古尔纳《海边》中跨国难民的身份叙事

The Identity Narrative of Transnational Refugees in Abdulrazak Gurnah’s By the Sea

古尔纳的《海边》紧紧围绕逃离故国与抵达他乡这一难民问题的起始两端,集中探讨了跨国难民的身份问题。小说以两位非洲难民及与其相关的人的故事勾画出一幅难民全球迁徙地图。新旧家园的转换不仅仅是地理空间的迁移,还意味着文化边界的跨越。在古尔纳创造出的关于故乡的历史记忆空间里,难民不断地通过对过去的叙事,重塑自我形象。难民在接纳国的身份转换与自我调适,既关乎难民的自我重塑,也折射出欧洲普遍存在的对“他者”的文化排斥。欧洲人对非洲移居者的敌意反映了难民问题背后的道德平等、体系责任等复杂的伦理和政治问题。在古尔纳看来,由于欧洲对非洲掠夺性的殖民历史,失去家园的非洲人来到欧洲寻求庇护,完全符合道德正义原则。

In his novel, By the Sea, Gurnah puts a focus on exploring the identity of transnational refugees by revolving his story around two ends of migration – fleeing from homeland and arriving in a foreign country. Through a story about two African refugees and the people associated with them, the novel outlines a map of refugee migration around the globe. The transition from the old home to a new one is not only a relocation in geographical space, but also an action of crossing cultural boundaries. Gurnah creates a space of historical memories about native places, in which refugees constantly reconstruct their self-images through the narrative of the past. The identity conversion and self-adaptation of refugees in host countries seem really essential to their self-reinvention and reflect the widespread cultural exclusion of the “other” in Europe as well. Europeans’ hostility towards African immigrants reveals the complex ethical and political issues, such as moral equality and institutional responsibility, behind the refugee problem. Given the predatory history of European colonization in Africa, as Gurnah states it implicitly in the novel, the actions taken by homeless Africans to seek asylum in Europe are completely in line with the principle of moral justice.