“羊皮纸重写”:萨尔曼·鲁西迪《摩尔人的最后叹息》中铭刻的杂糅观念

Palimpsestual Writing:Idea of Hybridity in Salman Rushdie’s The Moor’s Last Sigh

在《摩尔人的最后叹息》中,鲁西迪通过"羊皮纸重写"的历史,铭刻了印度文化形成的历史和变异的过程,包括其形形色色的文化遗产,以及它们交织重叠的轨迹。小说中"羊皮纸重写"的隐喻所蕴含的杂糅思想是鲁西迪对文化折中主义的热切期待。这种折中主义是一种乌托邦式的理想,是后殖民时代种族主义话语和"本质主义+民族主义"话语之间的一条艰难的中间道路。本文集中讨论两个相互关联的议题,其一是"羊皮纸重写"如何解构官方历史,颂扬文化的杂糅性,其二是作者对折中主义印度的乌托邦愿景的追求。最后得出的结论是,尼赫鲁世俗理想并没有一个美好未来,这种幻灭在奥罗拉的死亡和阿尔罕布拉宫的衰落中找到了象征性的对应物。

In The Moor’s Last Sigh,Salman Rushdie employs palimpsest as a metaphor to inscribe India’s intersecting trajectories of variegated cultural legacies and their imbrications in the course of cultural formation and historical mutation.The ideal of hybridity expressed by the metaphor of palimpsest shows the author’s enthusiastic anticipation of cultural eclecticism which seems a utopian ideal and a difficult middle path amid the tumult of resuscitating racist discourse and essentializing nationalist discourse in postcolonial times.This paper discusses two interrelated issues:one is how the palimpsest destabilizes the official history and eulogizes cultural hybridity;two is its utopian vision about eclectic India.The conclusion is that this eclectic cultural ideal seems a dim prospect which finds its symbolic corelative in the death of Aurora and in the fall of Alhambra.