帶來希望的「潛在的嗎哪（Manna）」：小川樂《歐巴桑》裏的復活事件

Abstract

本文以巴迪烏（Alain Badiou）對事件的陳述為主要理論架構，探索小川樂（Joy Kogawa）《歐巴桑》（Obasan）書裏中川直美（Naomi Nakane）和她母親的夢中相遇及其影響。儘管母親的存活不確定，直美對母親存活的執著與探索，構成使直美從絕望走向希望的事件。從夢中跟母親的遭遇，直美學到再現應該是流變的，要建立在超越各種界限的愛之上，更因而明白行動的重要。小川樂以直美的事件為中心，尋求使更多人能因為忠於此一事件，而構成共同互助的主體，終結種族迫害。

With Alain Badiou’s views on event as the major theoretical framework, this study of Joy Kogawa’s Obasan is focused on Naomi Nakane’s reactions to her encounters with her mother. The mother’s undecidable existence, the appearance of motherly love in Naomi’s dreams, and Naomi’s subsequent inquiries constitute the event that transforms Naomi from an abandoned daughter who sees no hope for herself and for the Japanese Canadians into one that sees hope of salvation for all of them. Between Aunt Emily, who tries to present the undistorted facts about the Japanese Canadians, and Obasan, who takes no action against racial persecution and accepts her life of invisibility, Naomi finds no hope at first. Through the unpredictable encounters with her mother’s volatile presence in her dreams, Naomi affirms her mother’s existence and inquires about that existence. Along with the dissolution of her belief in representation as a reliable means to present reality, Naomi sees that love that goes beyond representation should serve as the foundation for the use of representation. By having Naomi constitute herself as a subject in relation to the event and declare her new understandings so that the other people can know of her experience, Kogawa works for the realization in the future of a world in which people will all be subjects due to their fidelity to the event, and in which racial persecution cannot occur.