班雅民的裸命、活物與科技技術複製性(II-II)

Abstract

本計畫將重新檢視「活物」、「裸命」與「科技技術複製性」等三個班雅民的重大觀念，這三個相關的觀念不僅是班雅民現代性批判的理論主軸，也具體而微地包藏了他對社會革命的思考。班雅民早從“On Language as Such and on the Language of Man” 與The Origin of German Tragic Drama 就開始發展有關「活物」的說法，在當時設定的框架下，活物形態指的是一種墮落後的狀態，在這個狀態下，自然不僅被剝奪了溝通的能力，生命也自此開始頹萎。經過阿岡本在HomoSaccer 與 The Open 中的闡釋與挪用，「活物」這個原本晦澀的概念開始變得清晰，同時也開始帶有相當的政治意涵。作為「活物」的延伸概念，「裸命」指的是一種怪異的臨界狀態，在這個狀態中，猶太人的身體因為被剝奪了公民權、被非人化的關係反倒顯得過度像人。班雅民堅定主張活物狀態的不可逆轉性，這樣的說法看似悲觀，但絕不宿命。本計畫將更進一步研究被複製機器奪除生命、被科技技術複製性完全滲透的科技複製活物，如何反過來模擬機械，進而引發革命的狂笑，形成對生命政治的挑戰。在班雅民的論述中，科技複製活物有許多的化身─包括米老鼠像原生質一般隨時處在變異狀態的身體，與卓別林既斷裂又流暢的身體姿勢與動作都是。科技複製活物所引發的「橫隔膜痙攣」之所以帶有革命性，主要的原因在於大笑可以造成群眾的解離效應─群眾彼此解離，甚至自我也會產生解離（這就是Lockerung 的原義）─將群眾轉化為一群公共的、具有同志情誼又有階級意識的集體活物。透過科技複製活物，班雅民預想了一個遭到阿多諾排除的可能性：那就是，大笑不見得是認同施虐者的病徵，電影院反倒有可能是組織一個沒有領袖情結的集體活物的訓練場，藉以防堵在納粹的魔法棒下群眾的非理性動員。

This project seeks to re-examine “the creaturely,” “bare life,” and “technological reproducibility,” three interrelated ideas that stand to the fore in Walter Benjamin’s critique of bio-political governmentality and contain in crystallized form much of his ruminations on social revolution. Developed in “On Language as Such and on the Language of Man” and The Origin of German Tragic Drama, the idea of “the creaturely” signifies the post-lapsarian state in which the nature is deprived of the capacity for communication and thereby rendered devitalized. This otherwise convoluted idea is fleshed out and takes on more definite political contours in Giorgio Agamben’s Homo Saccer and The Open. “Bare life,” a correlative of “the creaturely,” now marks a vanishing point where the Jew’s body appears all too human insofar as it is deprived of citizen rights and, so to speak, dehumanized. However pessimistic it may seem, Benjamin’s strident insistence on the irreversibility of the creaturely state breathes no air of fatalism. This project will take a step further to see how the mechanized creature, which is devitalized by the copying apparatus and saturated with technological reproducibility, will join hand in hand with the mimetic body of the creature to evoke fits of revolutionary laughter and blast the bio-political apparatus. In Benjamin’s writings, the mechanized-cum-mimetic creature finds its full embodiment in the plasmatic body of Mickey Mouse, and in the staccato posture of Charlie Chaplin. The “convulsion of the diaphragm” these creatures cause is revolutionary, I will try to argue, to the extent that laughter is very likely to loosen up (locker) the masses, alienating them from one another and even from themselves, and turning them into a collective creaturely body (leibhaft) organized with solidarity and class-consciousness. By way of the mechanized-cum-mimetic creature, Benjamin thus envisages a possibility ruled out by Adorno: instead of being a symptom of identifying with the aggressor, laughter is rather instrumental in organizing a collective creaturely body without the follow-the-leader mentality, which will then serve as a preemptive antidote to the mass psychosis caused under the baton of Nazism.