殖民主体的诞生——对《射象》及其他缅甸文本的拉康式解读

The Birth of the Colonial Subject:A Lacanian Reading of “Shooting an Elephant” and Other Burmese Texts

本文旨在以拉康的逻辑时间概念和有关焦虑的论述重新解读乔治·奥威尔的随笔《射象》。奥威尔对射象事件的叙述凸显了主体顿悟的几个时刻。这些时刻与拉康论述心理主体的生成机制时给出的逻辑时间颇有异曲同工之妙。从这个角度,本文揭示了奥威尔笔下的殖民主体生成的三重悖论,并结合奥威尔的另外两部缅甸作品《绞刑》和《缅甸岁月》以及其他史料进一步证明,奥威尔的文学创作在早期就显现出探知主体生成和主体间逻辑关系的深刻倾向,而在逻辑时间下所必然生成的焦虑不仅成为奥威尔笔下殖民者身份的固有特征,并且也成为他本人文学创作从始至终的潜在推动力。

The paper aims to reinterpret George Orwell's essay "Shooting an Elephant"with Lacan's concept of logical time and anxiety theory.Orwell highlights the several moments in the subject's enlightenment in the event of shooting the elephant.These moments uncannily parallel the logical time given by Lacan in his discussion of the generative mechanism of the psychological subject.In this perspective,the paper illustrates the triple paradoxes existent in the birth of the colonial subject.And with Orwell's two other Burmese pieces "A Hanging" and "Burmese Days",the paper further proves that a strong inclination to explore the genesis of the subject and the inter-subjective logic manifests itself in Orwell's early work.