纷乱将至——拉什迪《求婚者》解读

Ongoing Unstuck: A reading of Salman Rushdie's "The Courter"

在《求婚者》中,拉什迪诠释了20世纪60年代伦敦一个功能失调的移民社区因大英帝国的解体而出现的误解、困境和暴力。在帝国的末日阶段,随着梦想的印度和梦想的英国这一对概念的消褪与奔溃,帝国神话的破灭引发了一系列严重的问题。英语语言作为一种曾经权威、绝对的系统,被剥夺了其权威性,被拆解、被歪曲。殖民时代的神话破灭了,或被打乱了,取而代之的是一种将怀旧的过去变成了破坏性的"向前",并取代了历史的现在的杂糅叙事。处于过去和现在、神话和历史、边缘和中心、定位与错位、官方语言和经改造的语言的交汇之处的拉什迪,在这个短篇中成功地编汇了一种"杂糅的民族叙事"。

Salman Rushdie＇s ＂The Courtier＂ was published as the final contribution in Rushdie＇s collection entitled East, West. In it, Rushdie explores, decodes and demystifies the misunderstandings, dilemmas and violence resulting from the break- up of the British Empire, through the creation of a microcosmic, dysfunctional, immigrant community in London in the 1960s. This article tends to examine how ＂The Courter＂ is organized around the key post-imperial elements of disjunction and dislocation and the implications of this for language and writing. The joyful and exhilarating polysemy of so many competing discourses generates a new kind of liberating narrative tension, an authenticity of hybridized voices at a time of dynamic change for England and the English language. The myths of the colonial period are shattered and dislocated. They are replaced by a hybrid national narrative that turns the nostalgic past into the disruptive ＇anterior＇ and displaces the historical present. Rushdie, poised as he is at the intersection of past and present, myth and history, margin and center, location and dislocation, language and languages, to transform, disrupt and displace as he assists, masterfully, in the compilation of a new ＂hybrid national narrative＂.