对真理的“删除保留”——当代英美小说改写与求真叙事的转变

“Sous Rature” of Truth: Rewriting in Contemporary British and American Fiction and the Turn of the Truth-Seeking Narrative

批评界针对当代英美小说的总体特征已经提出了诸多概念,其中威廉·加斯的'元小说'、弗雷德里克·詹明信的'后现代拼贴'、琳达·哈钦的'后现代戏仿'和'历史编纂元小说'最具代表性和影响力。但上述概念存在显见的矛盾:当代小说的总体特征到底是偏重内容('后现代戏仿')还是偏重形式('元小说''后现代拼贴')亦或是兼而有之('历史编纂元小说')?实际上,这些概念有一个重要的交叉点——改写,而改写既可以针对前文本的内容也可以针对前文本的形式或兼而有之。本文提出具有先锋性和代表性的当代英美小说的共同特征是通过改写重新审视小说与真理之间的关系,这种对真理的内容的反思以及对小说本身作为真理叙事形式的自省,标志着小说作为求真叙事在当代发生的最根本的转变,而改写的具体形式是对真理的'删除保留'(Sous Rature,海德格尔),即把前文本中的真理置于小说创作的核心地位,运用改写的方式为其划上删除线(真理),改写的结果是真理既被质疑也被保留甚至被凸显,目的是揭示前文本隐含的真理和前文本运用的真理叙事形式的不合理性、矛盾性、自我消解性、不稳定性。此种改写与20世纪六十年代以来的后结构主义思潮一脉相承。

In terms of the general feature of contemporary British and American fiction,critics have put forward a number of definitions,among which William Gass’s'metafiction,'Fredric Jameson’s'postmodern pastiche,'and Linda Hutcheon’s'postmodern parody'and'historiographic metafiction'are the most representative and influential.However,there exists an obvious dispute in the above notions:Does the general feature lie in content as in parody,or in form as in metafiction and pastiche,or in both as in historiographic metafiction?Among these notions,however,there is actually an intersection—rewriting,which could be focused on either the content of the pretext or its form,or both.This essay argues that it is through rewriting that the most pioneering and most representative contemporary British and American fiction reassesses the relationship between truth and fiction,reflecting on the truthful content in fiction and the form of fiction as a truth narrative.Such reflections mark the most radical turn of fiction writing as a truth-seeking discourse in contemporary literature,whose more specific representation in rewriting can be defined as'Sous Rature'(Martin Heidegger)of truth(truth),namely,to give the truth in the pretext a strikethrough while still retaining it as the focus.Consequently,by questioning,or preserving,or even foregrounding the truth,rewriting may reveal the irrationality,self-contradiction,self-disintegration,and instability of not only the truth implied in the pretext,but also the truth narrative form used in its representation.Such kind of rewriting has developed with the post-structuralist intellectual movement since the 1960 s.