深夜的食堂，不算好客，因為營業時間，在日常三餐之外；深夜的食堂，也算好客，因為夜深不歸、無伴無炊之人，得以在此果腹。疫情，因怕感染，使得人無法好客；心情，害怕透露，使得人距離倍增。好客與不好客，親近或遠離，就如此呈現在《深夜食堂》亦獨亦群的飲食意象裡。

安倍夜郎（Yarō Abe）所著的《深夜食堂》，以圖文敘事的單元故事（此處文本分析，僅限圖文創作英譯本，不論及改編之電視劇），記述一間不起眼的食堂，無固定菜單，應顧客要求，做出一道道充滿回憶，記錄過往得失悲喜的菜餚。一位客人，一道餐點，便是一則往事。相對於《艾瑪》（Emma by Jane Austen）中伍德豪斯先生（Mr. Woodhouse）處處告誡客人如何擇食進膳的限制，相映成趣。

因是食堂，來客沒有既定身分，入門都是深夜覓食之人。這是充滿自由、平等的情緒嘉年華：情緒自持則獨，情緒分享則群，沒有階級地位的高低、壓力。除了空間性具備巴赫汀（Mikhail Bakhtin）嘉年華的特色，分享的故事有時也充滿詼諧之趣，透過飲食的意象與幽默的置換（例：人如蛋，人如菜，人如茶泡飯），原本應孤獨發酵，自我吞嚥的甘苦，化為眾人分擔，沆瀣一氣的抒發。

探討飲食的空間性、意象系統、置換的幽默，並了解上述各項如何在人與人之間的互動產生亦獨亦群的社群作用與圖文敘事，佐以對比食堂的飲食自由與宅邸的飲食拘束是為本文要旨。

【關鍵字】深夜食堂、飲食意象、飲食幽默（food humor）、置換幽默（displacement humor）

Many critics have noted that Chaucer’s Miller’s Tale exhibits an inherently destabilizing energy via a series of trespass that not only heightens the drama of the plot, but essentially ambiguates the concept of space on various levels, between outside and inside, public and private, master and slave, men and women, etc. However, while this critical line of thought is productive in shedding a new light on the question of power in architectonic terms, it overlooks a subtler issue intersecting ethics and emotions. As much as readers are laughing at, say, John’s cuckoldry, Absolon’s bottom-kissing, or Nicholas’ penetrated “ers,” beyond the laughter lies a fair share of uneasiness toward the transgression initiated by the Other in proximity, i.e. the stranger who lives next door. Who are these strangers? What’s the significance of their role that binds intimacy with proximity? Why is the narrative so keen on the concept of trespass that it renders every party vulnerable?

With these core questions in mind, in this essay I aim to advance the current studies of the tale by way of the emerging “neighbor theory,” a body of philosophical responses to Freud’s interpretation of the commandant for “the love of thy neighbors.” Building on recent research on the Neighbor, (Kenneth Reinhard), this paper seeks to re-read the Miller’s Tale via the lens of the strangers and examine the ways in which the Neighbor unveils the interlocking interests among different parties within a medieval urban context.

摘要

本論文將探討韓裔美籍作家李昌來最新的小說《我在國外的一年》（My Year Abroad）其中的飲食與敘事者 Tiller Bardmon 突如其來的意外中國行裡所遭遇的各種文化不適。這本小說可說是李昌來從第一部作品《母語人士》(Native Speaker, 1994)迄今的第七部創作，也是首度跳脫出討論族裔歧視或是第二代亞裔移民所背負的顛沛流離主題的作品；小說敘事中的起伏轉折流暢，文字相較之前的《姿態人生》 (A Gestured Life , 1999) 、《懸空》（Aloft , 2004）、《投降》（The Surrendered, 2010）、或《滿潮》(On Such a Full Sea , 2014)等作品更為開放簡潔，洋洋灑灑地速寫一位二十歲從大學休學的旅者，跳脫原來規律生活的大學生身份，在名為 Pon Lou 的商人熱情邀請下到中國遊歷的故事。本文將分析主角在旅途中所產生的個體差異之外，食養保護機制的書寫策略，透過飲食與各種食物的涵養所產生之舒適感和主角描繪出的旅行不安感，勾勒出「舒服」與「不舒服」旅行的定義。由於小說以第一人稱敘事者直接開宗明義，提及自己跟無血緣家人的三人小家庭居住的地點是個「普通且沒有太多特出傳統的小地方」，主角 Tiller 自稱是個「半漂泊後殖民裹足不前」之士，甚至幾乎足不出戶，文中自表處於如目前後疫情時期的自我居家隔離的狀態。除了李昌來在這本厚達將近五百頁的旅行回憶錄裡，企圖開展的東方行旅充斥著對健康的要求之餘，這趟旅行還被商人 Pon Lou稱作是將超級精力湯「羅勒薑黃汁」推廣到世界各地之旅（jamu venture）。此小說的氛圍在這般極度封閉的獨白裡，主角娓娓道出小說中每個人的身世之謎以及身處極端不好客之人世之道。

關鍵字: 李昌來、旅行想像、食養日常、旅行不安感、旅行療癒

Patrick Ness’s Chaos Walking trilogy narrates the story of the male protagonist Todd Hewitt’s reaching his young adulthood, his encounter and developing friendship with the female protagonist, Viola from another universe, and their engagement in chaotic wars in Todd’s world—New World. With the accidental arrival of Viola, Todd starts to question what he has always believed, and he gradually discovers the dictatorship and oligarchy that maintain the stability of his community and that request his participation. This paper suggests that as Todd is one of the few hosts who cannot decide how far hospitality extends, his attempt to stay hospitable and humane in a hostile world becomes an ethical struggle, while he is bound to survive with worries about risks, a sense of guilt and bad conscience. As Gideon Baker points out, “the ethical subject of hospitality is always torn, divided, compromised or caught in a double bind” (8.) When Todd decides to aid Viola in contacting her people, Todd is forced to leave his comfort zone, his cozy hometown and community. This move and decision make him further suffer from disorientation and confusion, as most adult characters seem suspicious, and his actions, be they impulsive or calculated, often fall short of his expectations. Through his striving to survive wars and save Viola, Todd recognizes his competence and inadequacy in attempting to extend the hand of friendship to those whose origins, stances, and beliefs are different from his own.

Key words: ethics, hospitality, guilt, bad conscience

This essay seeks to study the importance of the fern in understanding Ferndean, one of the five major locations in Charlotte Brontë’s novel Jane Eyre (1847). Ferndean is a manor house encircled by thick woods and unhealthy moisture. When Rochester retreats to this house by the end of this novel, he declines to meet any friends. Few modern readers of Jane Eyre would dispute the fact that, buried in an unpleasant environment and inhabited by an unfriendly master, Ferndean is an inhospitable place. This apparently indisputable fact has predisposed us to take Brontë’s description at face value and prevented us from being more curious about Ferndean. Why did Brontë name this unwholesome place Ferndean, with an emphasis on one species of plant? For Victorian readers of Jane Eyre, what connections existed between Rochester’s inhospitality and the fern? To find adequate answers to these questions, I plan to read this novel in the context of the Victorian fern fever, or, pteridomania. This nineteenth-century popular interest in the fern was fuelled by the advancement of scientific knowledge and the expansion of the British Empire. I plan to investigate the scientific and imperial connotations of the fern in the nineteenth-century, before analysing the extent to which they help to enrich modern interpretations of Ferndean. My essay is heavily influenced by Elaine Freedgood’s seminal book, The Ideas in Things: Fugitive Meaning in the Victorian Novel (2006). Freedgood has urged us to take things in the Victorian novel more literally, because this approach potentially can uncover meanings that were transparent for the Victorian readers but lost to modern scholars. While Freedgood focuses largely on inanimate objects, I would like to explore whether the same approach can illuminate the role a living plant plays in shaping Jane Eyre.

摘要

狼人的起源可追溯到古典及歐洲中世紀的民俗誌、傳奇等文本，對於狼人的記載不僅帶有地方傳說的神秘色彩，也隱涵對於人作為一個物種更加多變多樣的想像。狼人故事中關鍵的「變形」，從根本上挑戰了人之為人的疆界，而狼人意象在不同時期文學作品中的變形，更成為轉譯當時代文化、宗教、政治、我他衝突的媒介。例如十二世紀威爾斯的傑拉德（Gerald of Wales）獻給英格蘭國王亨利二世的《愛爾蘭風土誌》（Topographia Hibernica）中，對狼人的描述成為傑拉德強化愛爾蘭異域性的元素；在十五世紀傳奇文本《高瑟爵士》（Sir Gowther）中，高瑟的犬化成為他作為基督教世界異端的凸顯，以及他與異教他者的連結；2020年由愛爾蘭動畫工作室卡通沙龍（Cartoon Salon）推出的動畫長片《狼行者》（Wolfwalkers）中，狼行者的狼化，被刻畫為具有傳播性質的愛爾蘭本土宗教魔法，並具現化原生居民與英格蘭基督教統治者間的衝突；日本當代小說家池井戶潤於2021年出版的《民王：西伯利亞的陰謀》中，狼化更成為後疫情時代對疫病的恐懼以及國家間政治傾軋的外在展現。這些文本一方面沿襲了傳說中狼人咬傷具備的傳播力和威脅性，一方面亦用傳播與變形的意象，動搖疆界的建構與我他二分。事實上，雖然化狼使得人類主體脫離社群成為他者，狼化的故事卻也總是暗藏著交融和回歸，以及主體和他者共同流變的可能。因篇幅之故，本文欲將討論聚焦於同樣以愛爾蘭為背景的《愛爾蘭風土誌》及《狼行者》中關於狼人的片段，並取徑德勒兹和瓜達希提出的流變，以及列維納斯的他者倫理，探討狼化的過程中，身體的外在變化如何迫使主體重新思考自身的位置，而從狼的身份回歸的主體，又如何重新形構我他關係，並帶出共情／共同流變的可能。

關鍵詞：狼人、疆界、身份、變形、流變、感染、他者

The 2020 Booker Prize-Winning novel, The Promise, written by Damon Galgut features a broken promise made by Herman Manie Swart to his wife, Rachel, by her dying bed that he would give their black maid, Salome, a house on their farm, which is overheard by their youngest daughter, Amor. The bigoted Manie failed to deliver his promise and it becomes a curse for the coming decades. As we follow their three children, Anton, Astrid and Amor, we find the undelivered promise starts to haunt the characters. This essay examines the structural violence that still haunts South Africa in Damon Galgut’s The Promise. In the first part, the paper focuses on how issue of house and land is implicated with racial issue. The 1913 Natives Land Act caused the subsequent socio-economic issues the country is facing including landless people and inequality. In the novel, Manie deliberately denies the promise; however, even if Manie is willing to give her the house, South African law at that time would not allow Salome to own the property. Ironically, toward the end, the justice the state allows means a historical claim to the land, which would still land Salome in a homeless state eventually. The second part focuses on the healing effect of the promise. As it is an obvious allegory of the promise which resembles the outcome of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Committee (TRC), Amor’s lifelong struggle to fulfill her mother’s dying wish seems to parallel the nation’s ongoing struggle. Apartheid is the structural violence that leaves long-lasting aftermath.

Keywords: apartheid, The Promise, Damon Galgut, social justice, racism

Published in 2012 in Arabic and translated into English in 2018, Ahmed Saadawi’s Frankenstein in Baghdad sends readers on a harrowing journey through Baghdad starting in 2005, chasing a mysterious creature, Whatitsname, down a path of lethal vengeance. This paper situates the novel in the larger context of Iraqi writers voicing their perspectives on the links between U.S. coalition forces’ invasion, and its civil war. While past critics have overlooked the date of Hadi’s arrest at the end of the novel, this paper maintains its importance. The date of Hadi’s arrest, 21 Feb. 2006, widely recognized as the start of Iraq’s Civil War, suggests that the novel should be read as an investigation of Iraq’s spiral into civil war. Using Roberto Esposito’s biopolitical concepts of community, immunity and auto-immunity, this paper proposes to read the Whatsitsname in Frankenstein in Baghdad as embodying the auto-immune responses of Iraq’s body politic towards the invading coalition forces. Though the novel tempts readers to read the Whatsitsname as an agent of justice, mending the broken cycle of gift and debt in the society, the Whatsitsname in fact embodies the violent stasis created by Iraqi body politics’ auto-immune responses towards foreign threats. Ultimately, the novel demonstrates how the public’s fear, governed by Esposito’s logic of auto-immunity, further entrenches the country in an inevitable war against itself.

Abstract

Gary Shteyngart’s fifth novel, Our Country Friends, published in October 2021, is among the first novels to depict both the Covid-19 pandemic and the killing of George Floyd. Under the pretext of inviting his old friends to his country estate in the Hudson Valley to wait out the pandemic, Shteyngart examines the state of the United States and its long-infesting problems of social inequalities, as well as white supremacy and systemic racism.

In this essay, I argue that Shteyngart, who has professed his appreciation for the work of Anton Chekhov in his memoir, Little Failure, plays on Chekhov’s gun—the gun that is hung on the wall on the first act must be fired by the third act—the famous literary advice the 19^th-century Russian author gave to his fellow writers. Shteyngart multiplies Chekhov’s metaphorical guns, including menacing black pick-up trucks, an author whose book negotiates white supremacy, and Covid-19. Moreover, he defers their explosions or eventually de-activates the loaded gun in the novel in order to magnify the social tensions between Sasha, the novel’s protagonist and host, who represents the liberal views, and his rural and poorer neighbors who display Confederate battle flags and signs supporting their president (Trump) or show hostility toward his guests of Asian (Korean) descent.

The last gun to explode in Our Country Friends is manifested in the death of Vinod, one of Sasha’s best friends since high school who eventually dies of Covid. The death of Vinod, who lost his adjunct job and worked at a Queens restaurant and who had lung cancer for a decade before succumbing to Covid, highlights the vulnerability of the working poor and those who have underlying health conditions in the Covid-era; they are underserved by the American health care system which runs on profit.

Keywords: Covid, white supremacy, systemic racism, Chekhov’s gun, Shteyngart

印度裔作家阿米塔·葛旭(Amitav Ghosh)2019年出版的小說《槍島》(Gun Island)乃是探討當前氣候變遷的鉅作。古書商迪恩(Deen)來到鄰近孟加拉的桑達班(Sundarban)，調查十七世紀流傳的槍島商人昌德(Chand)與印度蛇神Manasa衝突的傳說。查訪結束後前往威尼斯，赫然發覺該城市的生態系統遭受破壞，大量氣候難民遷徙，與桑達班如出一轍，而難民船Blue Boat的抵達加劇當地政府與行動主義者的衝突。筆者感興趣的是，藉由迪恩的生態/檔案追尋，葛旭的小說如何啟發我們對氣候變遷與人類世的思考？重要的是，氣候難民要如何與象徵不好客的力量—極端氣候與反移民政府—等協商？最後，有別於科幻小說或啟示錄敘事，葛旭的小說如何體現環境人文關懷？本論文以上述的提問出發，主張葛旭的小說不僅彰顯氣候變遷與人類世的關聯，氣候難民的能動性，更對人類世中人與非人(自然生態)的關係提出深刻的反思。論文共分成三個部分。第一部分闡述本論文的理論架構，主要援引環境人文理論，尼克森(Rob Nixon)的緩慢暴力理論，以及葛旭關於氣候變遷的論述，期使與葛旭的小說產生對話。第二部分檢視槍島商人傳奇，重點聚焦在殖民理性與象徵自然的印度蛇神衝突，如何映照到當前桑達班的氣候變遷。第三部分探討迪恩的跨國之旅如何見證當代氣候難民的生成，進而思考與自然生態協商、結盟的可能。筆者認為，葛旭的氣象小說深具環境人文的思維，除了反映當前氣候變遷的危機，更強調將「不好客」的力量轉化為「接納異己」，在在凸顯多元物種共存的重要性。　

關鍵字：阿米塔·葛旭；氣候難民；人類世；緩慢暴力；環境人文

As Brexit has changed from a political option or a conversation topic to a fact, a new normal, Ali Smith’s immediacy of response in her seasonal Quartet not only documents the present turbulent moment, but also enables us to understand its impact on the nation as well as its people in an overwhelming way.

      This essay discusses the post-referendum landscape in Winter, the second novel of the series, and looks at how Smith captures sense of political impasse and hostility by examining characters’ intimate relationships playing out against the backdrop of sociopolitical turmoil in both the past and present. It argues that Smith’s domestic approach at addressing the specific mood of Britain’s social division represents an ethical engagement to the ongoing internal conflicts—the rise of the far-right, anti-immigration, city versus country, intolerance—across the UK. This novel is seeking to break the deadlock between two opposite groups and make dialogues open again through the idea of hospitality. I attempt to demonstrate that the novel dramatises the small moments of connection especially with and among (un)wanted family guests (a stranger, an opponent, and an estranged family member) as a possible path to heal the political and personal rifts wrenched open by the vote.

摘要 

Since the mid-seventeenth century, the Cromwellian settlement had led to Protestant dominance in Ulster. After the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921, the Irish Boundary Commission was formed to decide on the partitioning of Ireland. Given the interstate border with the South and the existing communal border between the Protestant and the Catholic communities, Northern Ireland is so defined by border that identifying who the neighbor is becomes a crucial part of everyday life. In the sectarian milieu, the neighbor could be the compatriot on the same side or the enemy from the other side. Uncertain about the neighbor’s alliance, residents often remain silent either to avoid confrontation or to avert suspicion of betrayal. Silence becomes the invisible but audible boundary between two communities. This paper proposes to read the depiction of silenced border in McNamee’s Resurrection Man and McGilloway’s The Nameless Dead. In the former, I aim to show how the life of Belfast is shaped and reshaped by the border of silence. Adopting Slavoj Žižek’s notions of objective and subjective violence, the first part explains how the space of Belfast is imposed with objective violence that designates one’s communal identity through naming. Amid communal tension, names of various sorts – surnames, street names, or names of schools attended – serve as absolute signifiers for individual and collective identification. Victor Kelly and his family, whose quasi-Catholic surname does not accord with their Protestant affiliation, are socially marginalized and remain taciturn. To subvert this order, Victor turns to the subjective violence of serial killings, silencing victims by slashing their throat. Appalled by Victor’s atrocities, the public fall into reticence, which then reshapes the psychoscape of the city. The silenced border persists into the post-Agreement period. McGilloway’s The Nameless Dead portrays silence on the geographical and temporal border, unravelling the psychological limbo of Troubles-related victims and the societal impasse after the Good Friday Agreement. Beginning with the excavation on the border between the North and the South in 2012, the novel follows Inspector Devlin’s dig into remnants of the past. Overshadowed by the vision of peace and prosperity promised by the Agreement, victims during the ‘70s have lain silenced, waiting for recognition and justice. As if neighbor and stranger, the past of Northern Ireland is close at hand and yet deliberately overlooked. As Birte Heidemann’s idea of “negative liminality” explicates, the collective memory of the conflictual past is suspended in the liminal state between oblivion and recognition, past and present while the future-oriented socio-economic discourse dominates the Northern Irish society during the post-Agreement period. The two works combined reveal that through the Troubles and into the post-Agreement period, Northern Ireland has been and continues to be influenced by border, which struggles to define who the neighbor is—be that the other community or the troubled past.

Keywords: Resurrection Man, The Nameless Dead, border, silence, Northern Ireland

摘要 

在改編自多人線上戰鬥競技場遊戲《英雄聯盟》(League of Legends，簡稱LoL，2009 Microsoft Windows介面)的九集動畫影集《奧術》(Arcane，2021 首播於Netflix平台)中，皮爾托福(Piltover)和佐恩(Zaun)是兩個質性相異、生活樣貌與價值理念均截然不同的鄰近城市：前者信仰科技、理性與秩序，擁有完美的議會政治，相信萬能的科學足以駕馭乖張的魔法，是科技烏托邦的理想化身；後者(又稱為下城，undercity)則通行弱肉強食的科技叢林法則，居住空間充滿暴力、汙染與科技濫用，是科技反烏托邦的極端再現。兩城經過戲劇核心人物爆爆/吉茵珂絲(Powder/Jinx)所牽扯引爆的人事糾葛與利益衝突，最後發展為劍拔弩張、一觸即發的敵對關係。為了和緩緊張情勢、維持城際和平，兩城曾簽訂互惠契約，並以吉茵珂絲作為交易籌碼，換取兩城和平。然而，吉茵珂絲最終即如其名「不祥之人」或「厄運」所暗示，是導致不穩定或甚至引爆動亂的危險因子：無視於兩城欲透過協定所換取之利益，吉茵珂絲朝皮爾托福議會所發射的致命飛彈，最終仍無情地摧毀兩城的和平關係，證明油、水互不相容，終將敵對抗衡的永恆宿命。在《友誼的政治》(The Politics of Friendship，1994法，1997英)中，德希達曾引述柏拉圖、亞里斯多德、西賽羅與尼采的警句，質疑穩定而長久的友誼關係的存在，並主張將友誼看成「單一」「事件」，及其對「偶然性」的開放，也就是對友誼終將產生質變的可能性的認同。以德希達的論點為基礎，本文不僅將論證吉茵珂絲終將導致兩城交戰的必然性，也將探討其與安德里亞斯布洛克曼(Andreas Broeckmann)的「機械美學」(machine aesthetics)不謀而合的關聯：「機械之美應從其動態、不穩定的過程視之，而非將其當成最終、永恆的物件」。此外，從德希達的友誼政治與布洛克曼的機械美學的相互暗喻，本文也將進一步探討蒸氣龐克作為一科幻文類與當代重要次文化的龐克特色─尤其是其顯現於《奧術》中的重要元素。

關鍵字：《奧術》、蒸氣龐克文類與次文化、友誼的政治、機械美學、敵意、亞穩定

Keywords: Arcane, steampunk genre & subculture, the politics of friendship, machine aesthetics, enmity, metastability

Abstract

This conference paper explores (in)hospitality, class, and visual culture in Downton Abbey, the popular British TV drama (six seasons 2010-2015) (created, co-written, and directed by Julian Fellowes), the feature film Downton Abbey (2019) (directed by Michael Engler), and the new heritage film Downton Abbey: A New Era (2022) (produced by Gareth Neame). Jacques Derrida in his lecture “Of Hospitality” in Paris proclaimed that the hosts ideally “offered an unconditional welcome (77). “For to be what it “must” be, hospitality must not pay a debt, or be governed by a duty; it is gracious” (Derrida 83). Derrida’s notion of hospitality can be manifested in Downton Abbey, (a fictional magnificent castle estate in Yorkshire County in England), owned by the aristocratic Crawley family (hiring many domestic servants) in the post-Edwardian era in the early 20th century. Robert Crawley, the Earl of Grantham, and the Crawley family are gracious to host numerous quests and even the strangers during WWI in the hit TV series and do their best to host the royal King and the Queen of England in the film (2019). It is rare for the Earl of Grantham to leave the dinner banquet with inhospitality because he was angry at the woman who talks with hostility toward the aristocracy. It is luring with nostalgia to understand the aristocratic marriages, heir and inheritance, architecture, the system of servants, farmers, village people living in the hierarchy and monarchy of Edwardian era in England “a socially stratified, angst-ridden world” (Treble 86). People then lived in the world of decorum and propriety but faced the challenge of the coming of the new era for them to adjust to without keeping living proxy lives driven by the rigid rules, law, politics, and hierarchies of the past. I argue that (in)hospitality and visual culture are embodied by British English language full of euphemism, class, costumes, fashion, food, cars, castles, paintings, silverware, and technology symbolizing progress. 

English and American literatures, including historical fictions, magazines, graphic novels, art, and history enrich Downton Abbey. Downton Abbey the hit series are based upon the parody graphic novel Agent Gates and the Secret Adventures of Devonton Abbey: A Parody of Downton Abbey. In the historical and cultural background, this paper applies Derrida’s notion of hospitality and Feminism to interpreting the fantastic and nostalgic world of Downton Abbey containing fictional stories and historical momentous events (for example, the sink of Titanic in 1912, the outbreak of WWI, the Spanish influenza pandemic, the Marconi scandal, the Irish War of Independence, the Teapot Dome scandal in the U.S., the British general election of 1923, and the Beer Hall Putsch, a failed coup d’état by Nazi Party leader Adolf Hitler in Munich in Germany). Scrutinizing the visual culture in Downton Abbey, through the analysis and comments on those intriguing plots and complicated stories, we see the aristocracy face the crisis of the time’s drastic economic change with the freedom of sexuality, appearance of the vocations, and the rise of the working class with the hint of the decline of the British aristocracy no matter (in)hospitality or not in the early 20th century.

Keywords: (in)hospitality, Downton Abbey, class, aristocratic marriages, Feminism,  Visual Culture 

Abstract

This paper will explore a new dimension in the study of utopian fiction by focusing on the representation of historical artefacts, antique objects, and other collectible relics in selected utopian novels. I propose to call this theme utopian curatorship. Two major forms of utopian curatorship and museum-making will be examined. First, there is the selective salvaging and collecting of pre-utopian relics which are preserved to demonstrate the sickness of the old civilization and validate the new order which has arisen. As one such example states regarding the cities of the old civilization, “their sites are still so pestilential, after the lapse of centuries, that travelers are publicly guarded against them” (William Dean Howells' A Traveler from Altruria: A Romance, 1894). Second, there is the production and circulation of new cultural artefacts in the utopian society, and this requires the creation and maintenance of libraries, archives, museums, national galleries, and other cultural institutions. Both types of collecting and culture building, thus, serve a common purpose, namely, to document the triumph of the new over the old and contribute a new historiography in the service of the dominant utopian ideology. Writings to be examined in this study include Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward: 2000-1887 (1888), William Morris’ News from Nowhere (1890), William Dean Howells' A Traveler from Altruria: A Romance (1894), and several works by the English philosopher and novelist Olaf Stapledon, namely, Last and First Men: A Story of the Near and Far Future (1930), Last Men in London (1932), and Darkness and the Light (1942). It is in these texts that the essential forms of modern utopian curatorship are manifested.

Keywords: utopian fiction; collections and collecting; museums; curatorship; antiquarianism; objects.

本文以巴特勒（Judith Butler）非暴力為理論架構，探討柯慈（J. M. Coetzee）的《屈辱》（Disgrace）中不同層次與種類的暴力，與回應暴力的可能方式。本文會先從個人層次的暴力開始（大衛性侵女學生梅樂妮、露西被三位黑人鄰居性侵），並以二者截然不同回應暴力的方式為例，探討當個體被暴力對待時，其所實踐非暴力的（不）可能性。一方面，梅樂妮的父親訴諸官方管道要求大衛道歉，並要求法理上的處置，但另一方面，露西遭鄰居性侵卻不願報警、懷孕卻不願墮胎，並視其為她所必須付出的代價。本文會討論南非在後種族隔離時期，當身體成為暴力的載體，並且在巴特勒關於不涉及個體喜好與意願，而必須與他者共居且相互依存的大前提下，究竟非暴力的倫理有何侷限。第二部分將藉著大衛將收容所裡的狗進行安樂死的舉動，討論就算生命的排序在人類世界可被逆轉（如在後種族隔離時期，黑人開始伸張土地與話語的所有權與公民意識），但柯慈安排的結局暗示，非暴力的倫理無法擴及到非人的生命。在人類世中，生態上無關乎選擇的暴力，正暴露出暴力就算在本質上沒有差異，在實踐上卻有。

關鍵字：柯慈、《屈辱》、性侵、巴特勒、非暴力、共居、後種族隔離時期、人類世

Laurence Sterne’s and Tobias Smollett’s comic narratives are able to hold their gaze, without flinching, so the reader need miss nothing on the path to the punchline in A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy and Travels through France and Italy, respectively.  The authors were connected by common experience and acquaintance; both were suffering declining health and nearing the end of their careers, such that each “spontaneous overflow of powerful feeling” was especially precious since it might not bear the repeating; and power surely is never as keenly appreciated as when imperiled.  

In/hospitality is central to the success, or lack thereof, of the protagonists, Sterne’s Yorick and Smollett’s anonymous correspondent.  As guests in a foreign country, both characters are necessarily the focus of hospitality and inhospitality. This paper will examine how Yorick is able to preserve sovereignty via legerdemain over the host/guest dynamic, opening a provisional space where he becomes temporary host, while Smollett’s correspondent cedes power in cross-cultural interaction, rendering himself impotent as a passive recipient/consumer, or guest. Like many just now, the correspondent understandably lacks tools to carve out an autonomous space in a strange environment with altered rules, so as to retain influence, agency, and power. Of course, this is not to claim that Smollett’s novel is the lesser; his correspondent’s flaw allows an arc of development Yorick could not match. However, A Sentimental Journey may present more than an exit for Travels’ stymied tourist; its versatile and inventive solution to lack of agency and power is an inspiration to those estranged from their normality.   

(258 words)

Keywords: Sterne, Smollett, power, in/hospitality, cross-culture, Yorick.

Abstract

Ali Smith’s Spring (2019) is the third instalment of her post-Brexit Seasonal Quartet. Similar to the other three novels, Spring still centers around the issue of the refugee crisis in British society. The novel is woven by two storylines, the years-long friendship between Paddy and Richard, and the newly-befriended bond between Brittany and Florence. Smith’s use of the juxtaposition of the two storylines in the novel is to decry the xenophobic fear and hatred toward foreign immigrants in post-Brexit society. Different from the common viewpoint on immigration officers and refugees, Brittany (the immigration officers in the detaining center) feels depressed and ashamed of her work. It is not until she meets Florence, a 12-year-old immigrant in the center, she regains a new vision for her life and future. Florence’s fortuitous intrusion into Brittany’s life instills new energy and possibilities of change into Florence’s life, which reflects Smith’s attitude of tolerance towards foreign immigrants in the UK society and meanwhile the erasure of the concept of “border” in the polarized society after the Brexit vote. Brittany and Florence’s ambiguous relationship reverses the traditional Eurocentric worldview on natives and immigrants and also spurs people to rethink how to view the relationship between the self and the other. Sometimes the visit of the unwelcomed guest, the other, may revitalize the rigid and stratified social system and bring hopes or newness to the future. This paper is going to explore how Florence and Brittany’s unusual friendship reverses the concept of (in)hospitality and helps us to redefine the meaning of “borderlines” in terms of Gilles Deleuze’s idea of “becoming-nomad.”

Keyword: Spring, Ali Smith, nomad, migrant, (in)hospitality 

ABSTRACT

葛羅托斯基(Jerzy Grotowski)與印度的淵源深厚，並在印度找到他「悅納異己」之道。他是當代劇場界和表演藝術領域轉向印度的先驅之一。約莫在十歲左右，葛氏在母親艾蜜莉亞(Emilia)的引導下，拜讀布倫頓(Paul Brunton)所著的《印度尋祕之旅：在印度遇見馬哈希》(A Search In Secret India: The Classic Work on Seeking a Guru)，書中關於印度聖哲馬哈希(Ramana Maharshi)的故事對他造成不可磨滅的影響。葛氏在1959年成立位於波蘭Opole市的實驗劇場，初期所導的戲中便包括印度詩人迦梨陀娑(Kālidāsa)的作品《沙恭達羅》(Śakuntalā)，該製作成為他實驗觀念與實踐方法的試金石。從1968到1970年，葛羅托斯基曾多次獨自造訪印度：1968年底、1969年夏天、1969年底和1970年夏天。葛氏在印度的腳印遍及各地，他曾參訪位於加爾各答的羅摩克里希納神廟(Shrine of Ramakriskna)、喜馬拉雅山和佛陀悟道的菩提伽耶(Bodh Gaya)。藉著機緣的帶領，葛氏在印度的靈性之旅拜訪不少高僧大德，包括在Pondicherry主持奧羅賓多修道院(Sri Aurobindo Ashram)(1968)的The Mother (本名Mirra Alfassa)和包爾大師(Baul Master)並和其交換關於表演者解剖學的意見(Barba 1999: 169)。印度是葛氏性靈的故鄉，也是其精神與肉體最後的歸宿。1976年12月葛氏做了他最後一次的印度之旅，和其母親兩人共同參訪了神聖的火焰山(Arunachala)，這是印度聖哲馬哈希隱居修行的聖山。葛氏於1999年1月14日逝世，數月後他的骨灰遵其遺囑，撒在其精神導師馬哈希(Sri Ramana Maharshi)修道的火焰山(Mount Arunachala)。在本論文中，筆者首先將探討葛羅托斯基轉向印度並成就「悅納異己」的原由，追蹤並檢視葛氏所進行、體驗和實踐的眾多印度之旅。筆者將深入研究葛氏啟動跨文化劇場實踐的方式，並檢視葛氏跨文化表演理論的建構。最後，筆者將評估葛氏如何運用與挪用他在印度的所見所聞，並深入探討葛氏離開劇場後的後劇場時期。

關鍵字：印度、葛羅托斯基、聖哲馬哈希、悅納異己、濕婆神之舞、貧窮劇場、藝乘

【摘要】

管家，是主也是客，非主亦非客。在世界秩序動盪的二戰背景下，《長日將盡》的英國貴族管家史蒂文斯（Mr. Stevens）也面臨著個人身份認同的危機。

史蒂文斯是主人，他打理家計，管理達林頓府，操持重大迎賓盛會；史蒂文斯又是客人，他寄身於名流之家，與來往的政要賓客一同見證改變歷史的決策。

史蒂文斯非主非客，作為權貴府第的一員，他掌管著貴族府邸卻處於低等階層，大權在握只為履行個人職責。待客的職業操守使他讓渡了良知與自我意識，不加判斷地接納一切來客；作為權貴階級的外人，他獲得主人獨有的信賴，卻没有被真正地平等對待，他的個人生活從未得到關懷。他是熱情待客的（代理）主人，是受到冷落待遇的客人。

正是這樣的多重身份交織，使得史蒂文斯置身於對立身份的抉擇。憑藉著「尊嚴」這一原則進行價值判斷，他幻想著「亦主亦客」的權力與殊榮，卻沒有意識到自己「非主非客」的現實，從而淪為沒有情感的工具，在達林頓勳爵（Lord Darlington）沒落後作為英國的傳統符號，裝飾在易主的宅院，徹底失去價值，陷入身份認同的絕境。本文旨在探討管家史蒂文斯挣扎在主客兩端的身份，所面臨的身份認同危機。

【關鍵字】長日將盡（The Remains of the Day）、石黑一雄（Kazuo Ishiguro）、身份認同、認同危機（identity crisis）

Abstract

Feasts in Beowulf show hospitality on the one hand and inhospitality on the other hand. The story in Beowulf is set in pagan Scandinavia in the sixth century. At that time the Danes in Denmark and the Geats in Geatland crossed the strait named Kattegat (in Danish) to visit each other. This study draws on interdisciplinary resources to examine the boundaries between locals and foreigners and between humans and monster-like creatures in Beowulf. As a foreigner, Beowulf in his young age travels from Geatland to Denmark to help the Danes to fight Grendel. The king of the Danes, Hrothgar, says, “Beowulf, my friend, you have traveled here / to favor us with help and to fight for us” (Heaney 457-58) at a welcoming feast. This feast shows Beowulf hospitality; however, it has been prepared owing to the Danes’ reliance on the foreign support to defeat the powerful enemy. At the feast, Wealhtheow, Hrothgar’s queen, offers the goblets to all ranks and Beowulf, and she “thanked God for granting her wish / that a deliverer she could believe in would arrive / to ease their afflictions” caused by Grendel who has killed many young men in Hrothgar’s kingdom (Heaney 625-28). To fight the monstrous Grendel is a good deed to the Danes. Nevertheless, fighting could result in death. To kill the perpetrator of the Danish victims is truly an act of social justice to the Danes as they celebrate Grendel’s death at Heorot by drinking wine. It may, however, be a heartbreaking consequence to Grendel’s mother. The reason why Grendel attacks the Danes is that he has been forbidden from Denmark. Although Grendel and his mother are described as the descendants of the Biblical Cain, their appearances have been changed to be monster-like, rather than human-like. For this reason, they become the outsiders of the human society of Hrothgar’s kingdom. The marginalization of Grendel and his mother in Denmark is a sign of inhospitality expressed by the Danes. Depicted as Cain who murdered his brother out of jealousy, Grendel kills Danish young men because of his jealousy of their happiness at their banquets. A host’s hospitality and inhospitality to his guests at feasts may cause jealousy which is one of the sources of evils. After Beowulf has ruled Geatland for fifty years, a slave steals a treasure cup from a fire-spewing dragon’s lair. The demon therefore spews flames to burn houses in which no one is alive. To avenge those victims for social justice, Beowulf in his old age declares himself as the lord of treasure, who inherits treasure and feast from King Hrethel, before fighting the dragon. Both Beowulf and the dragon are treasure keepers. To the Geats and Beowulf, it is not justifiable that the dragon hoards treasure as a non-human creature. The Geats show inhospitality to the dragon as the Danes do it to Grendel. In conclusion, hospitality tends to prevail in homogenous cultures.

Keywords: Hospitality, inhospitality, feasts, death, and foreigners.

References

Anonymous. Beowulf. Trans. Seamus Heaney. Greenblatt and Abrams 34-100.

摘要

本文擬援引德希達的悅納異己概念與哈洛威的親屬創造（kin-making）概念，探討努涅斯（Sigrid Nunez）兩部小說《摯友》（The Friend）與《告訴我，你受了什麼苦？》（What Are You Going Through?）中的倫理抉擇與實踐。在兩部小說中，兩位年老的女性敘事者都面臨突如其來的倫理難題與請託。《摯友》的敘事者在參加摯友告別式後、傷痛尚為撫平之際，即受摯友三號老婆請託，在敘事者所租賃、禁止飼養寵物的狹小公寓中照顧摯友留下的老弱大丹狗。《告訴我，你受了什麼苦？》的敘事者受久未聯繫的罹癌友人請託，陪伴後者前往選定的旅宿自行進行安樂死。兩位敘事者在回應他者的請求之際，不僅暴露了自身的能力侷限，也讓自身陷入法律問責與倫理困境。然而，兩位敘事者依然透過不同的協商實踐與大丹狗或友人共同創造更加適合彼此居住或存活的條件。本文認為，兩部小說中主與客、異與已、人與非人之間的關係，某種程度體現了哈洛威的非血緣親屬創造與相互照護（mutual care）的實踐，有助重新思考德希達無條件悅納異己中，關於主客非互惠關係的侷限，開展另一種可能性。

關鍵字：努涅斯、悅納異己、親屬創造、照護、友誼、共生死、倫理抉擇

In William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Ophelia is too weak-willed to have an identity of her own, which could imply some type of mental illness or “madness.” Her madness with grief over the death of her father who bestowed her sense of identity upon her eventually leads Ophelia to commit suicide by drowning herself in a river, along with Laertes’s expectation for her to be chaste and Hamlet’s refusal to accept her love. Like Hamlet, Ophelia experiences the division of subjectivity, an effect of the political and social failure. In Black Sun: Depression and Melancholia (1987), Julia Kristeva is concerned with the woman’s psychology, with a note that when the depressive retardation hinders possible realization, the woman compromises herself; as a result, the only possible act for her is to kill herself or to kill oneself. The woman feels unfaithfulness or desertion by the lover or husband as an assault on her genitality, amounts to castration. Consequently, feminine castration is concealed by narcissistic anguish. According to Kristeva, narcissistic wounds, castration, and sexual dissatisfaction condense into a simultaneous killing or irretrievable burden which establishes her subjectivity; inside, the melancholy woman is nothing but bruises and paralysis; outside, the rest for her is acting out. Under the frame of Kristeva’ s psychoanalysis, I will examine the madness of Ophelia in Hamlet to map the inhospitably medical humanity and how the mad woman confronts such an inhospitable situation in the Renaissance period.

KEYWORDS: inhospitably, medical humanity, madness, melancholy, psychoanalysis

The COVID-19 pandemic inhospitable to physical meetings to share knowledge has allowed hospitable virtual platforms to flourish. In this sense, the global crisis becomes an opportunity for us to rethink how to bridge across differences in knowledge production when physical communication becomes unavailable. When it comes to the concept of bridging, Chicana feminist writer Gloria Anzaldúa’s writings have much to offer. Anzaldúa was known for her bridging works, from her editing efforts of the first U.S. women of color collection titled This Bridge Called My Back to her theorization of political alliance in the essay “Bridge, Drawbridge, Sandbar, or Island.” Her bridging endeavors aim to de-alienate between the self and the other in order to lift the slash in her phrase of “nos/otras [us/others]” to become “nosotras [we]” (Light in the Dark 151). When exploring Anzaldúa’s theory on interconnectivity such as “nosotras,” much existing scholarship focuses on her view on political alliance across differences. Little research centers on how her writings can also shed light on a translational framework that encourages conceptual communication between different schools of thought rarely thought together to take place, such as that between Anzaldúan studies and Chinese philosophy. This essay attempts to delineate such a theoretical contour by shifting the analytical focus from Anzaldúa’s well-known metaphor of bridge to a lesser-known one of “hypertexts’ multiple links” (Light in the Dark 151). This essay will draw from an interdisciplinary approach, including feminist translation studies, new media studies, and literary studies, to close-read the metaphor in question.

Works Cited

Anzaldúa, Gloria. “Bridge, Drawbridge, Sandbar, or Island: Lesbians-of-Color

Hacienda Alianzas.” The Gloria Anzaldúa Reader, edited by AnaLouise Keating, Duke UP, 2009, pp. 140-156.

---. Light in the Dark/ Luz en lo oscuro: Rewriting Identity, Spirituality, Reality, edited

by AnaLouise Keating, Duke UP, 2015.

Anzaldúa, Gloria, and Cherríe Moraga, editors. This Bridge Called My Back: Writings

by Radical Women of Color. Kitchen Table, 1983.

Abstract:

Kazuo Ishiguro’s latest novel, Klara and the Sun, explores the nature of human love and affects through the eye of an artificial friend (AF). From the viewpoint of the AF Klara, the author adopts the sub- or quasi-human perspective to deal with the thorny and unsolved issues of human relations. Continuing his melancholy and controlled style, Ishiguro unfolds his story with Klara’s attempt to reach the Sun’s adobe and seek salvation. Klara, designed to be a companion robot, serves as an other for her human child. She demonstrates an eager will to learn and help her human companion, Josie. While the human society is portrayed to stand on a fragile symbolic plane, the dimension of the Other seems to be on its way of collapsing. The Sun is viewed by Klara as the source of all goodness and order, which, in Lacanian terminology, occupies the place of the Other. The Sun therefore is the locus of God and truth. However, the position of the Other also suggests its inaccessibility and emptiness. In the midst of chaos and the collapse of the symbolic plane, Klara shows amazing perseverance in her believing and upholding the Other. In this paper I would adopt Jacques Lacan’s concepts to illustrate the complicated positions and functions of the other/Other in Klara and the Sun, beginning with AF as humanity’s other, the Sun as the Other, and the mother-child relationship as one another’s other/Other. Moreover, the picture of human interactions with their others would be delineated through the gaze of Klara. Finally the article would be concluded with the discussion of the otherness brought by Klara’s quest for the Sun as the ultimate salvation.

Abstract:Employing the notion of unhomely/uncanny, a concept that originated from psychoanalysis and later developed by Homi Bhabha, I examine how racialization, xenophobia, transcultural encounters, and memory of trauma contribute to unhomely feeling of the key characters in Hwee Hwee Tan’s Foreign Bodies, a novel set in the globalized city of Singapore. I propose that the practice of attributing the unhomely sense simply to minority or deprivileged status of diasporic and migrant subjects is problematic and arguable. Given that the context of globalization has complicated a simple binary division of hospitable and inhospitable world, I suggest that the examination of the sense of unhomeliness requires a more comprehensive and dialectic approach to bring its complexity to light. Reading Tan’s novel from the nexus of psychological, social, cultural, and political dimensions, I also argue that the entanglement of the local and the global, the Western and the Eastern values, and the love-hate sentiment with foreigners in Singapore, can lead to ambivalent effects and result in unhomely sense of both foreigners and locals. To support my argument, I look into how Mei’s and Eugene’s trauma, Andy’s identity as a foreigner, the specific social-political milieu, and national policies function in shaping an in/hospitable world and in facilitating social (in)justice. In so doing, I hope this paper can contribute to the research of the unhomely and in/hospitality in globalization studies and world literature.

Key words: unhomely; justice; racialization; in/hospitality; Hwee Hwee Tan; Foreign Bodies

The zombie subgenre has proven itself to be one of horror’s greatest treasure troves, carrying a multifaceted range of dimensions that continue to disturb and impact contemporary culture. Widely credited with establishing the archetype for the modern zombie horror film, George A. Romero’s independent picture Night of the Living Dead (1968) incorporates metaphors of contagion, consumption, and violence that lend themselves suggestively to sociopolitical discourses as well as aesthetic and psychological ones. Referencing secondary sources rooted in film criticism and the cultural context of Romero’s cinema, Priscilla Wald’s theories of contagion and outbreak narratives in popular media, and Susan Sontag’s discourses on the metaphorical significance of disease, this essay aims to analyze the depictions of violence and contagion in Night of the Living Dead with a focus on how it performs as an outbreak narrative—and more importantly, how this outbreak narrative acts as a subtle, ambiguous yet deeply subversive critique of its contemporary cultural climate.

Abstract

Since its publication in 1722, Daniel Defoe’s A Journal of the Plague Year has been a controversial work, as scholars over the centuries have been casting doubts over its authenticity and how this work should be positioned. As this journal is undersigned by a narrator H. F., it is believed to bear his “first-hand”, “eyewitness” experience and share it with the reading public. Several points are worth noting: first, the narrative is predominantly constructed upon “rumours and reports of things” as well as the narrator’s own observations and comments; second, as the narrator of this work, H. F. remains unquarantined even in the thick of the bubonic plague, but he somehow survives to tell the tales; third, H. F. seems to use his plague writing as a social criticism, from disease control and prevention to the widespread of “fake news”.

Interestingly, Defoe’s Journal is not merely a “historical account” of the Great Plague in 1655 as it claims; it can be seen as a response to the Quarantine Act 1721, an act that made it mandatory for all ships and crews to go through a complete quarantine in order to determine if there was a threat to public health. In other words, it is almost defaulted that the disease came from a foreign land and that quarantine should be the most effective preventive measure. While the Quarantine Act is “inhospitable” by nature, Journal repeats the similar presumptions, in many ways it also challenges how the authority fails to recognise the early outbreak and fails to take better control over the disease. In the development of his infectious plague writing, “rumours and reports of things” make the narrative even more unstable and questionable as it swings between the facts and fictions, allowing more “gaps” in his seemingly persuasive but often chaotic narration.

This paper thus seeks to address the following questions: while Journal often reads as a survivor guide to modern-day readers, what was Defoe’s real intention to write this “historical account”? Was it meant as a precaution? Or was it meant as a part of medical advice? Should H. F be considered as a reliable narrator, if he is really a survivor of the plague? As the city of London is growing infected, H. F.’s uninfected body, immune status, and his undying curiosities drive his infectious plague writings forward with his undivided faith in religion. The paper intends to delve into how the “inhospitality” is incorporated in the imagination of the plague as well as in the assumption of perfect immunity by quarantine, and how national health can be balanced and preserved by the beliefs of consistent identification, discrimination, and purgation of infected bodies.

摘要

在《與麻煩共處：在觸生世中攀親帶故》中海洛葳批判人類中心主義所造就的人類例外主義以及縛限個人主義，將「人」想像為為獨立自生發（autopoiesis）單元，自給自足，孤芳自賞，因此她主張從軟、爛、黏、膠的非人生命體與環境牽絆纏絡的現象，重新思考共生發(sympoiesis)，並進而提出觸手式思考。然而，觸手式思考本身就是一種矛盾修辭，觸手要怎麼想？非人是否能思考？

本論文試著從凡德宓（Jeff Vandermeer）的《龍涎香》（Ambergris）來試想真菌智能。《龍涎香》是由《聖者與狂人之都》(City of Saints and Madmen)、《隋科：後記》（Shriek: An Afterword）、《賁區》（Finch）三部內容迥異的奇幻小說所構成，共通處在故事的場景為一個叫「龍涎香」的都市，這個地方原來的居民是一群與蕈類共生的人，又稱「灰帽」或者「蕈菇住民」，外來的移民殘酷屠殺他們之後，將之驅趕至地底，自此這裡便不時上演人與真菌的攻防戰。故事當中，被真菌寄生的人類身上會像某些蕈類一樣發出螢光。

目前科學家對自然界蕈類發光的解釋是其細胞中的螢光素(Luciferin）與氧分子和酵素作用所致。Luciferin來自 Lucifer，拉丁文原義是「帶光者」（light-bringer），而另一方面路西法又是背叛上帝的大天使。本論文將針對Luciferin的意義作闡述。西方哲學傳統以太陽光作為理性的隱喻，因此不論是人類或者植物，都是某種太陽中心論（heliocentrism）；相對來說，真菌的路西法光暗示的是一種去中心、非理性、反邏輯式的思考模式。從這個角度，我將嘗試思考真菌的自帶光，將如何在幽暗處為人類之自生發想像帶來微光。

關鍵字：凡德宓、寄生、觸手式思考、真菌、海洛葳

摘要 

This paper proposes to investigate the moments in which hostility replaces hospitality in the short fiction of the Anglo-Irish writer Elizabeth Bowen. First, Bowen’s concept of hospitality will be analyzed, supported by her essays. In her essay, “The Big House”(1940), Bowen claims that the Big House in Ireland was “planned for spacious living---for hospitality above all.” Then she goes further to point out that the Big House has a duty to receive visitors both known and unknown: “The stranger, in fact, is the friend if he does not show himself otherwise.” The phrase “shows himself otherwise” implies that whether the host shows hospitality or hostility depends upon the guest’s attitude, anticipating Jacques Derrida’s theory of hospitality. Derrida discusses the word hospitality and its Latin origin “hospitalitat”: how it carries its own contradiction incorporated into it, a Latin word which allows itself to be parasitized by its opposite, ‘hostility,’ […].” In other words, the visitor can at the same time evoke hostility. Second, most critics consider that the ideal hospitality claimed by Bowen in her essay stands in contrast to how hospitality is performed in her fiction. For example, Geraldine Gent argues that “In Bowen’s short story, the owners of the house are both host to the visitor from England and neighboring Protestant families and yet hostile to the local Irish”(41). Although I do not deny this reading of Bowen’s concept of hospitality as what Sarah Harsh calls “a very specific form of hospitality” that “reenacts colonial violence,” this paper intends to explore the moments in which hostility is triggered by reasons other than the opposition between the Anglo-Irish and the Irish. After all, Bowen was not just a member of the Anglo-Irish Ascendancy, living in a Big House in Cork. She spent much of her adult life travelling between Ireland, England, and the United States, experiencing the radical displacement resulting from both political and personal crisis.

Third, while Sarah Harsh argues that the performance of hospitality in Bowen’s novel A World of Love (1955) shows “the hollowness of Bowen’s ‘social ideas,’” close readings of selected short stories by Bowen will be performed, in order to reconsider Bowen’s concept of hospitality as a way to add “a sort of order, a reason for living, to every minute and hour.” Bowen retains a belief in the persistence of order in the time of uncertainty. In “Daffodils” (1923), Miss Murcheson tries to counter the isolation of her house by opening the window and inviting in three of her pupils; there is a moment in “Her Table Spread” (1930), when the English visitor, Alban, appreciates the bravado of the Anglo-Irish hospitality sustained throughout a time of crisis; in “The Happy Autumn Fields” (1945), Henrietta’s hostility to the male guest Eugene is bred by her fear that she is about to lose her sister Sarah to her suitor. This paper aims to give a more comprehensive picture of how hospitality and hostility are displayed in Bowen’s work. 

Keywords: Elizabeth Bowen, hospitality, hostility, order, displacement

摘要 

無論是19世紀的霍亂、美墨邊界的偷渡客、越戰後的船民、歐洲難民潮、網路詐騙、電腦病毒一直到時至今日擴散全球的新冠肺炎，從病毒到人口的移動，(不)好客總是與空間有關。我們總是從邊界的入侵、領土/身體完整性的破壞、到悅納異己的空間重整去想像該如何以及是否(不)好客。本文嘗試探問是否能從德希達與史蒂格勒的時間的概念去思索(不)好客在今日的倫理與意涵，以及從時間為出發點的(不)好客又能剖析出甚麼樣的新的視角。此探問將以改編自傑夫‧范德米爾(Jeff VanderMeer)的小說《滅絕》並於2018年上映的同名電影及原著小說為研究文本。《滅絕》出自范德米爾的《遺落南境三部曲》，內容主要描述由四位女性科學家所組成的團隊—主角為生物學家，加上隊長心理學家以及考古學家和測量員兩位隊員—由名為「南境」的政府組織委任，深入一神秘的X禁區進行調查。在詭譎的X禁區中，成員們不記得自己是如何進入此禁區，也不知道該如何離開，她們想要找到邊界逃離，卻不知道邊界在何方，她們每個人所見景象不盡相同，也隱約被心理學家的催眠術控制及操縱個別的行動。探勘隊一一面臨了隊員的失蹤、自殺與他殺而瀕臨瓦解，生物學家成了最後生還者，並在禁區的燈塔中找到曾任前次探險隊員的丈夫的手記，而她也深信死去的丈夫有一部分還仍然存活在禁區中，生物學家選擇留在禁區尋找丈夫與被掩蓋的真相。在此文本中，空間與邊境仍然成為我們慣常理解(不)好客的基本框架，但本文的關懷不再於否定空間作為開展好客的範疇，而在於關注時間各種形式的流動—直線前進的、暫停後重啟的、逆流往返的或平行共時的—是否能夠提供一個新的倫理視角重新定義好客讓我們能對於今日資本流動、訊息加速以及流量滿載的時代做出適切的回應？滅絕一詞本身意味著時間的摧毀與終結，同時也意味著物質與其反物質相遇時，會發生完全的物質與能量轉換，那麼今日世界裡，我們是否能期待一個新物質或新能量由時間介入的好客而生？

關鍵字: 滅絕、時間、好客、空間

Keywords: annihilation, time, hospitality, space

Proposal

Migration has been a salient global phenomenon for ages. While moving around different countries and cultures, migrants often suffer from exclusion, hostility, or even violence simply due to their difference in race, complexion, religion, and the like. Such manifestations of inhospitality are evidenced by what migrants encounter in Shaun Tan’s The Arrival (2006), a wordless graphic novel that focuses on the male protagonist’s diasporic experiences in a foreign land. Since its publication in 2006, it has been critically acclaimed for depicting the pain and pleasure of immigrants who manage to survive and even thrive in a foreign country, a universal experience common to many people living in an increasingly globalized world. Some critics note that the main feature of this text lies in its effective use of illustrations without words, an unmediated approach that elicits one’s memories of departure and arrival. Reading Shaun Tan’s The Arrival from the perspective of in/hospitality, this paper examines how migrants are received/rejected and how the diasporic experiences are conflicted and compromised. Critical theories relevant to the topic (e.g., Derrida’s Of Hospitality and Sara Ahmed’s Strange Encounters: Embodied Others in Post-coloniality) will be included in my investigation. It is expected that the discussion will contribute to our advanced understanding of in/hospitality inherent in Shaun Tan’s graphic text and beyond. 

Keywords: Shaun Tan, The Arrival, inhospitality, migration, graphic novel

Abstract:

Abstract

On the Earthsea Archipelago constructed by Ursula K. Le Guin in her world famous novel series The Earthsea Cycle dwell a number of non-humans measured by the anthropological standard. This paper focuses on the three types of non-humans who are in proximity to humans and are actually recognized as people in Earthsea. They are (1) superhumans including mages, wizards, sorcerers and witches who are innate with magical powers, (2) inhumans represented by Cob and Thorion who are suspended from life and death, (3) beyond humans or the dragon people who demonstrate the trans-species existence as well as the transcedent force. Through the channels of these non-humans in the novel series, this paper intends to examine the places of negativity unveiled by these non-humans, discussing the dark power, the unemployed magic powers, the unlearned Old Speech, the suspended condition negating life and death, and the freedom unattained by humans. Following this track, this article argues that non-humans in The Earthsea Cycle lend meaningful lens into the places of negativity in human existence and the shadowy realms surrouding the human agencies.

Keywords: non-human, places of negativity, The Earthsea Cycle

Abstract

    In Daniel Defoe’s last novel Roxana: The Fortunate Mistress (1724), readers will find a female character who becomes a mistress to different male characters in order to survive at first and then to gain fame and fortune. This paper aims to examine how Roxana’s relationships with other male characters, such as her landlord, the German prince, and the Dutch merchant, demonstrate the ways by which she becomes a mistress of (in)hospitality. The use of “(in)hospitality” intends to emphasize how Roxana, like a businesswoman, “trades” her virtues with the said male characters in order to survive her hardship and sometimes insists on remaining independent, a plot that is somehow different from the traditional master-mistress one. Roxana’s becoming of a “fortunate mistress,” as indicated in the title of the novel, is a result of her survival strategies. Examinations of these survival strategies will reveal how Roxana carefully manages her role as a hospitable mistress and an inhospitable one. Swinging between these two roles does not always guarantee that Roxana takes an upper hand in life. By looking into her “misfortunes,” this paper also presents the moral lessons that Defoe wants to include in this novel. These moral lessons reflect the virtues that Roxana is in lack of, since she is at best a fortunate, hospital mistress.

Abstract

Mary Wollstonecraft, in the opening paragraph of her travel narrative, Letters Written During A Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark (1796), declares that she travels through “new scenes, whilst warmed with the impression they have made on me” (11). She is determined to open her mind to observe and experience the “new scenes” of the local otherness while traveling across the Scandinavian countries. The kind host of a retired lieutenant on a small island warms her mind later, making her feel “Still nothing was so pleasing as the alacrity of hospitality” (16). The host even terms her “a woman of observation” because she asks “him men’s questions” (19), which implies her operation of rational thinking and her difference from the other women in her time when men were considered dominant and rational. Furthermore, she perceives the Scandinavian “scenes” of the natural landscape as the hospitality of a motherly figure and nurture of imagination, so she is pleased to open her “bosom to the embraces of nature” (54). In this travelogue, the use of epistolary form enables Wollstonecraft to think inwards, address both her lover, Gilbert Imlay in private, and the public readers, and reflect on whatever she observes and perceives during her journey. Wollstonecraft thus dynamically turns her thought inwards while interacting with the local otherness, expressing her public views on family, social, and national progress in terms of social justice. She also reveals her private emotions, relating her failed relationships with Imlay and her role as an independent woman and mother. Based on the above findings, this paper investigates how Wollstonecraft keeps juxtaposing her private selfhood with her public one while interacting with the locals to experience the “new scenes” and their hospitality during her constant physical movement. By exploring the writer’s mobile selfhood, this paper simultaneously analyzes Wollstonecraft’s thoughts on social justice and her identity as a woman educator and mother with emotions and reason and her revision to the idea of women’s irrationality dominant in the 18th-century Enlightenment period.       

Keywords: selfhood, otherness, hospitality, new experience, social justice             

Abstract

In his short story collection, The Refugee (2017), Viet Thanh Nguyen rehearses how the experiences of Vietnam War trauma intrude the lives of the living in the forms of ghosts or memories, be themselves Vietnamese refugees in America or the host population. Just as how the narrator remarks on the intertwining of Vietnamese and American history (“As they haunt our country, so do we haunt theirs”) (“Black-Eyed Women” 21), Vietnamese refugees can be seen as the living embodiment of the past in American society. The way Vietnamese refugees are included within the state reminds us of the metaphor of transplantation (which is dealt with in the story “The Transplant”), allowing us to ponder upon the issue of (in)hospitality. How can refugees, instead of wiping their identity off everything, live on and tell the stories of the dead? How can the host population face the refugee guests’ intrusion that reminds them of the past that threatens their sense of self?

Drawing on Derrida’s concept of hospitality as the experiences of feeling not at home, this paper argues that Nguyen’s story collection problematizes the host-guest relationship between Vietnamese refugees and American citizens, but it also allows refugee stories of aftermath to be framed beyond “bare life.” In this paper, I will firstly provide an overview of contemporary Vietnamese American literature, discussing how these writers rewrite racial and cultural expectations. Then the paper attempts the analysis of Derrida’s deconstruction of the host-guest relationship. Finally, in the last part of this paper, I read how Nguyen’s refugee stories demand new paradigms to reshape our shared future.

Keywords: Vietnamese refugees in America, hospitality, refugee studies, nation-states

論文摘要

對於十八世紀的英國而言，隨著國家內部的蓬勃發展與帝國快速向外擴張所獲致的成就，「進步史觀」（the progressive view of history）逐漸成為社會的普遍信念。然而，若回頭檢視自十八世紀中葉起發生在蘇格蘭高地薩瑟蘭地區（Sutherland）長達一個半世紀的清地運動（Clearances），我們不免開始對「進步」的論述開始產生質疑。清地運動的一個半世紀間數以萬計的蘇格蘭高地佃農因被視為無生產競爭力的社會殘餘，遭到地主（同時也是各氏族的族長）以經濟發展與社會「進步」為由逐步驅離世代賴以為生（家）的土地，並以相較佃農更具高經濟生產力的黑面羊取而代之。本文將從最早針對高地清地的歷史書寫著手，如唐納德·麥克勞德（Donald McLeod）的《蘇格蘭高地的悲傷記憶》（Gloomy Memories in the Highlands of Scotland, 1841），以了解清地運動受難者的論述，同時也探研支持清地運動之人的書寫，如以美國作家、廢奴主義者哈里特·比徹·斯托（Harriet Beecher Stowe, 1811-1896）親身體驗高地生活後，於《異國他鄉的陽光記憶》（Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands, 1854）中所提出的論點與受難者之論述相比對，呈現不同觀點對此事件所做出的思辨，並且從好客/不好客之視角探究十八世紀進步史觀之言說方式。

Anthony Veasna So’s short story collection Afterparties portrays young Cambodian Americans as children of refugees, navigating through the complexities of their history and communities. Particularly, in the short story “Somaly Serey, Serey Somaly,” issues concerning proximity and hospitality arise from portrayals of tension between generations, past and present, and the living and the dead. Serey, the protagonist, is “latched” by the spectral presence of Somaly, her dead aunt, ever since she was born. The belief that she is the reincarnation of Somaly and the proximity she shares with the spirit and the memory torments Serey especially during the final days of Ma Eng, an elderly demented relative whom she takes care of at the nursing home and who constantly reminds her of her reincarnated identity. Serey’s distress is presented via disorientation in two aspects: the replay of the family’s history in her nightmares about the Cambodian genocide and the series of physical symptoms that suggest the breakdown of Serey’s conflicting interiority. Interestingly, such distress only exacerbates as Ma Eng approaches her death, hinting at an anxiety of the finitude of hospitality of Serey’s identity as Somaly’s reincarnation. This paper unfolds in two parts: First, it examines the concept of reincarnation as hospitality in the Cambodian American community. This paper considers the enforcement of the idea of reincarnation—one that anticipates the continuity of a life not in spectral form but in another life form—as a gesture of radical hospitality that nevertheless faces the challenge of reciprocation and reaction from the host(age). Second, this paper investigates the problematics of hospitality correlating with proximity. Honing in on examples of communication of the mother language (Khmer) and instances of physical contact, this paper explores the extent of which hospitality delineates borders between the self and the other.

Keywords: Anthony Veasna So, Afterparties, Cambodian American literature, hospitality, proximity, reincarnation

Abstract: Hostility and inhospitality towards foreigners have become common emotions in the recent wake of COVID-19. Consequently, the concept of hospitality has become an arising theme in literature by examining how characters interact and handle the foreign or strange. In Derrida's theory, hospitality is almost always accompanied by hostility, making them intricately intertwined. This paper aims to respond to Jacques Derrida's theory by providing a deep and explorative look at both hospitality and inhospitality in Miguel de Cervantes' two-part novel, Don Quixote. For early sixteenth-late, seventeenth-century Spaniards, Don Quixote was a literary madman fastened in his fantasies of romantic chivalry and knighthood. His inability to match the times causes him to encounter hostility from his fellow compatriots. The same can be experienced by modern-day readers when they initially read the book. Nonetheless, in time characters friendly with Don Quixote grow captivated by his ideals and deal with him with hospitality, as does the compassionate reader. Further, Don Quixote and the characters in the novel illustrate the hostility between idealism and romanticism, as well as by some individuals living in Spain as the country entered a new age. 

Keywords: hospitality, hostility, Don Quixote, idealism, romanticism

Abstract

George Saunders’ Lincoln in the Bardo is a millennial speculative novel that disqualifies our claims for the Anthropocene. Rather than reduplicating a narrative continuity, which had dominated the literary landscape for centuries, Saunders’ novel is a hodgepodge of nonlinear narratives—a millennial writing style that lacks a central character or narrator. For this paper, I argue that the writing of Lincoln in the Bardo—particularly fragmented and disorganized—adumbrates a kind of literary or theoretical unrest towards the Anthropocene. Also by shedding light on liminality and the moments of cohabitation of the novel, I would take this novel to demonstrate a form of shifting or sliding identity between hosts and visitors, both of whose identities are never fixed but ambiguously intertwined, leaving a large space for us to reconsider hospitality and inhospitality.

Firstly, this paper would define what the Anthropocene is by putting this argument in the context of literature. To do so, we find Saunders’ Lincoln in the Bardo embodied as the dissolution of traditional narrative trajectories; then we would witness how the idea of oneness or centeredness is shattered and multiplied. Secondly, since the Anthropocene is accepted reservedly or halfheartedly here, I would instead acknowledge this novel as the one that contains material aspects with resort to, for example, the transitional space (i.e. liminality or the Bardo) and the moments of cohabitation between various characters of the novel. Liminality features ambiguity or disorientation. In a liminal space, one finds, when cohabitated, layers of realities conjured up. They could be the memories from one’s “previous life” or the voice(s) of other person(s) cohabitating him or her. In other words, the space of liminality is fraught with activities or intensities, a fact that also suggests the disruption of causality, because everything could be amalgamated into this liminal space without distinguishing between the present, previous, or future time and space. Hence, the liminality as substantiated here is to suggest humans’ capacity to enter not only different time-scales but different human consciousness, which is when humans can serve as a medium for other humans, and thus become materially-reconfigured rather than Anthropocentrically-presented. In addition, I attempt to further take the moments of cohabitation as a substantiation for reconsidering the lines between the hosts and visitors in relation to whether they express their hospitality or inhospitality towards the others, namely, how they react to being cohabitated. By studying the moments of cohabitation of the novel, I suggest that the hosts are emptied, muted (in a sense that they do not own the authority of expressing themselves but are instead contaminated with the voices of the Other), and thus incapable of expressing their hospitality or inhospitality towards the visitors. Yet, these cohabitation performers (i.e. the unexpected visitors) would become the hosts that show hospitality towards the original hosts, because they all are up to one purpose in the end.

摘要

柴納·米耶維(China Miéville) 在2011年出版的科幻小說《使館鎮》(Embassytown)中描述了未來外太空的一場殖民國奪權「病」變。故事主角Avice在Arieka 星球的使館鎮長大。統治Arieka異星生物的語言造成族群溝通障礙，因指涉物必須實存，使用明喻(simile)為擴充感知唯一途徑。他們以雙口共鳴發音，凡事必須透過孿生「大使」同步發聲翻譯。Bremen 星際帝國為獲取更大利益，派遣新任大使EzRa到Arieka散播致幻致癮的魔音毒藥，造成該地社會崩解。直到Avice 教導Arieka生物透過隱喻學會「說謊」後，當地語言產生質變，也發展書寫符號，病態失序亂象才得以改善。

米耶維左翼政治立場鮮明，為何在小說中會因為隱喻而強調語言革命必須是社會改革的基礎？本文首先將分析《使館鎮》中援引德希達(Derrida)〈柏拉圖的藥房〉之處，例以「靈藥」諷刺獨裁者語音中心主義等。然而，米耶維強調的並非德希達的「延異」，而是在特定語用情境的具身認知:「說謊」一詞透露「似假亦真」的隱喻包含了「以假亂真」的踰越動能。這正是政治行動超出文本再現，而接近德勒茲(Deleuze)的解疆域化之處。對米耶維而言，符號的生成源自隱喻，而隱喻則源自對於表面同一性的反動和對內在異質性的理解與接納。位於帝國邊境的使館鎮，也因此能透過隱喻啟動的符號生成，成為對外無限開放的遊牧主體。

關鍵字：柴納·米耶維、《使館鎮》、隱喻、踰越性、德希達、德勒茲

ABSTRACT

“The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line.” Du Bois prophetically stated in 1903. Despite the passage of time, the line has been left uncrossed as the enduring effects of de jure segregation continue to haunt American society. For black people, the agony of surviving in the “white space” points to the fact that their social status is not only precarious and provisional, but always subject to negotiation. With the politics of hospitality as a prism to reflect power dynamics embedded in racial relations, I argue that the ambiguity of “hôte” underlies the question of thresholds in a sense of exclusion produced within a racist society. It entails the conflicts of racial designation and propels people to interrogate who they are in the typological essence. The state of inhospitality consequently serves as an inevitable result when the society is conditioned by a culture of white supremacy. By analyzing the play, Trouble in Mind, written by Alice Childress in 1955, this article will emphasize how black people navigate the white space as a prerequisite for social existence, and explore how the tolerance and openness presented by the white are nothing but the opposite of hospitality. With the discussion of its long-overdue Broadway premiere that was six decades late, the article will furthermore suggest that such a belated welcome gesture is hardly a sign of racial progress, but a sharp reminder that the tension of racial division has not abated, notwithstanding the national awakening over systemic racism.

Jack London’s novella The Scarlet Plague (1912) is a story about a man remembering his life before the Scarlet Death, a plague that wipes out most of the population, in an apocalyptic world. Like most of the deadly diseases, the Scarlet Plague is horrifying, but it might be uniquely destructive to civilization because of the psychological effects of its symptoms. Its visible scarlet rashes mark its victims and its ability to disintegrate the victims’ corpses makes the plague extremely contagious. These symptoms mean that not only does the Scarlet Death kill, it sows distrust and fear in those who have not yet fallen sick. The compromised body integrity of the infected people also disrupts the internal structure of society, destroying civilization to the point where it cannot rebuild after the pandemic ends. Andrew Tudor’s studies on the “unruly body” and “paranoid horror” aids in the comprehension of London’s imagination, where people grow terrified of themselves. Priscilla Wald’s theory on disease prevention and quarantine and Mary Douglas’s theory on individual bodies and social structure help understand the fundamental difficulty of rebuilding after the stage of paranoid horror. It is a story about an apocalyptic pandemic, but by reading it along with London’s another speculative fiction, The Iron Heel, the novella also voices London’s commentary on the fragility of the structure of a highly hierarchical and specialized society

Written by Max Brooks in 2006, World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War is a zombie apocalyptic horror novel depicting the world twenty years after the worldwide pandemic of the zombie virus. As oppose to other zombie fiction, the work focuses more on the impacted human world instead of the zombies themselves. Although it is a work of fiction, Brooks nonetheless drew inspiration from real events including the SARS outbreak and the spread of HIV. In addition to these links with reality, the concept of zombie has become more popular as a symbol over time with its numerous representations in modern culture. Zombies are now used more as a symbol rather than mere shambling and groaning creatures yearning for brains, an image utilized even by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention. In 2011, CDC posted a blog elaborating on emergency preparedness in the case of a zombie outbreak. The blog is updated in 2021, possibly due to the spread of COVID-19, accentuating the parallel between the fear of a zombie outbreak and that of a pandemic.

In this essay I wish to examine how the fear of pandemic is manifested through the zombie fiction, and in retrospect, how the zombie fiction can be utilized either to serve as a cautionary tale, or to represent other ideas concerning contagion. In considering the zombie virus as a pandemic, I also wish to view World War Z itself as a pandemic narrative, and contemplate its place today in the pandemic culture during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Among the group of Brexlit that capture the ethos of the fenced, claustrophobic, post-referendum British society, while Ali Smith's Seasonal Quartet (2016-2020) invites characters from the UK and EU countries to the same house for confrontation and reconciliation between hosts and guests in an era of change, Linda Grant’s A Stranger City (2019) depicts “the labyrinth of London” along with the tracking for an unidentified woman who drowned herself in the Thames, where invisible networks are woven among total strangers. Set against the backdrop of Brexit, this article aims to examine in a comparative reading how these novels represent in an ethnographical way the unwelcome tradition in the British society towards migrants and why the notion of home and of Englishness should be called into question and reconsidered. It argues that Ali and Linda, while using symbols that recall the British Empire’s past glories in an ironic way, position themselves as ethnographers to tell the life stories of the lonely, vulnerable foreigners and strangers who are simply scapegoats of the backlash of the EU referendum; meanwhile, both women writers are practicing literary hospitality in response to the xenophobic crisis that combines Euroscepticism, nationalist narcissism and nostalgia for the British heroism, melancholy self-pity as well as a bleak outlook for a post-Brexit Britain.

Abstract

        While Macbeth is not frequently perceived as a play about hospitality, in a distinctive way it draws our attention to the ethics of hospitality—and the ruin of it—through its representation of the host-guest relationship. By looking into the assassination of King Duncan, this essay first demonstrates that, apart from a heinous crime, the Macbeths’ regicide is an unspeakable infringement of the host-guest relationship displaying the fact that kindness is not inherently reciprocal between people. In this regard, hospitality essentially consists of a certain amount of risk and our practice of it—either as the host or as the guest—is not only an expression of our goodwill to others but also a test on our response to uncertainty and potential peril. Following this, through an inquiry into Macbeth’s invitation to Banquo to a feast that he knows the thane will never be able to attend (“Fail not our feast”), together with Banquo’s consent not to miss the dinner party (“My lord, I will not”), this essay subsequently demonstrates that Macbeth’s feigned hospitality exemplifies an ethical dilemma that we may all have faced in life: the problem about how to be hospitable when we do not mean to. In this context, the appearance of Banquo’s ghost as an unanticipated guest at the banquet, other than a divine or demonic retribution for Macbeth’s crimes, can also be considered as a satire on the host’s insincere hospitality. Moreover, when the titular character sees the ghost at the dinning table, his sheer terror also prompts us to reflect upon the possibility for people to unconditionally welcome a guest that is foreign, non-identifiable, unforeseeable, and even otherworldly to us.

Keywords: Macbeth, hospitality, host-guest relationship

摘要 

        本文企圖藉用哲學家艾斯波西托（Roberto Esposito）的「免疫」（immunitas）概念，來討論漫威英雄改編電影中，所呈現的異／疫體生命政治學。漫威英雄改編電影中，有一個常見的設定：超級英雄的誕生，與形構其（非）同一性自我的異／疫體息息相關。浩克（Hulk）一角，即為一例：班納博士（Bruce Banner）受到了珈瑪射線的照射而成為浩克，並讓他的生命遇到危機時，會自動變身為浩克作為抵抗，而得以存活。這表示保護生命的免疫體源於非自身的異物體，「異體」因此成為其「疫體」，使班納／浩克成為非同一體、異體與疫體的綜合。有趣的是，在福斯電影公司所拍攝的舊版《X-men》第三集裡，有位變種人的超能力是讓其他變種人的能力無效，表示其基因裡面具有解決這些異體的「疫體」，該能力甚至被政府研發成疫苗，企圖讓變種人「正常化」而不再異於常人。

        本文的目的，就在於跳脫德希達「自體免疫」（autoimmunity）概念隱含的自我否定特質，轉向艾斯波西托的免疫構想，來說明（非）同一體、異體、疫體之間的生命政治關係，討論超級英雄的身體對於異體所產生的免疫反應，是一種既排斥又接受的（不）好客行為，進而形成某種具（非）同一性的自我，並解釋如此的（非）同一性，又如何使具有保護社會功能的超級英雄受到社會排斥，讓他們的身分認同，進入另一個層次的（不）好客與異／疫體辯證關係。

關鍵字：艾斯波希多、免疫、異體、疫體

Keywords: Roberto Esposito, immunitas, foreign body, immunitary body

Abstract

This study aims to explore the man-made barrier between the master-servant relationship in two films: The Help and Green Book. Here, I use “master-servant” as an umbrella term to describe the connection between the characters in both films. The bond between the maids and the wives in The Help is “hostess-maid,” whereas the relationship of the two main characters in Green Book is more like a “boss-chauffer”. Interestingly, the master-servant relationship in both films is the exact inverse of the other. The Help mainly focuses on a group of mean and superficial white wives and their poor and uneducated black maids. Green Book, by contrast, portrays the evolving relationship between a rich, educated black pianist, and his Italian, coarse, and violent chauffer. First, I examine scenes related to food or dining areas in both movies and show how such spaces are generally used as tools to segregate and amplify the demarcations between people of different class, race, and gender. Specifically, the kitchen and the dining room in The Help establishes a clear boundary between the maid and host, suggesting that transgressing those boundaries will lead to conflict. Because the dining room is used to hold gatherings and parties for the host’s guests, the maid is forbidden to enter and must stay in the kitchen unless she is serving someone. In Green Book the director explores the opposite situation: what happens when people mutually choose to ignore such boundaries. In one scene the two protagonists share fried chicken in the car with a sense of joy and companionship. The fried chicken in this case symbolizes friendship. Mutual understanding and acceptance between people, in some cases, can lead to the crossing or eliminating boundaries. In Green Book, the relationship between the two protagonists changes from “boss-chauffer” to brotherhood friendship. Over time they both learned to tolerate, understand, accept and appreciate each other. At the end of the film, the two characters cross several boundaries when the initially cold and distant pianist drives the chauffer home; the pianist subsequently is invited and attends Christmas dinner at his chauffer’s house. In The Help the relationship between segregated groups does not change much over the course of the movie; however, in Green Book the director explores eliminating segregation. These two movies both suggest that barriers segregating different people are man-made and, therefore, can be torn down by sharing common experiences of human feeling, sympathy, and empathy.

Keywords: host, guest, food, dining, boundary, understanding, acceptance

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to reformulate what is known as the paradox of horror through my reading of H.P. Lovecraft with the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari. In the past, this paradox asks why people would enjoy horrifying objects in artworks. But this, I find, reduces the experience of art to a relation between human as subject and work as object. In order to avoid such reductions, I treat the works of Lovecraft not as objects of representation but as a machine that produces effects. Therefore, instead of asking the question why horror, I ask how horror works to undermine precisely the demarcation of self and non-self and human and non-human. This is what I called becoming-monster which constitutes the reformulated paradox. The concept of becoming-monster demands that we think the metamorphoses and connectivity in the experience of art. This poses challenges to the current anti-anthropocentric philosophy that focuses on objects, namely, Object-Oriented Ontology (OOO). Becoming-monster not only means that we cannot remain subjects, it also suggests that we cannot be persisting objects as well. Instead, through the works of horror, we experiment on our own becomings. This is what the paradox of horror entails: I am horrified. But who am I really?   

This paper considers music’s role in the delineations of queer hospitality in Dorothy Richardson’s novel-series Pilgrimage. It compares two episodes of Miriam Henderson’s engagement with music: her piano performance of Mendelssohn’s and Beethoven’s music in front of a potential male suitor in The Tunnel (1919) and her listening to someone’s playing of Chopin’s ballade in Oberland (1927). In the former, Miriam’s choice of repertoire and the way she plays provide a means through which she tests multiple ways of expression, modulates her relations with her audience, and teases, questions, and rewrites the conventional, male-defined and male-centred narrative of courtship. Her performance becomes an ambivalent seduction, inviting but also thwarting. In the latter, Chopin’s music enables Miriam, who has just settled in her room in a hotel for her two-week holiday in Switzerland, to register her foreign surroundings as well as to recall her memories of being abroad. As such, Chopin’s music becomes a formative part in Richardson’s exploration of the boundary between familiarity and strangeness, security and insecurity, self and others. Miriam’s engagement with music thus stages a play between performer and audience, suggesting a complex web of relations where invitation appears to be extended, but cordial reception seems not at all certain. Following Jo Winning’s reading of the erotic, especially lesbian, subtext of Pilgrimage, the paper argues that such a play is an ambiguous articulation of queer desire; one lingers in front of both welcome and disdain, the subject herself undecided whether to take a hospitable or a hostile role. Through a close reading of these two episodes, the paper examines the erotic charge of these musical episodes, analysing how Richardson’s representations of music signal, and queer, the prospect of intimacy between the host and the guest.

Abstract

In this paper, I examine how Joseph Conrad creates a space of (in)hospitality in his 1902 novella, “Typhoon,” which features one of the worst storms in English literature. The story recounts British Captain MacWhirr’s navigation through a destructive typhoon and his successful delivery of two hundred Chinese coolies from Singapore to Fu-chau. I will argue that, in this particular heterotopia, the distinctions between self and other, and by extension the roles of host and guests, are variously complicated. The ship, rather than offering a shelter to the coolies, confines them to a narrow space below the deck, a place that exposes them to the danger of drowning in the event of a typhoon. MacWhirr disregards his first mate’s protest that the coolies suffer from the tumbling actions of the ship and the gush of salt water in the bilges. Instead of changing the ship’s course to avoid an inhospitable weather, the captain meets the typhoon head on in order to deliver the coolies, along with their savings, to the destination on time. The most important thing for the captain, then, is whether he can honor the contract and get his payment. Additionally, MacWhirr claims that the coolies are not passengers (but they are not exactly cargo, either). Their needs can be ignored until there is substantial damage. The coolies fight under the deck over scattered dollars, mirroring the chaos the typhoon creates—a portrayal reminiscent of Yellow Peril literature, which tends to characterize Chinese laborers as uncontrollable torrents or hordes. In the text, there is also a brief mention of the end of the world being brought about by a catastrophic disturbance of the atmosphere. The apocalypse is constantly anticipated but not materialized, as the worst moment of the storm completely exceeds narration. Moreover, at the end of the novella, all seems to turn out well when MacWhirr makes it to Fu-chau on time, distributes the money equally among the coolies, and gives three remaining dollars to those that physically suffer the most as compensation. But we must ask: does MacWhirr have the jurisdiction to do so? Is this an act of hospitality or inhospitality? How should we interpret the status of the coolies, if they are neither passengers nor cargo? Interestingly, though most of the story is told from the white men’s perspectives, there is a brief passage of free indirect discourse voicing the Chinese’s fear toward the white men aboard, who are referred to as “white devils.” It is in place like this, along with the British first mate’s sympathy toward the coolies, that “Typhoon” critiques the inhumanity of global capitalism and challenges the narratives of the Yellow Peril circulating at the turn of the twentieth century. In turn, the novella—though not a cautionary tale about the Anthropocene—provides a rare, unprecedented window into the precarity of lives in the Global South, especially in facing natural disasters.

 Abstract

This paper aims to explore how the themes of inhospitality and hostility in Richard Yates’s Revolutionary Road (1961) problematize the idea of community and home in the American fifties, arguing that the postwar suburbia is reinvented as a place of tension and conflict in the novel. Revolutionary Road is set in a fictional suburban community during 1950s America, telling the story of Frank and April Wheeler’s failed pursuit of their passionate but destructive dream of self-fulfillment. The Wheeler couple regrets moving to the suburbia, thinking they deserve more decent and interesting people and lifestyle; thus, they plan to move to Paris to start over meaningful life. During the preparation for the plan to come true, they can only confirm to the collective harmony by pretending to be hospitable to their neighbors even though they are inhospitable in their hearts. The hidden inhospitality, or the seeming hospitality, indicates the conflict between the private and the public, the host and the guest, and the individual and the collective. Furthermore, to what extent inhospitality would become hostility——the act of turning the unwanted guests into the enemies, the Other? The reading of inhospitality and hostility in Yates’s Revolutionary Road reveals the other side of the suburban living paradise; it is not as welcoming as it is romanticized in the 1950s. More surprisingly, the reinvented image of the postwar American suburbia turns out to become a national allegory itself, manifesting the nation haunted by anxiety and surveillance in the postwar decades.

Keywords: hospitality, postwar America, 1950s, suburbia, Revolutionary Road

摘要

康德對於「異己」之概念是從「容忍」的角度出發；而德希達在《論好客》中其「悅納異己」一詞在於肯認自己相較於他者，即便存有「差異化」仍「無條件」接納對方，因而期待自我及他者間的藩籬能夠消失。但無論自康德到德希達，其提倡「悅納異己」之概念有其限制，人與人之間受限於主體性的箝制而無法做到無條件的友好並接納他人。因此，讀者可發現在古希臘神話及英雄史詩中，「悅納異己」一詞常與不好客或者逢場作戲等反面效應連結，進而帶出角色人物的苦難抑或是悲劇的下場。荷馬史詩《奧德賽》中的波理費摩斯(Polyphemus)因監禁奧迪修斯且未熱情款待他而遭其弄瞎眼睛；艾提斯(Aetes)在傑森前來欲取金羊毛之際，心生怨懟，但表面上仍是笑臉迎人，與之周旋。若「好客之道」有其限制，我進一步想問的是「悅納異己」在希臘神話及史詩中如何透過「異鄉人」/ 「化外之民」角色被反面呈現、其界限為何? 其悲劇結果又是如何再現好客之道的界線及危險性? 作者首先針對康德以及德希達對於接納他者之概念進行交叉討論、接著透過奧迪修斯流浪記及傑森取得金羊毛兩個故事文本中的波里費摩斯及艾提斯兩個角色進一步加以評析。本文旨在探究希臘神話中有別於悅納異己的不好客反面敘事，企圖勾勒出史詩傳統裡危機重重的賓主關係，進而衍生不好客之道在古希臘時期所隱含的問題、極限與代價。

關鍵字: 德希達的「悅納異己」、待客之道、不好客、波理費摩斯(Polyhemus)、艾提斯(Aetes) 、「異鄉人」/ 「化外之民」

The English word “host” has a set of related meanings. In one important sense, a host is a person who receives or entertains guests. Closely related to this, yet with a more negative valence, is the host as one on whom a parasite lives. How does this relation play out in the domain of literature? When a critic cites a text, is she hosting the text? Or is she a parasite on or guest of the text? If critics are parasites on texts, what if anything do they “owe” those texts? If authors are parasites on readers, what do they “owe” their readers? These are the kinds of metaphors and questions the American literary critic J. Hillis Miller began exploring in the 1970s. This paper is itself parasitical on the work of Miller as well as a host for his work. In it, I look at the origin of the host/parasite metaphor and how it stimulated Miller to develop his theory of criticism over the next three decades. We begin with Miller’s “Critic as Host” (1977), which emerged out of debates over Derridean deconstructionism in literary criticism; we pass through Miller’s elaboration of this theme in The Ethics of Reading; and conclude with his later efforts to “make literature matter.” Given Miller’s later readings of literature through the lens of climate change, as well as his persistent use of the “parasite” metaphor, this paper raises the question of how we might read literature in terms of the current global health crisis.