丘吉尔戏剧《地底精灵》的后人类生命政治解读

A Posthuman Biopolitical Interpretation of Caryl Churchill’s The Skriker

当代英国剧作家卡里尔·丘吉尔的戏剧《地底精灵》借用英国民间故事创造了一个集人、动物、物和鬼怪为一体的妖女斯克莱克。通过这个带有赛博格特征的怪物对身体和生命形式的种种僭越,剧作展示了后人类时代人类与非人类的生存困境以及作家对生命政治出路的思考。不同于以往将《地底精灵》当作乌托邦想象或反乌托邦寓言的解读,本文在生命政治理论的关照下,对剧中后人类生命政治主体的混杂性、技术干预生命的复杂性以及人类与非人类关系的不定性进行了分析,发现了作家带有未托邦思想的后人类生命政治观,这使《地底精灵》成为一种创造性的宣言,警示我们在人类、技术、环境共构的后人类生命政治体系中,要时刻保持人文主义的理性、清醒与批判意识。

In The Skriker,by resorting to English folk tales,contemporary British playwright Caryl Churchill creates an underworld spirit named the Skriker,a combination of human beings,animals,objects,and ghosts.Through the cyborg monster’s various modifications to its body and lifeform,the play indicates the survival predicament of human and non-human existence in the post-human era and suggests a solution to biopolitical problems.Different from previous interpretations of The Skriker as a utopian or dystopian fable,this paper,in line with biopolitics theory,identifies the play’s view of posthuman biopolitics as“vucatopian”due to its probe into the hybridity of the subject of posthuman biopolitics,the complexity of technological intervention in life,and the uncertainty of the relationship between human and non-human lives.The paper argues that The Skriker is a creative manifesto which alerts us to maintain the rational,sober,and critical consciousness of humanism in the posthuman biopolitical system,with cooperation between human,technology and environment.