A Political Reading of the Gender ing/Sexualizing of Colonial and Racial Condition

文學與文化研究領域中探討議題的政治化趨向，自一九九○年代後期以來，逐步將原本 各自獨立的議題加以交錯綰合，固然是問題意識與研究成果深化的必然發展。但殖民／ 種族與性別／性相這兩組議題，其實在一般的文化想像中，早就有了連接。只是初步的 批評論述可以掌握的連接，多半僅限於「類比」。雖然「類比」的確是這兩組議題在現 代文化想像中慣常的連接方式之一，但實際上的想像連接，卻遠遠還要複雜的多，這個 研究計劃就試圖擴展批評論述對於相關連接的理解掌握，先指出「類比」的限制與不足， 繼而主張以「交錯」乃至「綰合」的概念來加以補充替代，這不惟在方法論上較為細緻， 也比較貼近這兩組議題的具體歷史連接，因為它們其實是源自於「現代性」此一龐大的 計畫中一些共同的文化型構，而這些型構我們今日已經勾勒出相當清楚的面貌。然而這 兩組議題的深度文化連接，還不僅限於歷史的層面，或者應該說，在歷史的脈絡中，還 有細部的個人心理層面，也非常值得加以探索。For the politicized literary and cultural studies, there has been a tendency, since the 1990s, to bring together two (or more) previously segregated but evidently related problematics for critical exploration. This latest development would not be possible had critical discourse not reached an advanced stage, but it is already a belated response to the factual connections of the concerned issues (specifically colonialism/race and gender/sexuality in this project) in the modern cultural imaginary. Before, “analogy” was the commonest and actually the only conceptual scheme available for understanding such connections, which themselves, however, have gradually begun to show complexities that demanded a much more sophisticated approach. That is why I am proposing “intersection” or even “convergence” to replace “analogy” as the real adequate conceptualization to be deployed here. After all, recent studies have demonstrated colonialism/race and gender/sexuality as sharing some common origins in the grand cultural configuration known as modernity. In other words, these two groups of issues are much more closely related, or, to put it more accuratedly, entwined, than the conceptual scheme of “analogy” suggests. Yet the entwinement in question is not just historical, and therefore can be traced in the Foucauldian manner, it also has its psychical dimensions within that grand narrative, which calls for local analysis with the help of psychoanalysis. And the present research project comprises these two main aspects of critical exploration