论扎迪·史密斯新作《摇摆时光》的叙事伦理和身份政治——兼谈史密斯小说创作美学
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摘要
2016年英国女作家扎迪·史密斯出版了新作《摇摆时光》。这部新作有两个特点值得关注:其一,史密斯在这部作品中首次采用了第一人称叙事。其二,这是"一部宏大的社会小说",而小说独特的艺术魅力正是源于第一人称叙事和"社会小说"之间明显的张力。在"叙事作为伦理"的视域中,这种叙事视角的改变势必带来叙事和伦理互动关系的改变。本文把自我放置在时间之轴、他者之轴、伦理之轴中,历史地考察史密斯独特的第一人称叙事所蕴含的叙事伦理对建构英国当代黑人女性多元身份政治的独特价值以及史密斯创作美学的独特性和变化。
British writer Zadie Smith published her fifth novel Swing Time in 2016. The new book has two striking features: 1) Smith for the first time employs the first person narration in her novels; 2) It is a "grand social novel". The interaction of the two is what produces the novel's uniqueness. The change of narrative perspective leads to a shift in the interactive relations between narrative and ethics. This paper, situating self along the axes of time, the other, and ethics, historically examines the narrative ethics embodied in Smith's particularized first person narration, discusses its value in constructing the multifaceted identity politics of contemporary African-British women, and explores Smith's creative aesthetics and their transformation.
British writer Zadie Smith published her fifth novel Swing Time in 2016. The new book has two striking features: 1) Smith for the first time employs the first person narration in her novels; 2) It is a "grand social novel". The interaction of the two is what produces the novel's uniqueness. The change of narrative perspective leads to a shift in the interactive relations between narrative and ethics. This paper, situating self along the axes of time, the other, and ethics, historically examines the narrative ethics embodied in Smith's particularized first person narration, discusses its value in constructing the multifaceted identity politics of contemporary African-British women, and explores Smith's creative aesthetics and their transformation.
引文
Arendt, Hannah. The Human Condition. Chicago: The U of Chicago P, 1958.
Biggs, Joanna.“ Review of Swing Time.” London Review of Books 38.23 (2016): 31–33.
Booth, Wayne C. The Rhetoric of Fiction. Chicago: The U of Chicago P, 1983.
Caryl, Phillips.“ Mixed and Matched, Review of White Teeth.” The Guardian 9 January 2000.
Charles, Ron.“ ‘Swing Time’ : Zadie Smith’s Sweeping Novel about Friendship, Race and Class.” Washington Post 9 November 2016.
Childs, Peter, and James Green. Aesthetics and Ethics in Twenty-First Century British Novels. London: Bloomsbury, 2013.
Dickstein, Morris. A Mirror in the Roadway: Literature and Real World. Trans. Liu Yuyu. Shanghai: Shanghai Joint Publishing Company, 2008.[莫里斯·迪克斯坦:《 途中的镜子:文学与现实世界》,刘玉宇译,上海:上海三联书店,2008年。]
Eugenides, Jeffrey.“ Zadie Smith Interview:‘ I’ ve Always Made Myself Cringe’ .” Telegraph 5 November 2016
Fisher, Susan Alice.“ ‘ Temporal Layers’ : Personal and Political History in Zadie Smith’s On Beauty.” Reading Zadie Smith: The First Decade and Beyond. Ed. Philip Tew. London: Bloomsbury, 2013. 83–96.
Freeman, Mark.“ Axes of Identity: Persona, Perspective, and the Meaning of (Keith Richards’s) Life.” Rethinking Narrative Identity: Persona and Perspective. Ed. Claudia Holler and Martin Klepper. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2013. 49–69.
Fryer, Peter. Staying Power: The History of Black People in Britain. London: Pluto Press, 1984.
Greenidge, Kaitlyn.“ Shaken Out of Time: Black Bodies and Movement in Zadie Smith’s Swing Time.” Virginia Quarterly Review 93.1 (2017): 196–99.
Hale, Dorothy J. Social Formalism: The Novel in Theory from Henry James to the Present. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1998.
---.“ Aesthetics and the New Ethics: Theorizing the Novel in the Twenty-First Century.” PMLA 124.3 (2009): 896–905.
---.“ Fiction as Restriction: Self-Binding in New Ethical Theories of the Novel.” Narrative 15.2 (2007): 187–206.
---.“ ‘ On Beauty as Beautiful?’: The Problem of Novelistic Aesthetics by Way of Zadie Smith.” Contemporary Literature 53.4 (2012): 814–44.
James, Henry. The Art of the Novel. Trans. Zhu Wen, et al. Shanghai: Shanghai Translation Publishing House, 2001.[亨利·詹姆斯:《 小说的艺术》,朱雯等译,上海:上海译文出版社,2001年。]
Kerby, A. P. Narrative and the Self. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1991.
MacLeod, Lewis.“ Eliminating the Random, Ruling the World: Monologic Hybridity in Zadie Smith’s White Teeth and Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children.” Reading Zadie Smith: The First Decade and Beyond. Ed. Philip Tew. London: Bloomsbury, 2013. 155–68.
Mildorf, Jarmila.“ Referential Frameworks and Focalization in a Craft Artist’s Life Story: A Socionarratological Perspective on Narrative Identity.” Rethinking Narrative Identity: Persona and Perspective. Ed. Claudia Holler and Martin Klepper. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2013. 103–16.
Newton, Adam Zachary. Narrative Ethics. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1995.
Perry, Donna.“ An Interview with Jamaica Kincaid.” Reading Black, Reading Feminist: A Critical Anthology. Ed. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. New York: Meridian, 1990.
Perry, Menakhem.“ Literary Dynamics: How the Order of a Text Creates Its Meaning.” Poetics Today: Special Issue: Literature, Interpretation, Communication 1.1&2 (1979): 35–64, 311–61.
Schwartz,Alexandra.“ Zadie Smith’s Memory Tricks.” The New Yorker 6 November 2016.
Selasi, Taiye. The Guardian 13 November 2016.
Shen, Dan, et al. A Study of Narrative Theory of English and American Novels. Beijing: Peking UP, 2005.[申丹、韩加明、王丽亚:《 英美小说叙事理论研究》,北京:北京大学出版社,2005年。]
Smith, Zadie. On Beauty. New York: Penguin, 2005.
---.“ Fail Better.” The Guardian 13 January 2007.
---. Swing Time. New York: Penguin Press, 2016.
---, and Jessica Murphy Moo.“ Zadie, Take Three.” Atlantic Monthly October 2005
Tancke, Ulrike.“ White Teeth Reconsidered: Narrative Deception and Uncomfortable Truths.” Reading Zadie Smith: The First Decade and Beyond. Ed. Philip Tew. London: Bloomsbury, 2013. 27–38.
Tew, Philip.“ Celebrity, Suburban Identity and Transatlantic Epiphanies: Reconsidering Zadie Smith’s The Autograph Man.” Reading Zadie Smith: The First Decade and Beyond. Ed. Philip Tew. London: Bloomsbury, 2013. 53–68.
Tortorici, Dayna“. Zadie Smith’s Dance of Ambivalence.” The Atlantic 318.5 (2016): 32–34.
Wang, Zhuo.“ A Pair of‘ Watchful Eyes’ Are Speaking: On the Multi-modes of Gaze in Brooks’ In the Mecca.” Foreign Literatures 3 (2012): 93–101.[王卓:《 一双“观察的眼睛”在述说》,《国外文学》2012年第3期,第93–101页。]
---.“ Politics of Space and Confusion of Ethical Identity in Zadie Smith’s NW.” Contemporary Foreign Literature 4 (2015): 99–105.[王卓:《 “主”“客”之困 —论扎迪·史密斯新作〈西北〉中的空间政治和伦理身份困境》,《当代外国文学》2015 年第 4 期,第 99 –105 页。]
Wood, David. On Paul Ricoeur: Narrative and Interpretation. London: Routledge, 1991.
Biggs, Joanna.“ Review of Swing Time.” London Review of Books 38.23 (2016): 31–33.
Booth, Wayne C. The Rhetoric of Fiction. Chicago: The U of Chicago P, 1983.
Caryl, Phillips.“ Mixed and Matched, Review of White Teeth.” The Guardian 9 January 2000
Charles, Ron.“ ‘Swing Time’ : Zadie Smith’s Sweeping Novel about Friendship, Race and Class.” Washington Post 9 November 2016.
Childs, Peter, and James Green. Aesthetics and Ethics in Twenty-First Century British Novels. London: Bloomsbury, 2013.
Dickstein, Morris. A Mirror in the Roadway: Literature and Real World. Trans. Liu Yuyu. Shanghai: Shanghai Joint Publishing Company, 2008.[莫里斯·迪克斯坦:《 途中的镜子:文学与现实世界》,刘玉宇译,上海:上海三联书店,2008年。]
Eugenides, Jeffrey.“ Zadie Smith Interview:‘ I’ ve Always Made Myself Cringe’ .” Telegraph 5 November 2016
Fisher, Susan Alice.“ ‘ Temporal Layers’ : Personal and Political History in Zadie Smith’s On Beauty.” Reading Zadie Smith: The First Decade and Beyond. Ed. Philip Tew. London: Bloomsbury, 2013. 83–96.
Freeman, Mark.“ Axes of Identity: Persona, Perspective, and the Meaning of (Keith Richards’s) Life.” Rethinking Narrative Identity: Persona and Perspective. Ed. Claudia Holler and Martin Klepper. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2013. 49–69.
Fryer, Peter. Staying Power: The History of Black People in Britain. London: Pluto Press, 1984.
Greenidge, Kaitlyn.“ Shaken Out of Time: Black Bodies and Movement in Zadie Smith’s Swing Time.” Virginia Quarterly Review 93.1 (2017): 196–99.
Hale, Dorothy J. Social Formalism: The Novel in Theory from Henry James to the Present. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1998.
---.“ Aesthetics and the New Ethics: Theorizing the Novel in the Twenty-First Century.” PMLA 124.3 (2009): 896–905.
---.“ Fiction as Restriction: Self-Binding in New Ethical Theories of the Novel.” Narrative 15.2 (2007): 187–206.
---.“ ‘ On Beauty as Beautiful?’: The Problem of Novelistic Aesthetics by Way of Zadie Smith.” Contemporary Literature 53.4 (2012): 814–44.
James, Henry. The Art of the Novel. Trans. Zhu Wen, et al. Shanghai: Shanghai Translation Publishing House, 2001.[亨利·詹姆斯:《 小说的艺术》,朱雯等译,上海:上海译文出版社,2001年。]
Kerby, A. P. Narrative and the Self. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1991.
MacLeod, Lewis.“ Eliminating the Random, Ruling the World: Monologic Hybridity in Zadie Smith’s White Teeth and Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children.” Reading Zadie Smith: The First Decade and Beyond. Ed. Philip Tew. London: Bloomsbury, 2013. 155–68.
Mildorf, Jarmila.“ Referential Frameworks and Focalization in a Craft Artist’s Life Story: A Socionarratological Perspective on Narrative Identity.” Rethinking Narrative Identity: Persona and Perspective. Ed. Claudia Holler and Martin Klepper. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2013. 103–16.
Newton, Adam Zachary. Narrative Ethics. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1995.
Perry, Donna.“ An Interview with Jamaica Kincaid.” Reading Black, Reading Feminist: A Critical Anthology. Ed. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. New York: Meridian, 1990.
Perry, Menakhem.“ Literary Dynamics: How the Order of a Text Creates Its Meaning.” Poetics Today: Special Issue: Literature, Interpretation, Communication 1.1&2 (1979): 35–64, 311–61.
Schwartz,Alexandra.“ Zadie Smith’s Memory Tricks.” The New Yorker 6 November 2016
Selasi, Taiye. The Guardian 13 November 2016
Shen, Dan, et al. A Study of Narrative Theory of English and American Novels. Beijing: Peking UP, 2005.[申丹、韩加明、王丽亚:《 英美小说叙事理论研究》,北京:北京大学出版社,2005年。]
Smith, Zadie. On Beauty. New York: Penguin, 2005.
---.“ Fail Better.” The Guardian 13 January 2007.
---. Swing Time. New York: Penguin Press, 2016.
---, and Jessica Murphy Moo.“ Zadie, Take Three.” Atlantic Monthly October 2005
Tancke, Ulrike.“ White Teeth Reconsidered: Narrative Deception and Uncomfortable Truths.” Reading Zadie Smith: The First Decade and Beyond. Ed. Philip Tew. London: Bloomsbury, 2013. 27–38.
Tew, Philip.“ Celebrity, Suburban Identity and Transatlantic Epiphanies: Reconsidering Zadie Smith’s The Autograph Man.” Reading Zadie Smith: The First Decade and Beyond. Ed. Philip Tew. London: Bloomsbury, 2013. 53–68.
Tortorici, Dayna“. Zadie Smith’s Dance of Ambivalence.” The Atlantic 318.5 (2016): 32–34.
Wang, Zhuo.“ A Pair of‘ Watchful Eyes’ Are Speaking: On the Multi-modes of Gaze in Brooks’ In the Mecca.” Foreign Literatures 3 (2012): 93–101.[王卓:《 一双“观察的眼睛”在述说》,《国外文学》2012年第3期,第93–101页。]
---.“ Politics of Space and Confusion of Ethical Identity in Zadie Smith’s NW.” Contemporary Foreign Literature 4 (2015): 99–105.[王卓:《 “主”“客”之困 —论扎迪·史密斯新作〈西北〉中的空间政治和伦理身份困境》,《当代外国文学》2015 年第 4 期,第 99 –105 页。]
Wood, David. On Paul Ricoeur: Narrative and Interpretation. London: Routledge, 1991.