非洲炙熱聖誕節：凱蘿邱吉爾《九霄雲外》中卸裝除甲的氣候

Abstract

十九世紀末葉，英國達到帝國勢力的鼎盛期。大英帝國向海外擴張殖民勢力之時，雖然他們也預期會遇到被殖民者的反抗，可是他們仍然用武力鎮壓，成功的宰制被殖民者。然而，他們萬萬沒有料想到，與如此相異的自然環境相遇會加速帝國的崩解。有一些英國作家在他們的作品中都處理到殖民過程中帶來的帝國反撲。凱蘿邱吉爾就是其中一位。在她的《九霄雲外》(1979)中，她描述非洲天氣和氣候的卸裝除甲的能力。這個能力不但破壞第一幕中維多利亞父權社會規範，還牽引出第二幕中全面性的性解放。要闡述《九霄雲外》的氣候反撲勢力，我將援用巴巴、艾希克羅夫等學者的後殖民理論來證明面對非洲如此令人迷惑的天氣，英國殖民者無可避免的不但失去殖民地子民的掌控權，更是失去了自我。

At the end of the 19th century, Britain reached its peak of imperial power. As the British expanded their colonial power across the ocean, they expected the resistance from the colonized but they still succeeded in subjugating their colonized relentlessly. However, hardly had they foreseen the encounter with such different natural environment would accelerate the precipitation of the collapse of the empire. Among few British writers who have tried to deal with the backlash of the colonial process against their country, Caryl Churchill is one who describes in her Cloud Nine (1979) the dismantling power of weather and climate in Africa, which sabotages the Victorian patriarchal social codes in Act I and anticipates the full-blown emancipation of sexuality in Act II. To illustrate this climatic counterforce in Cloud Nine, I will employ postcolonial theories expounded by Hommi Bhabha, Bill Ashcroft, and others to demonstrate that confronted with the deceptive weather in Africa, the British colonizers inevitably lose the hold of and claim on their colonized subjects as well as themselves.