太平洋上的“伊甸园”:《夏威夷生活》中的农业乌托邦与权力政治

“In and Out of Eden”:Agrarian Utopia and Power Politics in Hawaian Life

斯托达德的《夏威夷生活》是一部将夏威夷群岛的田园景观纳入美利坚帝国在太平洋的地缘政治版图考量的帝国叙事文本。作者在描绘太平洋景观时,先是把太平洋“荒野”同北美大陆上“无人耕作”的“新大陆”相联系,然后通过“发现”和“见证”修辞聚焦西方地理“发现”的巅峰时刻,最后通过“凝视”实现对自然景观象征意义上的帝国权力控制和占有;他还试图绘制一幅看似“全如伊甸园”般和谐美好的田园景观图,一方面借此寄托美国的田园牧歌理想以延续边疆开拓神话,另一方面试图掩盖这一虚假的乌托邦幻象背后存在的残酷而真实的专制、剥削和压迫的种植园现实和社会关系。

Charles Stoddard's Hawaiian Life is an imperial narrative work that incorporates the pastoral landscape of the Pacific Islands into the geo-political considerations of American empire in the Pacific:when delineating the landscape of the Pacific,first by associating the"wilderness"of the Pacific with the"uncultivated""New World"on the North American continent,then by highlighting the pinnacle moment of geographical"discovery"in the Western colonial history through the rhetoric of"discovery"and"witness,"he eventually realizes,in a symbolic sense,his goal of controlling and occupying lands and resources through dominant"gazing."He also attempts to draw a seemingly harmonious and beautiful Edenic landscape,on which on the one hand are placed the pastoral ideals of the United States to perpetuate the myth of the frontier,on the other hand,the real and cruel reality and social relations are meticulously masked in the cane plantation where despotism,exploitation and oppression exist behind this false utopian illusion.