卡森．麥可考勒絲《婚禮的成員》中的酷兒時間

Abstract

過去對麥可考勒絲《婚禮的成員》(1946)的傳統詮釋，多將這本小說讀成一個典型轉大人的故事。然而，酷兒觀點式的歪讀卻可更清楚明白地顯示出小說中所隱含的另類情感、歸屬、與親密形式的想像根源。援用「酷兒時間」來閱讀小說中的性別反叛者（青少年小T、娘娘腔男性、反串/易裝者、同性戀者）及社會棄兒（馬戲團怪胎、種族歧視的受害者），本文審視這些畸人的落後性及不合時宜，是如何揭露了普世霸權時間的武斷性，而這樣的霸權時間概念，其實是建立在以一種同質形式的認同或共群為前提。小說對另類時間（如殘存的時間、新興的時間、殘障的時間、幻奇的時間、虛擬的時間）的入神關注，應當讀成對直時間的批判，而此直時間乃與某種理想化的家庭生活、性別正典化、及美國國族認同有關聯性。法蘭奇酷異的婚禮幻想、改造世界的想像、以及小說開放性的結尾，皆召喚出一種對未來非正典式集體性的渴望、內蘊某種閃爍另類存有微光的酷兒潛質。

Traditional interpretation of Carson McCullers`s The Member of the Wedding (1946) tends to read it as a typical coming-of-age story; however, a queer-inflected reading will shed light on the hidden aspects of the novel that contain the seeds of imagining alternative forms of attachment, belonging, and intimacy. Employing the concept of ＂queer temporalities＂ to read the gender outlaws (adolescent tomboys, sissy men, crossdressers, homosexuals) and social outcasts (circus freaks, racist victims) in the novel, the paper examines how their backwardness and anachronism expose the arbitrariness of the hegemonic notion of time premised on a homogeneous form of identity or community. I propose to read the novel`s preoccupation with alternative temporalities (e.g., the residual, the emergent, the crip, the fantastic, and the virtual) as a critique of the straight time associated with an idealized domesticity, gender normalization, and the American national identity. Frankie`s idiosyncratic wedding fantasy, her world-remaking imagination, and the indeterminacy in novelistic closure are shown to be the invocation of a future collectivity, a queer potentiality that registers as the illumination of an alternative horizon of existing and being.