之上。透過激進物質性，布雷克的《約伯記插畫》強調了人類的道德決斷與行為並非受外在宗教權威與交換關係的制約，反映出巴代伊哲學中的「無用的價值」。另一方面，布雷克的圖像設計與聖經文本的非線性挪用，也確立了身體在宗教經驗中的重要位置，挑戰了傳統觀念中基督教的純粹精神性與唯心本質。

William Blake’s Illustrations of the Book of Job is widely recognized as the magnum opus of his final years. Generally, the preceding studies see the Illustrations as either an inner mental drama or a coherent part of Blake’s theological framework of a more enlightened form of Christian belief. But I argue that certain plates of the Illustrations foreground radical materiality as a disruptive force that ceaselessly resists spiritual elevation. By engaging with Georges Bataille’s conception of“base materialism,”I propose that Blake’s fusion of imagery and text is artistically heterogeneous, intensifying the presence of the material to disclose the fact that theodicean idealization is dependent on and even outperformed by the“base matter.”With radical materiality, Blake’s Job designs convey that human beings can will their moral actions based on the intrinsic qualities of such actions—“the use-value of uselessness”—rather than dictated by the exchange value that points to external ends. Also, religious experience consists of materialistic exploration, manipulation, and consumption of the body, challenging the conventional understanding of religion as inherently spiritual and idealistic.