身体符号的限度:拜厄特与当代激进身体话语

The Limit of Body Signification: A. S. Byatt and Contemporary Critical Discourses on Body

对于身体在当代文学理论与文化政治语义场中符号化的倾向,英国作家A.S.拜厄特采取了较为审慎的立场。她在《巴别塔》中质疑了1960年代残酷戏剧的暴力语言对人类身体尊严与价值的侵越和践踏,通过《中国龙虾》的迫害妄想症个案,指出被无限放大的女性身体解放话语会扼杀女性审美想象力、扭曲自我认知,借助《原材料》暗示了表征身体欲望和语言的"阴性写作"之外,女性书写自我的可能。拜厄特对当代激进身体话语的反思,为深入理解她与后现代艺术理念以及女性主义思潮的复杂关系提供了重要切入点。

In much of her writing, A. S. Byatt has taken a cautious stand on the literary and political signification of body in contemporary critical discourse. In Babel Tower, she questions the language of violence in the Theatre of Cruelty which tramples on the dignity and inherent value of the human body. In “The Chinese Lobster”, she reveals the fatal consequences that a feminist obsession with the oppressed female body has inflicted upon women＇s aesthetic imagination and self-perception. In “Raw Material”, she suggests an alternative for women to write themselves beyond écriture feminine, deriving both language and the writing subject from the body. Reflecting upon the extent to which body has been signified to feed into a variety of contemporary critical discourses, these writings provide a glimpse into the writer＇s cautious engagements with postmodern theories and feminism at large.