“一个有所怀疑的阿非利卡人”——库切身份认同问题探讨

“A Doubtful Afrikaner”: Reidentifying J. M. Coetzee

学术界在谈及库切身份时多称其为流散者或世界主义者。这两个概念均强调主体和世界之间的关系,从而会淡化库切和南非这一地域以及与南非阿非利卡人这一群体之间的关联。细读库切自传体小说可发现,虽然库切曾体验“身份漂流”,曾一度打算效仿艾略特和庞德等文学大师建构世界公民身份,但他对世界主义、世界公民以及地方与世界之间关系的认识经历过明显的转变,其身份定位也随之有所调整,从最初的拒斥阿非利卡人身份转向阿非利卡身份认同。这一身份认同隐含着库切承认自己是殖民者后裔这一事实的伦理意识。将库切身份认同问题置于他对“世界主义”的理解嬗变语境中加以辨析,可令我们对库切的身份伦理以及“世界主义”形成多维思考。

J. M. Coetzee has been traditionally identif ied as a diasporic or cosmopolitan writer, two concepts that highlight the subject’s connection with the world instead of the region or the nation. Coetzee’s strong tie with South Africa, his home country,and his identif ication with Afrikaners, his ethnic group, might, as a result, be overlooked.In Coetzee’s three autobiographical novels, Boy, Youth, and Summertime, his understanding of cosmopolitanism and his pursuit of being cosmopolitan undergo a transformation. Young Coetzee, aiming at transforming his “provincial” identity, attempts to follow Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot, the representative voices of cosmopolitanism in the heyday of modernism. Yet his understanding of personal identity and writing starts to change once he discerns the Eurocentric position underlying the cosmopolitan demeanor of these writers. His recognition of the connection between the center and the margin, the world and the local, leads him to accept his original identity as an Afrikaner, a name directly associated with colonialism in Apartheid Africa. Coetzee’s identif ication with Afrikaners in post-Apartheid era, however, bears ethical power, indicating his guilt and sense of responsibility for the collective crime committed by his colonialist ancestors. The trajectory of Coetzee’s estrangement from and then identif ication with the Afrikaner in the context of his evolving understanding of cosmopolitanism reveals the complexity of his ethics of identity.