太阳之下无新意:石黑一雄小说《克拉拉与太阳》中的计划性报废

Nothing New under the Sun: Planned Obsolescence in Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun

本文指出,石黑一雄的小说《克拉拉与太阳》(2021)表明,"报废"概念是其小说里处心积虑关注的议题。此外,"报废"概念不仅为石黑一雄的小说提供了素材,而且展现其小说的叙事结构和语言。简明扼要地回顾一下他早先的两部小说《浮世画家》(1986)和《长日留痕》(1989),就能揭示两位叙事者如何因为战后资本主义时期帝国制度重组导致,结果被非计划性的"报废"所困扰。然而,在《克拉拉与太阳》一书里,如同《别让我走》(2005)一样,叙事者经历的"报废"是计划性的,它是预想中运作于技术官僚生产线的当代社会制度的产物。在详细探讨《克拉拉与太阳》如何运用形式和文体技巧来阐释其包罗万象的主题之后,笔者想提示,石黑一雄的新著鼓励我们针对小说作为21世纪计划性"报废"文化中的一种文学体裁,探索性地质疑其现状与地位。所谓计划性"报废"文化指的是资本主义利用一系列手段来生产迟早必须要替换或更新的商品,进而创造、维持、甚至扩大消费者的需求。

In this article, I argue that Kazuo Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun(2021) reveals obsolescence to be a central preoccupation of his fiction. Further, I contend, obsolescence not only furnishes Ishiguro’s novels with content but also informs their narrative structures and language. A brief look at his two early novels, An Artist of the Floating World(1986) and The Remains of the Day(1989), shows how their narrators are overtaken by the unplanned obsolescence that results from realignments of imperial systems in the time of postwar capitalism. But in Klara and the Sun, as in Never Let Me Go(2005), the obsolescence experienced by Ishiguro’s narrators is planned, that is, it is the fully expected outcome of contemporary social systems run on technocratic lines. After exploring, in detail, the formal and stylistic means by which Klara and the Sun articulates its overarching theme, I suggest that Ishiguro’s new book encourages us to ask searching questions about the state and status of the novel as a literary genre in a 21 st-century culture of planned obsolescence: the means by which capitalism generates, sustains, and even expands consumer demand by producing commodities that, sooner or later, must be replaced or updated.