《等待野蛮人》:自我解构的帝国与“他者”

Waiting for the Barbarians:The Self-destructive Empire and“Others”

作为一种权力机制,为维持自身的有效运作,帝国不仅要征服属于异域或异族的“外部他者”,同时还会致力于清除“内部他者”,也就是那些来自帝国内部,但对帝国的逻辑、价值观念和权力架构持异议的“内部人”。在已有的帝国叙事中,得到更多关注的往往只是“外部他者”,而忽略“内部他者”。但在《等待野蛮人》中,库切对这两种类型的“他者”和帝国之间的互动都有描述。在这部作品中,不管是对想象的“野蛮人”的征讨,还是对“内部他者”的规训•带来的并不是帝国内部凝聚力的增强和对“他者”的成功奴役,而是作为帝国隐喻的边境小镇的灭亡。在本文看来,帝国征服“他者”的过程同样是一个导致自身灭亡的过程,而《等待野蛮人》则以隐喻的方式演绎了这一内在于帝国的自我解构性。

As a power mechanism,the empire not only endeavors to conquer“the Other from outside”,but also aims to tame“the Other from within,”which refers to those“insiders”,who challenge the logic,values,and power structure of the empire.However,more emphasis has been given to “the Other from outside”in post-imperial narratives,while“the Other from within”has been largely ignored.However,Coetzee’s Waiting for the Barbarians deals with both of them.Both the conquest of“the Other from outside”and the taming of“the Other from within”in the story contribute to the final destruction of the border town which is also an allegory of the empire.According to this paper,the process of the imperial conquest of the Other is also the process in which the empire disintegrates,and Waiting for the Barbarians vividly exemplifies the self-destructive aspect of the empire in a metaphorical way.