另类殖民书写:《天堂》中东非沿海到内陆的生态研究

Unusual Colonial Writing: On the Ecology of East Africa from the Coast to Inland in Paradise

作为非裔移民作家,阿卜杜勒拉扎克·古尔纳的殖民书写可谓另类,迥异于以提安哥为代表的大多数非洲后殖民作家的惯有立场。其第四部小说《天堂》便将这种另类发挥得淋漓尽致。在书中古尔纳以求实态度揭示了广袤东非土地由沿海到内陆的复杂生态:天堂表象下的本土真实生态美丑交织;多元文化下的内部生态极具破碎性;殖民进程中潜藏着无孔不入的生态危机。殖民书写与生态描绘相互交织、彼此渗透。古尔纳将一度被忽略的东非殖民史化作文学现实,拒绝抹除非洲内部存在的文化差异,直指殖民症结所在,充满批判锋芒。

As an African immigrant writer,Abdulrazak Gurnah’s colonial writing may be called as unusual,which is widely different from the usual stance of most African post-colonial writers represented by Thiong’O.His fourth novel,Paradise,written around 1990,brings this unusual into incisive and vivid play.In the novel,Gurnah reveals in a realistic manner the complex ecology of the vast East African land from the coast to the interior:a mixture of beauty and ugliness of the real ecology of the land under the surface of paradise;the extreme crumbliness of internal ecology under the multiple cultures;and the all-pervasive ecological crises lurking under the colonial process.Colonial writing and ecological depiction are not independent and parallel but intertwined and interpenetrated.Gurnah turns the hidden colonial history of East Africa,which has been repeatedly ignored,into a literary reality,refusing to erase the cultural differences that exist within.Here,a strong ecological consciousness is imbued between the lines pointing to the crux of colonization with a fully critical edge.