In Quest of Home: Three Female Writers` Negotiation with Displacement in the Age of Globalization

Abstract

全球化近乎無遠弗屆地吸納了世界的每個角落並且改變了人類的世界觀。隨著觀光產業發展至全球規模，觀光客與在地人對家這個空間有了不同的理解。尤其對居住在第三世界的人民而言，家成為一個因應全球化時代時空錯置(displacement)的場域。本篇論文針對三位女性作家對家的敘述進行分析—阿蘭達蒂．洛伊的《微物之神》，牙買加．琴凱德的 《微渺之地》以及法蘭西斯卡．瑪西安諾的《荒野法則》。在對《微物之神》的分析中，筆者強調演現 (performance)為建構身份認同與歸屬感的重要過程與方法，並且分析女性敘述者如何從演現的角度重新審視現今受觀光業入侵的喀拉拉(Kerala)與在地人的關係。經由重建家族史，女性敘述者得以一窺權力結構是如何經由訓育(pedagogy)主導演現，並且藉由演現來鞏固訓育與其權力運作。在《微渺之地》中，琴凱德描述了安地瓜人(Antiguans)與觀光客之間不公平的拉距戰。筆者強調，琴凱德藉由詳述家園的消失，揭露觀光客的自行其事宛如重現殖民者的剝削，並且形成她對安地瓜的在地論述。在《荒野法則》的分析中，筆者意圖釐清全球化時代四海為家的誤夢。 藉由分析女性敘述者在肯亞建立家園卻遭遇失敗之因，筆者企圖闡明，全球化時代的疆域流動反而可能導致不經批判的過度懷舊與傳統價值的全面復興。藉著分析三位女性作家如何因應全球化之下的時空錯置，筆者企圖宣稱，或許，我們能經由重思如何建構家與歸屬感，找到另一定位。

Globalization has changed people’s understanding of the world seeing that the world has enlarged and involved more places in a more inter-related network. The development of tourism as a global phenomenon brings an impact on people’s home—a place where they, particularly those in the Third World, start to negotiate their displacement in the age of globalization. This thesis contains three female writers’ discourses of home—Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things, Jamaica Kincaid’s A Small Place, and Francesca Marciano’s Rules of the Wild. This thesis analyzes how their works can be regarded as their respective ways of negotiating their displacement experience. In the first chapter, I analyze how the female narrator in Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things re-describes and rethinks people’s relationship in the aspect of performance, and in this way, she intends to problematize her people’s performance of the exotic other to further tourist consumption. I highlight that performance is the process of constituting one’s identity and sense of belongingness. Through reconstructing her family saga, the female narrator thinks more critically of what lies behind performance of all kinds—the pedagogy of the dominant power structure that conducts people’s life but takes their practice to make itself stable. Jamaica Kincaid in A Small Place presents an uneven development between local Antiguans and tourists from the Western world. In the second chapter, I argue that by revealing how tourists and their ancestors, colonizers, exploit Antigua, Kincaid unveils the ideology of tourism and composes her own Antiguan discourse. In the third chapter, employing Francesca Marciano’s Rules of the Wild as an example, I intend to demystify the global dream of being at home in the world. By analyzing why the female narrator feels frustrated in making a home in Kenya, I argue that globalization may cause the frenetic longing for a return to old days as if they were all good. Therefore, to prevent a problematic revival of old values, people have to think critically how boundaries, geographical or metaphorical, are broken and redrawn to define their life. I suggest in this thesis that to rethink the politics of home—how home and the sense of belongingness are constructed—provides a way for us to engage and re-position ourselves in the globalizing world.