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CONTENT 01
Content
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Preface: The Body and its Antibody
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目盲。盲目 Dr. Esther M.K. Cheung
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《一個身體》之《耳》 周耀輝
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Undisciplining Porn Studies Prof. Katrien JACOBS
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What Do Contemporary Feminist Body Theories Tell About Body? Prof. Eva Man
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想像他人之痛 鄧正健
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翩翩淺說（香港）電影的舞者身軀 羅玉華
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行歇如雨 Sonia Wong
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What is it to be Human? A Few Segments of Thoughts Inspired by Harald Hamrell and Levan Akin's Ä kta Människor
Miss Helena Wu
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Mirror, mirror on the wall: Bodies, mirrors and identity in Atwood’s “Tricks with mirrors” and Kureishi’s The Body
Miss Julianne Yang 63
Comparative Literature Festival 2013 Exhibition: “Dismemberment” Society of Comparative Literature
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Film Review: Caterpillar Kelly Chui
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Book Review:《哀悼乳房》 林穎汶
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
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Preface: The Body and its Antibody Dr. Esther M.K. Cheung
Dr. Esther M.K. Cheung 張美君 is currently the Chairperson of the Department of Comparative Literature. Her areas of interest are Hong Kong cultural studies, contemporary Chinese fiction and film, critiques of modernity and postmodernity, as well as visual and urban culture in the context of globalization. She is the recipient of 2011 Outstanding Teaching Award (OTA) at the University of Hong Kong.
Despite the author of Fruit Chan’s Made in Hong Kong (HKUP) and In Pursuit of Independent Visions in Hong Kong Cinema (in Chinese, Joint Publishing), she is also the editor and coeditor of FIVE anthologies which include The Visual Memories of Stanley Kwan (in Chinese, Joint Publishing), Hong Kong Literature as/and Cultural Studies (in Chinese, Oxford UP) Between Home and World: A Reader in Hong Kong Cinema (in English, Oxford UP), Hong Kong Screenscapes: From the New Wave to the Digital Edge (HKUP) and City at the End of Time: Poems by Leung Ping-kwan (HKUP). She is a regular contributor to a prose column on the Century Page of Mingpao Daily (明報). 《寫在窗框的詭話》(The Uncanny on the Frame, Infolink Publishing) is her most recent creative output. 3
Writing the body engenders an antibody. You might not agree with me. No kidding, every time I think about the body, I begin to ruminate on the antibody. Perhaps you do not do so and that’s fine. Perhaps you think that I am merely playing with words, or that I am trying to reiterate the familiar approach that what is is defined by what is not. Perhaps you start to recall the Cartesian philosophical exposition on the mind-body dichotomy; you can’t help but say, come on, gimme a break—isn’t this binary way of thinking too dated and unconvincing? You are absolutely right—writing the body is much more interesting than a critique of the mind-body binary opposition. It engenders an antibody. “An antibody, also known as an immunoglobulin, is a large Y-shaped protein produced by B cells that is used by the immune system to identify and neutralize foreign objects such as bacteria and viruses,” the Wikipedia says. Have you seen it before?
Source: http://mimetibody.com/ The Wikipedia continues to explain, “Using this binding mechanism, an antibody can tag a microbe or an infected cell for attack by other parts of the immune system, or can neutralize its target directly (for example, by blocking a part of a microbe that is essential for its invasion and survival). The production of antibodies is the main function of the humoral immune system.” I am not kidding—writing the body engenders an antibody. It empowers you. It makes you alive. It keeps your immune system work, both physically and metaphorically. 4
An antibody may not be an antidote but it engenders a lot of anecdotes. No doubt, an antibody is often produced as a critical response to gendered thinking. This is what I have observed in the history of Western intellectual history. As you know well, the rise of feminism in the twentieth century is an important phase where the body is re-theorized. From the early days of Second Wave Feminism to the end of the last century, the body has re-gained a secure place in Western ontology and metaphysics. Benefited from this development, the body is no longer just an abstraction or associated with textuality only; it must be understood as material and concrete as well as being able to engage with our day-to-day lived experiences. Indeed writing the body engenders an antibody which goes beyond gender issues. There are multiple bodies to write about and lots of antibodies to produce. Bodies marked by an infinite array of differences—age, sex, sexuality, race, ethnicity, class, nationality—allow us to reflect on the relationship between self and other, inside and outside, part and whole, human and non-human, physicality and emotionality, sense and sensibility as well as illness and health. As such, do you agree with me that the body is not a determinate given? If the universal body has disappeared, can we think of the body as both concrete and fluid, material and immaterial, open and grounded?
Photo by: iQoncept
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Leafing through the following pages in this bulletin, you will enjoy an amazing variety of critical and creative endeavors to write the body along this line of thinking. If writing the body engenders an antibody, in this bulletin, you will find many Y-shaped antibodies produced from within the inside of the body, as an affirmation of the fact that bodies really matter, echoing Judith Butler’s famous book Bodies that Matter (1993). You might also remember Allen Ginsberg's witty poem "Footnote to Howl" and smile with me: The world is holy! The soul is holy! The skin is holy! The nose is holy! The tongue and cock and hand and asshole holy! Everything is holy! everybody's holy! everywhere is holy! everyday is in eternity! Everyman's an angel! If the body is holy, ha ha, then the antibody must be holy too! Hope you’ll enjoy our bulletin. 15.10.2013.
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目盲。盲目 Dr. Esther M.K. Cheung
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熙來攘往的旺角鬧巿，人群肩摩踵接，其中必定有他要追蹤的嫌疑犯在游走。但與其人 云亦云的說城市乃罪惡溫床，黑暗之都，不如說城市乃目盲或盲目衆生之所在地。有人眼目 看不見，耳朵聰敏心眼澄明；也有人視力正常，卻盲目執著，在孽海裏痛苦掙扎。他屬於前 者，還是盲探，有許多特別任務，矯健地以導盲棒在人群中穿梭。他看不見人群，卻嗅得到 疑犯的汗水和體味，聽到他內心的獨白。就是這樣，盲探聽到嗅到感受到，不久就鎖定目標， 把拋擲通渠水的疑犯繩之於法，當然他必須與身手敏捷的女探員配合，才能成功，當然警方 一定事後大事吹噓他們的功勞，因為他們安裝了天眼云云。
這是杜琪峯和韋家輝新作《盲探》的開首，節奏明快，趣味盎然，既是電影的引子，亦 儼若其楔子。當女探員何家彤﹙鄭秀文飾﹚向盲探莊士敦﹙劉德華飾﹚說：「你就是神探莊士 敦，是我的偶像啊。」 ，你不是想起杜韋前作《神探》麼？既看見鄭秀文劉德華的絕配，你是 否不期然地聯想這懸疑偵探故事是否《孤男寡女》喜劇系列的延續？問對了，分析商業電影， 從類型明星卡士入手，總有啟示。 《盲探》是一個類型混雜的城巿故事，喜劇揉雜偵探懸疑； 但更叫人意外的，是杜韋二人把目盲盲目的主題融在查案和創作的框架內。
把偵探隱喻創作者已不是太陽下的新事，最早把這想法道出應是德國猶太裔文評家班雅 明 (Walter Benjamin)。他在一篇題為《漫遊者》(“The Flâneur”，1938) 的文章中提到，作家 有若偵探在罪惡的城市裏游走，他必須以雪亮的眼睛觀察各種瑣碎不堪的現象，像偵探那樣 閱讀城市，然後在重組細節的過程裏，把那不為人知的故事編織，捕捉那稍縱即逝的城巿光 影，並非純粹作紀錄片式的再現，乃是繪畫創作一幅創新的城市圖像。這浪蕩漫遊者，是偵 探亦是創作者，努力地「看」清楚變遷莫測的城市。眼目的觀看是漫遊者、偵探和創作者最 鋒利的武器，有人因此批評這想法把視覺的重要性放得太大。所以當「盲探」這形象出現時， 我不期然相信，故事一定衝著「視覺的霸權」這個大前題而來，也許我過度詮釋了。許久以 前看過一個盲探的電視片集，忘了叫什麼名字，情節通通也想不起，只記得他有一隻導盲犬。 電影《盲探》沒有導盲犬，只有女警何家彤，但她又不止扮演警犬的角色。她與盲探卻二為 一體，互相依頼，不但在查案的過程如是，在一起重組案情的時候，他們二人一起進入犯案 者或受害人的精神世界，只是二人的配合仍不免地跌入一些二元對立的限制裏。
盲探目盲，但嗅覺靈敏，想像力非法，而且極度饞嘴。看見他一面查案，一面大快朶頤， 由紅酒魚翅龍蝦壽司到麵包嗅腸牛雜，查案的過程簡直有無上快感，叫人不禁想跟他一起行 動吃喝。他縱使視障，身體有無限愉悅，不讓健視人專美。他腦袋智性的活動跟口福之慾好 像一樣活躍，所以若說傳統的二元想像把男人局限在理智的範疇裏，電影裏饞嘴的盲探好像 8
打破了這對立僵局，彷彿告訴我們生命的體驗是一個整體，視障人的世界雖有缺欠，但其他 感官有豐富的層次，而且那些感官享受又有時引導盲探偵破案件，例如他從廚子下鹽的份量 意「味」到他內心世界的變化。至於女警何家彤就純粹透過身體感官協助查案，比導盲犬多 了一些工作要做。當她要進入受害者的內心世界時，她必須自殘嚎哭以致疲憊不堪來體驗， 而且她總是遵從盲探的吩咐行事，她的身體感官的體驗似乎比腦袋智性的活動多，盲探若沒 有她，早就死在黑夜的樹林裏，給瘋狂的的士司機擘死。這新的拯救者，不是女俠，又不是 忠心耿耿的導盲犬，卻是帶有幾分神經質的痴心女僕。盲探與女警，一男一女、一主一僕、 導演演員、偶像粉絲，與黑格爾 (Hegel) 著名的辯証哲學遙遙呼應，主人和奴僕，一個願打一 個願捱，虐待的和被虐的互為依賴、生存，因此電影裏盲探的助手，一定不可以是導盲犬， 而且一定要愛上盲探。
這個奇怪的組合，企圖讓人類各個疏離已久的感官連接起來，看起來用心良苦，實際上 卻有不少叫人不安的地方。盲探看不見，必須倚仗女警的眼目和身手，但他的體驗卻只限於 近乎縱慾的口福之樂，身體的痛苦還是由女警嚐受。女警既無法想通多年好友小敏失蹤的迷 思，必須由盲探引路，他曾因聽到一句葡文認出小敏是誰。他們二人既是偵探又是創作者， 一起合作在查案的過程編寫故事，是一個個關於執迷和盲目的故事，例如拋擲通渠水的胖子， 油炸負心漢的女子，肢解傷心女子的瘋子等等。作為創作者，盲探還是喜歡喜劇的，所以電 影結局在他而言是快樂的，開放的，他必須這般一廂情願的書寫。最後他和女警成功地拯救 一個小生命，然後結為夫婦，並領養了小孩，縱使小孩的血液裏有執迷盲目的基因。
這麼看來，電影裏的盲探和視障世界只是一個手段，為了與盲目角色的執迷作鮮明對照， 像許多觀衆所說，以期達到「目盲心不盲」的美好想像，我們因此也可以把電影放置在銀河 映像那探討宿命的主題脈絡裏，與前作《大隻佬》等電影呼應，這著實無傷大雅。事實上， 觀賞此片，可以因其喜劇效果和與韋家輝前作《再生號》對照有許多層次的思考。但是，我 們不得不承認，「目盲心不盲」這美好想像仍是形而上的，抽象得很的，當然十分政治正確， 健視人和視障者都不會反對，可是我們明白了多少視障者的體驗呢？我無意在此說電影有什 麼道德責任解決視障人的困難，只是在看電影時，深知道縱使抽象的形而上思考能解放人心， 但視障者常面對的障礙，是如此具體，並不是劉鄭的喜劇配搭可以輕易浪漫化的。最近中文 大學翻譯系取錄了以唇讀求學的曾芷君，看見她親吻書本很感動，但不禁想到大學要配合支 持芷君的設施很多，長路漫漫；芷君要面對的困難更多，我們除了說勵志的語言外，還懂做 什麼？
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還想起了年青視障作者盧勁馳和他的作品《後遺》(2009)，這集子副題為《給健視人仕。 看不見的城市照相簿》 ，此書是他與健視主流世界重建溝通的嘗試，曾獲新鴻基和三聯頒發書 獎。他的自序中有幾句叫我揪心的說話：「我不屬於你頼以為生的視象世界……於是我只可一 直信頼著你，依據著你所用的語言……」就是因著這些隔閡，他結集了自己的文字，重拾失 去的語言。他說： 「把一個已經被這個城巿遺忘了的秘密，偷偷的告訴你……就是生活在這樣 一個城市裏，作為一個視障人仕的我，失去一切跟你交流的語言，失去了記憶，以及失去與 你之間的友誼的整個過程。」盧勁馳的詩句就在這股動力下沉澱凝聚，冀望與健視者相認重 遇，嘗試遠離他人和自己的偏見，遠離真正的殘疾。勁馳曾是我的學生，至今仍忘不了他如 何在勵志語言無法描述的困境裏不斷閱讀和書寫，我們在旁卻因束手無策而感到不足和羞愧。 原來心靈的盲目和身體的目盲都是如此真實的障礙，有誰可以一夜之間消除？《盲探》只是 一趟對此無障礙國度的浪漫想像而矣。
載於明報世紀版 2013 年 8 月 7 日﹙星期三﹚
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《一個身體》之 《耳》 周耀輝
周耀輝，畢業於香港大學英國語文及比較文學系，其後參與多種媒 體工作。1989 年發表第一首詞作，書寫歌詞及其他文字創作至今， 出版約一千首詞作，以及文集《突然十年便過去》丶《7749》丶《假 如我們甚麼都不怕》。 1992 年移居荷蘭。2011 年獲阿姆斯特丹大學 傳媒學院博士學位，回港任職浸會大學人文及創作系助理教授。近 年亦參與舞台及視覺藝術創作。
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圖：林淼
最近，常常聽到有人呼喚我。
每天晚上，當我兒子來我臥房替我關燈的時候，啪，我便聽到了我的名字。
我跟兒子說，有人呼喚我，好像是你爸爸。兒子說怎會呢，爸爸不在了，一定是你年紀 大，耳朵不靈。
不是啊，明明有人喊我的名字啊。我越是堅持，兒子似乎越是不安，他一定以為我的病 又重了。後來，我就不再跟他說了。
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其實，也無所謂。反正，聽到人家聽不到的，或者人家不想你聽到的，很平常，只要不 說出來，就可以如常，但假如忍不住說出來了，人家擔心你啊，或者乾脆認為你瘋了。
我很習慣不說。
曾幾何時，聽到人家聽不到的，或者人家不想你聽到的，是先知。
聽，覺。
人耳只能聽到震動頻率在 20-20000 赫茲以內的聲波，超過的，狗才聽得到，至於低過的， 蝸牛，靠肚子覺得到。
蝸牛。我記得，昨天，不，應該是上個月了，我去醫院做聽覺檢查，看到一張耳朵的解 剖圖，內耳多像蝸牛。
當晚就發了一個夢，夢到一隻蝸牛從我耳朵爬出來，慢慢的，慢慢的，起初，耳旁的髮 絲是黑的，後來是白的，然後，蝸牛爬過而留下的濕濕的粘粘的痕跡，原來寫著一個個的秘 密，都是我聽過並且答應保守的秘密。
連自己都忘了。
原來我的耳朵收藏了很多不可告人的東西。
怪不得，我們都把注意放在耳珠上，最好看不到耳洞。
怪不得我們戴耳環。多離奇的習慣啊，刺穿來改造身體，並且集中在微小的耳珠上。我 多久沒戴耳環了，自從病了之後。但人類可是很早很早以前已經戴耳環了。
那次，我們遊博物館，展品之一是波斯帝國遺跡裡的士兵浮雕，他們都戴耳環。
會不會是為了辟邪？我問他。有可能啊，他說，耳朵從來都是保護我們的器官，不是嗎， 即使睡著，一樣張開，萬一有什麼走近，聽到了，感覺危險了，也就醒了。 13
假如睡著之後什麼都聽不到，多可怕，我說。別怕，他說，我會守在你身旁直至天亮你 的眼睛再張開。
那時，我們多年少，多輕狂。
然後，我問他，為什麼結婚是用指環的？我覺得耳環更好啊，假如承諾必須說出來和聽 進去，信物不該貼近耳朵嗎？手指，離開自己太遠了。
而且，誰說的，男人用眼睛來愛情，女人用耳朵。
後來， 我們結婚，還是按慣例互送指環，但他還多送我一雙耳環，左右各垂著一串碎水 晶。每次戴的時候，總聽到水晶碰撞的清脆。
我的耳朵，究竟聽過多少美好的聲音。
小時候，我們只有收音機，做廣播劇了，聽著門打開的聲音，杯放上碟的聲音，紙搓成 團的聲音，很專注，會想像，世界似乎更寬廣了。
年紀越大，越多聽到的，現在想起來，竟然是，嘟。地鐵車門快要關上，提款機按 0123456789， 收銀員素描貨品的條碼。嘟。
嘟嘟嘟嘟嘟嘟嘟。
一生人，其中記得最清楚的聲音，是我做服務員，捧著一盤剛清潔完的酒杯，不小心， 盆掉下來，幾十隻酒杯落地開花，叮叮噹噹劈劈啪啪，不和諧卻出奇地不吵耳，有那麼一刹 那，我完全不管對錯好壞不管前因後果，我甚至忘記了自己，任由聲音支配著。
這樣的經驗，我很想卻無法用話語向人表達，甚至我最愛的他。我只能向他說：我沒有 太多機會讓耳朵成為我的心。
我甚至沒有機會認真的看過自己的耳朵。 他的，我肯定看過，可是現在他不在了，我可以輕易想起他的眼，眉，鼻，嘴，臉，但 14
他的耳朵，想啊想啊總想不起來。我試過找來所有他的照片，才發現我們多愛拍人的正臉。
我們都虧欠了耳朵。
聽過一句話：人有兩隻耳朵一把嘴，聽進去的肯定比說出來的多一倍。這句話的是勸我 們多聽嗎？但我因此覺得，耳朵，很累啊。
他在博物館裡解釋耳朵的保護作用時，也告訴我，你知道嗎，耳朵是人體裡最先發育的， 也是人體裡最後失靈的，就是為了保護我們。
從起初到最後，還在聽，多累。會不會是這樣，因為累，後來就索性不想聽。
他來呼喚我了，大概，很快可以安靜。
假如在我靈魂開始離開肉體的時候，耳朵還聽著，我希望聽到什麼？我愛的人說，我愛 你；分散了的人說，我想念你；還有還有，那個一直負我的人終於對我說，我錯了。
但，其實，我什麼都不想聽。
在我彌留的時候，我多想耳朵變成心。可否有人再吻我的耳朵？ 上次，已經是多久以前。
我懷疑每只耳朵都渴望被舌尖觸碰，潛入，與充滿，於是一直開著，開著，開著。最終， 聽進了什麼話語和聲音。
2012 年 10 月。香港
載於電子雜誌《一個》
15
Undisciplining Porn Studies Prof. Katrien JACOBS
Katrien Jacobs received a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature and Media from the University of Maryland at College Park. Her dissertation about 1960s/1970s performance art offers a unique blend of theoretical essays and video documentaries. She has continued to work as a scholar and media artist who investigates the role of digital networks in people’s experiences with the body, art, and sexuality.
She has lectured and published widely about pornography, censorship and media activism in Hong Kong and global media environments. She is also working on long-term research projects in visual anthropology that detail the impact of Japanese animation on Southeast Asian youth cultures and social networks. She is the author of three books about Internet culture, art and sexuality. Her first book Libi_doc: Journeys in the Performance of Sex Art (Ljubljana: Maska, 2005) is a travelogue and performative narration that details encounters with culturally diverse media artists. Her second book Netporn: DIY Web Culture and Sexual Politics (Rowman and Littlefield, 2007) received critical claims amongst media scholars as a pioneering study of emerging web cultures that challenge government regulations and the aims of corporate expansionism. Her most recent book People’s Pornography: Sex and Surveillance on the Chinese Internet (Intellect Books, 2011) investigates mainland China’s immersion in new trends in sexual entertainment and DIY media. Her work can be found on www.libidot.org/blog. 16
Pornography can be defined as a variety of sexually explicit media and art forms, while Porn Studies is the study of the representation of sexuality and sex acts within different media regimes. I state this from the outset since people who are hostile to, or unfamiliar with, pornography narrowly define it as a money-driven and male-oriented entertainment industry that produces highly clichéd imagery and nothing that might be classified as “aesthetically elevated’. Pornography studies, or the more colloquial term “Porn Studies”, is an interdisciplinary academic project, a sub-field of several disciplines within arts and humanities, as well as the social sciences and health sciences. Many of these disciplines have only slowly and reluctantly accepted the study of pornography. In some cases they have actively prevented it from becoming a field of inquiry. But now the tumultuous field has matured and expanded and the international academic publisher Routledge has launched a journal with the title, Porn Studies, which makes this a good point in time a good time to reflect on its mission. 1 So far Porn Studies has not had the chance to become a field of study that can be taken for granted. Immediately after the announcement of the launch of the journal listed above, a large petition, under the title “Routledge Pro-Porn studies bias,” was signed by hundreds of Americans, a fair amount of whom are academics, who attacked the journal and its international editorial board for pursuing an unbalanced and morally corrupted mission.2 As the petitioners against the journal Porn Studies stated: … we ask that you change the name to reflect and make evident the bias of its editors (Pro-Porn Studies) and create another journal which will represent the position of anti-porn scholars and activists and the voices of mental health professionals, porn industry survivors, and feminist scholars whose analyses examine the replication and reification of misogyny, child abuse, and sexual exploitation in mainstream pornography. The petition was actually initiated by a campaigning group “Stop Porn Culture,” who refer to themselves as "a group of academics, activists, anti-violence experts, health 1
An overview of the recent controversies about Porn Studies was reported in the Guardian on June 16, 2013 http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2013/jun/16/journal-editors-attacked-promoting-porn. The author of this column is on the editorial board of Porn Studies. 2 The petition can be found at http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/porn_studies_bias/signatures. 17
professionals, and educators". Some of these academics (for instance a Comparative Literature professor whose affiliation I have deleted here) are more down-to-earth about their opposition to the subject matter: At a time when the humanities are endangered at many institutions, I can't imagine a more self-destructive development than a "pro-porn" academic journal. It hands a supremely useful gift to the opponents of liberal education. Porn makes sexual experience unreal, and destroys the capacity of men and women to form meaningful and lasting relationships. It is curious that a still emerging academic field is receiving so much uncritical and unoriginal attention, the kind of response that might be ironically categorized as “biased”, but this type of outright ideological opposition to the study of pornography is indeed part and parcel of its historical mission. Of course, for those of you who have read any of the porn research will understand, the field does not necessarily aim to promote a pro-porn bias, just as academic studies concerning violent media programs or low brow culture are not concerned with promoting these products. Porn Studies actually confronts and dissects a vilified subject matter, by inviting quality scholarship and following newly negotiated standards of research. The ongoing opposition to Porn Studies is based, to a great degree, on historically contentious claims about the all encompassing negative effect of pornography. But rather than thinking that we can smoothly start incorporating Porn Studies into mainstream academia and its overly disciplined academic standards of productivity, which are also still firmly rooted in attitudes of sexual ridicule and denial, I propose that the field needs to be undisciplined. Porn Studies needs to become a discipline which can be refreshing by exactly accepting perspectives that might be called perverse, in the sense that they can possibly disrupt engrained academic research practices. It could engage the discourse not through the continuation of hate wars against left-leaning or right-leaning researchers, commentators and ideologues, but by radically and playfully opening up methods of perception and communication. Liberal arts disciplines in general have become more aware of the fact that their fields of study have excluded or normalized minority or outlawed experiences of sexuality and ethnicity. A call for perversity, as in the Duke University Press book series “Perverse Modernities” has included critical introspection by thinking about “disciplinary infidelities” or how new methods of studying sexuality and perversity will further question research outcomes and “break up” 18
the making of knowledge. 3 Porn studies can and will take leadership in this self-reflective mission. Its politically tarnished “raunchy” subject matter is indeed affecting society at large and cannot be insulated from wider changes in education, culture and technology. Here is our opportunity to openly discuss the body/mind and its media immersion (rather than regurgitate horrified scenarios) and to question the dense and sometimes alienating languages of academic expression and evaluation. Porn Studies offers the possibility for a new academic framework that reconsiders the body in order to refocus the current volatile discourses centered around deep-rooted moral and ethical conflicts. To this end, I also believe that Porn studies needs to include work by non-academics or public intellectuals—artists, writers, pornographers, journalists, bloggers, indie filmmakers, erotica experts – all who have equally contributed to the diverse aspects of sexual representation. The academic body generally suffers from lethargy and exhaustion in its drive towards mental over-productivity and quantifiable research outputs within an ever-increasing corporatized institutional framework. The sexual body of Porn Studies might be able to foster a critical reconsideration of these conditions. At this moment, the subject does not sit well within the history of academic knowledge production, which has a tendency to reduce the analysis of sexual pleasure to highly disembodied modes of analysis and writing. Moreover, like the minority-body, the sexual body has suffered from academic stigmatization and mass media stereotyping. In undisciplining Porn Studies, we might innovate on how to fund-raise for novel types of symposiums, research gatherings and festivals about the sexual body, distributing knowledge and surviving as mainstream and sub-stream universities, or even underground ones, networks that can feed the discipline but also maintain an integral autonomy from corporate academia. But undisciplining Porn Studies is not an easy proposition. The history of radical sex research shows that by analyzing sexuality in tandem with producing an implied critique of the limits of academia can be quite precarious for the dedicated researcher. Think for instance about the work of Professor Alfred Kinsey in the 1960s, who proposed that to better observe sexual intercourse between individuals, one needed to film actual sex acts. He established a research team for this purpose, but was
3
For an overview of this book series, go to http://www.dukeupress.edu/Catalog/ProductList.php?viewby=series&id=39&pagenum=all&sort=newest. 19
immediately accused of being a morally corrupted individual, seeking sexual pleasure and pornography instead of excellence in health science. Due to this mode of attack he lost a huge amount of his funding. Kinsey’s method was valid, but the idea that an individual researcher or a collective academic entity could show a deep or serious interest in observing this intimate subject matter, has more often than not, led to serious consequences for the concerned scholars — from institutional stigmas to persistent attacks by conservative organizations and indignant individuals. As exemplified by the words of the Professor in Comparative Literature cited above (a signer of the anti-porn studies petition), pornography is believed to inherently lead to moral corruption and to mentally damage its users, especially the more vulnerable groups, such as young adults who are now deeply immersed in social media and netporn consumption. But indeed young adults in Hong Kong (and around the world) are rarely invited to share and discuss their experiences of effects or outcomes of pornography within the public spaces of education. Rather than thinking that we can offer our youth Porn Studies within the boundaries of academic thought, I believe that we need to make efforts to build wider cross-disciplinary and undisciplinary platforms to stimulate and develop this field. In 2011 I received a Direct Grant from the Chinese University of Hong Kong to set up a research project around women and the use of pornography in Hong Kong, Japan, and the USA. The project has archived a wide range of individual reactions to various types of pornography, which were screened and discussed with small-groups of women. The logistics of finding hosts and public spaces has been complex, but I have managed to set up porn screenings in several universities, as well as in sex shops and art galleries and LGBT community spaces who were all equally interested in the questions at hand, for instance -- How do young adults actually identify with porn culture and find (dis)pleasure in the aesthetics porn genres and porn scenes? As stated before, in some cases the project had to leave behind the notion of the “educational public space” altogether as we gathered in private spaces or motel rooms to watch and discuss the movies with various pornographic content. In one sense, the use of smaller screens and tablet devices rather than larger projections within a public space worked better for people, making them feel more comfortable and able to take a thoughtful distance from the oftentimes crude imagery. One can set up a research environment that immediately challenges the persistent media-induced fear of “primordial” porn culture; the idea that pornography would have 20
the power to subjugate audiences to predetermined “damaged” or “simplistic” subjectivities. While it is often believed that women are damaged by the sexist imagery of pornography, or by their male partners who have fallen prone to porn addiction, it is also often stated that porn also negatively affects male users. In order to find out how men actually react to pornography, Florian Voros has initiated a porn study based on ethnographic interviews with French adult male porn users. He found that men do not get “subjugated” by these images as they “re-activate” them by downloading, archiving and commenting on them, and also through bodily their own active viewing techniques such as nipple-touching and breast stroking. In this way, Voros believes, pornography and its sexual scenarios are “domesticated” amidst every day thoughts and experiences. In my own project, which focuses on porn viewing in a public space, I also found that women were quite unperturbed by most of the selected videos. Overall the participants were quite relaxed and talkative. They enjoyed looking at some scenes while tuning out others (to, for instance, check their Facebook). They also openly directed their reactions of lust and disgust at some of the selected scenes and thus created a sense of vibrancy and good humor during these sessions. In her book The Queer Art of Failure (2011) Jack Halberstam argues that new languages of social dissent and sexual change are interconnected as “climates” or “eco-systems” that transcend cultural boundaries. For Halberstam this type of ecology involves a breaking down of normative mechanisms of success, cultural growth and economic prosperity: Heteronormative common sense leads to the equation of success with advancement, capital accumulation, family, ethical conduct, and hope. Other subordinate, queer, or counter-hegemonic modes of common sense lead to the association of failure with nonconformity, anticapitalist practices, nonreproductive life-styles, negativity and critique. (Halberstam, 2011, 89) In research projects that focus on male and female porn viewing, we are finding that people are developing unprecedented “porno-attitudes.” They are seeking out sexually explicit media to belong to a climate of uplifting bodily aesthetics, cognitive awareness and intimacy. The art of failure is a way of renovating networks of culture and knowledge within neo-liberal societies. In developing attitudes of failure and difference, people also 21
reinvent artistic or cultural genres of vitality, while questioning their daily responsibilities and the pressures of work and leisure. Porn as a downloaded, pirated and peer-to-peer product par excellence is most aptly shared amongst male and female Hong Kong students, many of whom have amassed collections and sexual knowledge as young adults before entering a university classroom. Porn Studies could be easily moved out of academia altogether, hence we need to rethink (and loosen up) the aims and methods of academia alongside evolving media technologies, and be prepared to defend Porn Studies as an “undead� field of knowledge. Please welcome Porn Studies to academia. I am afraid that we, those scholars who are deeply involved in this subject, will not be able to do this without your support.
22
Bibliography Halberstam, Jack (2011), The Queer Art of Failure (Durham: Duke University Press) Voros, Florian (2013) Forthcoming, “Domesticated porn: Gendered Embodiment in Audience Reception Practices of Pornography. In E. Biasin, G. Maina and F. Zecca, Porn after Porn: Contemporary Alternative Pornographies, Mimemis Italy, 2013
23
What Do Contemporary Feminist Theories Tell About Body? Prof. Eva Man
Prof. Eva Man is the Head and professor of the Department of Humanities and Creative Writing of the Hong Kong Baptist University. Her research and
publication
areas
include
comparative
aesthetics,
comparative philosophy, woman studies, feminist philosophy, cultural studies, gender studies, and art and culture. Prof. Man has a column on local newspapers and is currently hosting a cultural radio programme for RTHK. In 2003-04, she got the Fulbright Hong Kong Scholar Program Fellowship to do research at the University of California, Berkeley. In 2009, she was named AMUW Woman Chair Professor of the 100th Anniversary of Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA.
24
Contemporary Feminist Reading of the "Ontological" Body Most recently, feminist philosophers and biologists have been trying to destabilize the notion of "biological sex". Judith Butler’s famous argument is that the body positioned as prior to the sign is always "posited" or "signified" as "prior" and "precedes" its own action. If this is so, then there should not be a mimetic or representational status of language or signs that follow bodies--as the body is only signified as prior to signification.1 The positing process also constitutes and conditions the "materiality" of the body. She states that what enables this positing is a problematic gendered matrix that ontologizes and fixes the "irreducible" materiality into a bunch of taken-for-granted discourses on sex and sexuality.2 We can sketch at least a few ways in which these discourses are conducted. First, as Irigaray argues, in as much as a distinction between form and matter is offered within phallogocentrism, there is an exclusion of the "female". Within the masculine-female (form-matter) binary, the masculine in fact occupies both poles, and the female is not an intelligible term. Irigaray further argues that the "female" is articulated through a further materiality acting as the impossible necessity that enables any ontology. 3 Second, aside from philosophy, the binding, forming, and deforming of gendered bodies through social prohibitions and the so-called cultural intelligibility criteria of sex also constitute and regulate the fields of bodies. According to Moira Gatens, the body politic uses the human body as its image, model, or metaphor. The body politic uses one type of body (male) to signify various items: diverse bodies; the opposition of the "self" to others; and many forms of oppressive ideologies. Now all human bodies are part of these systems of exchange, identification, and mimesis. 4 In addition, medical discourses have so far maintained the hegemony of heteropolarity by mapping differences onto bodies that illustrate gender, thereby eliding Foucault's suggestion of sociopolitical construction of bodies under particular kinds of needs and desires.5 . Gatens concludes that the recent question is: how does culture construct the body so that it is understood as a biological given? 6 The history of the representation of 1
Judith Butler, Bodies That Matter, (N.Y. & London: Routledge, 1993), 30. Ibid., 29. 3 Ibid., 39. 4 Moira Gatens, Imaginary Bodies: Ethics, Power and Corporeality (London & N.Y.: Routledge, 1996), 21-35. 5 Jane Arthurs and Jean Grimshaw (ed.) Women's Bodies: Discipline and Transgression (London & N.Y.: Cassell, 1999), 59. 6 Ibid., 52. 2
25
anatomical differences between man and woman is independent of the actual structure of organs or of what was known about them. Ideologies determined how bodies were seen and which differences would matter.7 Therefore, a re-evaluation of the importance of the body is conducted in wider arenas, and not merely within feminist social theory, but in terms of the analysis of class, culture, and consumption. Cultural Construction of Female Bodily Existence How does the above increase our understanding of how the female body is constructed? The return to biological essentialism is strongly contested, since "physical experiences" do not make someone a woman, but rather the specific social regulatory ideals by which female bodies are trained and formed. We can at least include in our consideration the categories of economy, politics, heterosexuality, philosophy, and subject and object relations. Economically, Judith Butler points out, the female must be the subordinate term in a binary opposition of masculine-female for that economy to operate.8 Politically, women are constructed as incapable of performing military service and therefore incapable of defending the political body from attack. This is sufficient to exclude them from active citizenship. The neutral body assumed by the liberal state is implicitly a masculine body.9 The worse social operation is to treat a woman's speech and her behavior as hysterical (rooted in the Greek word hystera, meaning uterus), thereby confining women to the biological. Philosophically, Moira Gatens argues that traditional philosophical conceptions of corporeality are counterproductive to the attempt to construct an autonomous conception of women's bodies. In our culture, every woman is normatively defined as the opposite and complement of man.10 It is interesting to read the philosophical metaphors of woman's body proposed by contemporary philosophers. Iris Young has summarized Simon de Beauvoir's account of woman's existence in the world as a tension between immanence and transcendence.11 Influenced by Merleau-Ponty's account of the "normal" relationship between human bodies and their environment in actions, Young states that bodily action in the world is commonly distinguished by three features: "ambiguous transcendence", "inhibited 7
Thomas Laqueur, Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press ), 88. 8 Butler, 36. 9 C. Pateman, The Sexual Contract, (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1988), ch.4. 10 Gatens, 25, 37, 49. 11 Iris Young, Throwing Like a Girl: And Other Essays in Feminist Philosophy and Social Theory. (Indianapolis: Indiana University Press,1990), 143-148. 26
intentionality", and "discontinuous unity". Young suggests that women often "live" their bodies in "ambiguous transcendence": transcendence in the sense that the lived body continuously calls forth capacities applied to the world that women used to refrain from. Female bodily existence is an "inhibited intentionality" that simultaneously reaches toward a projected end with an "I can" and withholds its full bodily commitment to that end in a self-imposed "I cannot". "Discontinuous unity" is inspired by Merleau-Ponty's suggestion that in the enactment of intentions, the body is not an object in itself, but for women, there is a sense that the body is indeed a "subject" as well as an "object." The female body is the object of the gaze of others and an object frequently experienced as limited and limiting. Young said it is important to recognize the specific and historically changing forms of restrictions that have been placed on women's movement, including such things as restrictive clothing and constricting conventions about female deportment and demeanor. She said that these modalities do not remain constant but are culturally variable, subject to changing circumstances and lifestyle. These restrictions have even acted as a guide to (and prescription for) women's mental health, and the very pursuit of the physical standards imposed may actually cause depression, low self-esteem, eating disorders and, generally, poor mental health.12 Traditional Western Philosophies Re-examined We are interested in the traditional philosophical conceptions of corporeality that Gatens has cited. Feminist scholars usually begin with Plato, who proposed the dualisms of form-matter, mind-body, and asserted that the body interferes with, and is a danger to, the operations of reason. He claimed that the word body (soma) was introduced by Orphic priests, who believed that man is a spiritual or non-corporeal being trapped in the body, the soma. His discourse on the "hypodoche" is considered as one on materiality, that when nature receives form as a sensible object, "her" proper function is to receive, take, accept, welcome, include, and even comprehend. "She" has no proper shape and is not a body. The receptacle principle, which applies universally, is then associated with the female, which is constructed as a non-thematizable materiality, but which never resembles either the formative principle or what it creates. Hence, as the receptacle, the female is a nonliving, shapeless nonthing, which cannot even be named, leading to the prohibition of the female body as a human form.13
12
Liz Frost, "Doing Looks: Women, Appearance and Mental Health" in Jane Arthurs & Jean Grimshaw
(ed.), Women's Bodies: Discipline and Transgression, (London and New York: Cassell, 1999), 119. 13 Butler, 40-53. 27
The consequent social implications to both women and corporeality are thus often negative, and function conceptually to undergird culturally valued terms such as reason, civilization, and progress. In Gatens's analysis, many philosophers have seen the soul or mind as sexually neutral, and the apparent differences among minds are generally seen to be due to the influence of the passions of the body. This element of sensuous and passionate corporeality enables philosophers to maintain the essential neutrality of the mind while allowing for individual and sexual differences. The most superior minds are said to suffer least from the intrusions of the body.14 Gatens further points out that this dualist notion of the body involves an implicit alignment between women and irrationality. The ideal conception of the rational is, in other words, articulated in direct opposition to qualities typical of the female.15 RenĂŠ Descartes is another philosopher many feminists are critical of. The way he distinguishes two kinds of substances, a thinking substance (res cogitans, mind) from an extended substance (res extensa, body), and the way that he believes that the latter is governed by its physical laws and ontological exigencies, while the mind has no place in the natural world, have placed the mind in a position of hierarchical superiority over and above nature, including the nature of the body. The critical questions of feminists about so-called Cartesianism include: how can something that inhabits space affect or be affected by something that is non-spatial? How can consciousness ensure the body's movements, its receptivity to conceptual demands and requirements? How can the body inform the mind of its needs and wishes? How is bilateral communication possible?16 Cartesianism is also criticized as a form of reductionism, denying any interaction between mind and body, instead focusing on the actions of either one of the binary terms at the expense of the other. Feminist scholars can identify at least three lines of investigation of the body in contemporary thought that may be regarded as legacies of the Cartesian view, which treat the body as primarily an object for: (a) the natural sciences, particularly for the life sciences, biology, and medicine; (b) as an instrument or a machine at the disposal of consciousness or allocating an animating, willful subjectivity; and (c) as a vehicle of expression of private thoughts and feelings; that is, as fundamentally passive and
14
Gatens, 49-50. See G. Lloyd, The Man of Reason, (London: Methuen, 1984). 16 Elizabeth Grosz, Volatile Bodies: Toward a Corporeal Feminism, (Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1994), 6-7. 15
28
transparent. 17 Another consequence of Cartesian dualism is that the male-female opposition has been closely allied with that of the mind-body. The conventional reading is that the mind is equivalent to the masculine, and body to the feminine, excluding women as possible subjects of knowledge. By implication then, women's bodies are presumed to be incapable of men's achievements, but being weaker, more prone to (hormonal) irregularities, intrusions, and unpredictabilities.18 Towards An Open-Ended Ontology Recently, feminist scholars are seriously thinking of a new conceptual model that can displace Cartesian dualism and that can emancipate notions of the body from Cartesian dominant mechanistic models and metaphors. In this light, we review traditional and contemporary alternatives. Some suggest as an alternative the writings of Baruch Spinoza, whose monism is a revision of Cartesian dualism. In Spinoza, there is a multivalent ontology that has been neglected in Anglo-American philosophy.19 For Spinoza, matter and mind emerge from one underlying process - or substantia - that is materially grounded in extension but is also absolute and infinite, and at the same time has mental attributes. Mind and body emerge from--and belong to-- the same substance. One reading of Spinoza's monism is that the body is not part of passive nature ruled by an active mind but rather that the body is the inseparable terrain of human action. In contrast to the philosophical traditions mentioned, the mind is constituted by the affirmation of the actual existence of the body, which enables the activity of reason. Activity should be understood as one's participation in one's situation that, instead of being dominated by the mind, depends on the body's character, manner, and context. Feminists recognize Spinoza's account of the body as a process. The body's meaning and capabilities will vary according to its context, and its limits and possibilities can be revealed only by its ongoing interactions with its environment.20 As Gatens suggests, the implication of Spinoza's model is that - in contrast to the essentialist position - its nonmechanical and nondichotomized view of nature and culture could acknowledge the cultural and historical specificity of bodies. What Spinoza 17 18 19 20
Grosz, 8. Ibid., 14. Gatens, 55. Ibid., 57. 29
contributes to feminist politics is that sexual difference does not necessarily mean gender difference; gender differences (behavioral and affective) are different patterns of relationality in a nature that is transformative and constituted by modes of power relations. The role of mother or wife thus refers to a historically specific body that recreates itself in a reduced sphere of activity and social conditions.21 Besides Spinoza, feminists also turn to the phenomenological reflection on the body, especially to the idea that a subject is not separated from the world or the mind from body, matter, and space. Merleau-Ponty's theory of body is their favorite: the subject is a "being-to-the-world". Merleau-Ponty begins with a fundamental presumption different from Cartesian dualism of mind and body: the two are necessarily interrelated, and that consciousness and nature are related, as are interiority and exteriority. The body and the modes of sensual perception that occur through it, affirm the necessary connections of consciousness because it is incarnated and always grounded on corporeal and sensory relations. Feminist scholars recognize in Merleau-Ponty that the body is both object for others and a lived reality for the subject. At the same time it is "sense-bestowing" and "form-giving", providing structure, organization and ground within which objects are to be situated, against which the body-subject is positioned and by which meaning is generated. Thus, the primary origins of human action reside not in thought but in movement and motility. The inspiring notion is that consciousness is in the first place not a matter of "thinking" but rather of capability. The most fundamental and essential ability is the fact that body inhabits space and that the objects in it and the possible movements of the body are integrated in an overall orientation toward action in the world. According to Merleau-Ponty, the life of consciousness is subvented by an "intentional arc" based on the body as a nexus of lived and related meanings. He concluded by giving an ontological priority to certain kinds of immediate bodily movements and actions. This attracts feminist politics as a meaningful alternative to Cartesian dualism. In sum, the body has remained a conceptual blind spot in both mainstream Western philosophical thought and contemporary feminist theories. To summarize our discussion, the human subject has long been regarded as composed by several related binaries: mind and body, sense and sensibility, outside and inside, self and other, depth and surface, reality and appearance, mechanism and vitalism, transcendence and immanence, temporality and spatiality, psychology and physiology, form and matter and so on. This 21
Ibid., 57. 30
binary thinking hierarchizes and ranks two polarized terms so that one becomes privileged, and the other is suppressed, subordinated, and negated. The body is typically regarded as passive and reproductive but largely unproductive. The situation is more complicated when the body is associated with the "female". It has even been proposed that it is in the West and in our time that the female body has been constructed not only as a lack or absence, but as a formlessness that engulfs all form, a disorder that threatens all order.22 Though there are claims that what needs to be changed are attitudes, beliefs, and values rather than the body itself, Elizabeth Grosz points out that culture itself can only assume meaning and value in terms of its own other(s).23 This explains why there is a refusal to transgress the mind-body binary by proposing its substitution by monism or by a non-contradictory and non-hierarchized relation between the binarized terms. It is not clear whether the holistic or monistic positions suggested can really resolve the mind-body problem. Grosz has concisely summarized the feminist questions, which include: by which techniques and presumptions is a non-binary understanding of the body possible? What, ideally, could a feminist philosophy of the body avoid, and what must it take into consideration? Which criteria and goals should govern a feminist theoretical approach to concepts of the body? The answers would certainly avoid the division of the subject into mutually exclusive categories of mind and body. But what is more interesting, as Grosz suggests, is to remain suspicious of the holism and unity implied by monism. Since the notion of corporeality and the ways in which materiality can be thought are still under the constraints of our culture, new concepts of corporeality that go beyond the regime of dualism should be developed. The new notions from her recent reflections are those that view human materiality as continuous with organic and inorganic matter, where physical and linguistic materialities interact and make possible a materialism beyond a mechanical physicalism, and that then will reorient physics itself.24 This new model must show some sort of internal or constitutive articulation, or even disarticulation, between the biological and the psychological, the inside and the outside of the body, while avoiding a reductionism of mind to brain.25 Merleau-Ponty's notion of the flesh is thus regarded as inspiring, acting as the elementary, precommunicative ontological domain out of which both subject and object mutually interact and develop. Finally, the new conceptual categories should also 22 23 24 25
Ibid., 203. Ibid., 21. Ibid, 22. Ibid, 23. 31
comprehend differences. When applied to cultural impositions, these categories should represent and comprehend bodies as a multiple field of possible body "types", young and old, black and white, male and female, animal and human, inanimate and animate; no one of which (pace, the male) would stand in for or represent the others. To conclude, we must emphasize that there are alternative ontologies and modes of metaphysics, though these may not have been stressed in the history of the West, but as Christine Battersby suggests, would be more useful for rethinking female identities.26
26
Christine Battersby, The Phenomenal Woman: Feminist Metaphysics and the Patterns of Identity,
(Cambridge: Polity Press, 1988), 102. 32
想像他人之痛 鄧正健
香港中文大學文化研究博士研究生。
33
一
聽說自焚是最痛苦的自殺方式，但到底有多痛苦，我不知道，至少我是沒有能力想像得 到的。應該是一種正義感作祟吧，近幾年每次聽到有西藏人自焚的消息，我都格外關心。這 些消息網上流傳較多，篇幅也較長，反而主流媒體報導很少。我幾乎不會分辨消息真偽，也 條件反射地把滲雜其中的煽情用語過濾掉，剩下那堆乾巴巴的資料，我才開始去讀。第一件 我會留意的事，是人數，截至某年某日為止，至少已有 XX 名藏人自焚，以抗議中共高壓統治。 句式多是這個樣子，冷淡得如止痛劑般把自焚者的痛苦都消除掉。
聽說痛苦有分身體和心靈兩種。自焚藏人的痛苦兼具兩者。心靈之痛源於對中共無情打 壓自己族人的現實深惡欲絕，但他們的宗教卻容許他們以割肉餵鷹的犧牲精神，捨生而取義， 以焚身來反抗這種心靈痛苦的外部根源。浴火點燃佛前燈，焚身化作自由魂，宗教的崇高感 足以抵銷肉身之痛，這是對自焚者心理狀態的最佳寫照，藏人亦以此把自己的行為合理化， 以反駁自殺不合佛教教義的指控。
當我反覆閱讀著這些報導時，我會感覺到左胸近心臟部位的肌肉突然抽搐起來。抽搐時 間很短，大概只有半秒，程度也輕，就好像心臟剛好移到體外，在胸口跳了一下。沒錯，是 一下，不是如心跳般連續不斷。而且這抽搐是突如其來，毫無徵兆，有時是在我讀到報導標 題時就已經出現，有時是讀到中段、末段時，有時則是在看到那些烈火熊熊、自焚者已在火 焰焚成焦黑，卻仍在到達死亡的路上掙扎未完的配圖之時，但更多時候，還是在讀畢報導、 看罷配圖，卻仍有一小段無聊時間呆坐在電腦前，手指還未使動滑鼠將 cursor 移向下一則新聞 前的那個小時刻，我會格外感覺得這肌肉抽搐確鑿出現，而事後的回憶也輕易確認這抽搐的 而且確發生過。有時我會把這種感覺記下來，然後用上一個很古雅卻老套得很的詞語：心有 戚戚然。
這戚然，大概一種程度最輕的身體之痛吧。相對於自焚者的痛，自然是微不足道了。可 現實偏偏是，我的心有戚然仍可大模斯樣寫在我分享新聞時的題字上，可他們之痛卻從未出 現在吃了止痛劑的報導裡。痛的主體消失了，自焚者成了數字，他們心靈痛楚，都化作只有 普遍形式的集體抗暴精神和宗教情操，肉身之痛更早早在只有火沒有熱的烈焰影像裡，灰飛 煙滅了。
典型到不行的旁觀他人之痛。雖然我不願承認我是在消費別人自焚，或者是消費其他任 34
何形式的戰爭、屠殺或災難，總之是遠在他鄉，只有靠臉書來觀看的集體痛苦事件，但這戚 然之感就好像一個烙印，不斷地提醒我，我這吹噓出來的義憤填膺是多麼的淺薄，多麼的貧 瘠啊。世界在受苦，人類在愈益華麗的文明外衣內持續墮落，這點我十分清楚。問題是知道 和體驗是兩碼子事，對於肉身的痛苦，我所知道的只是各種被新聞化了的社會事件，多少人 死了，多少人受著跟血肉有關的痛，但對於痛苦的可能形式、程度和層次，卻一無所知。自 焚者所受的痛跟我給一百度的熱水燙傷指頭差別有多大？又跟給西瓜刀在大腿割出一條三吋 長半吋深的傷痕又有哪種程度和層次上的差別？如傷痕多長一吋多深半吋又如何呢？總是， 即使我翻箱倒篋，把我有過的所有痛楚記憶一股腦兒摷出來，大概也無法用作我想像自焚之 痛的原材料。
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想像別人之痛，究竟有多重要？從形而上學角度來看，我不知道，但想像卻一直是我填 補個人經驗貧乏的不二法門。去年中國小說家莫言獲諾貝爾文學獎，不斷遭文學界內外的衛 道者追打，他們都說莫言沒腰骨，向權貴獻媚，跟展示文學家和知識份子該有風骨的基準相 去甚遠。我從不諱言對莫言獲獎感到高興，也沒掩飾過對莫言小說的好感，即使現實中的他 是如何窩囊，如何滑頭，如何討人厭惡，他的小說還是有著如黑洞般的魔力，把對肉體之痛 的想像推向極限。我經常跟別人說的例子是《檀香刑》 ，裡面有這樣一段令人吃驚的酷刑描述： 主角之劊子手趙甲如何執行一場完美的凌遲，而莫言所花掉的篇幅，是二十頁，大有普魯斯 特寫失眠的氣勢。
凌遲是酷刑的一種，是人類想像肉身痛楚極限的一次無與倫比，也無可救藥的嘗試。跟 自焚不同的是，凌遲幾乎跟宗教的崇高感無關，發明凌遲的人當時大概沒有想到任何關於心 靈的事，一心只想著如何把極端的痛感盡行延長，才令犯人死去。當然他所依仗的依然是想 像，雖然歷史上沒有記錄這種滿有創意的酷刑到底是誰發明，但可以肯定，起碼在發明之時， 他不知道凌遲的滋味。
中國的凌遲最遲出現於五代，然後在 1905 年廢除。最後一個受刑者是清末一名貴族的奴 隸，聽說當時有人曾拍下整個過程，並留傳下來。我不清楚莫言有沒有看過這照片，但即使 有，也得靠大量想像力才能把那二十頁寫得漂漂亮亮。這場凌遲的受刑者是試圖行刺袁世凱 的軍官錢雄飛，他的刑罰是受五百刀，劊子手趙甲心中沒有絲毫惻隱之念，只把行刑視為一 件作品，他要在那條肉體身上剮五百刀，每刀要割下一條肌肉或一個器官，五百刀內，錢雄 35
飛不能死，到第五百刀時，他必須剛好斷氣，這件作品才叫做完成。
我記得那一年，我右邊大牙旁的牙肉腫得通紅，大概是熱氣加忘了刷牙，受感染而牙肉 發炎吧。我一整晚沒法睡好，到了午夜，我爬起身子，開了床燈，隨手翻開正在讀的小說， 就讀了這驚心動魄的二十頁。莫言筆下的敘事角度是由劊子手趙甲出發，當中講他如何手起 刀落第一刀，第二刀……然後這些刀如何仔細地在錢雄飛身上割下胸肌，旋出乳頭，切下睪 丸，剜掉眼睛，再戳中心臟，這才剛好五百刀。我一邊讀，胸口的肌肉也跳動著，但這次不 是貧瘠的戚然了，而是一種莫以名狀的隱痛，彷彿有一道微弱卻無法忽略的電流從胸口出發， 瞬間直通全身。這電擊之感隨著趙甲的刀、莫言之筆持續加強，我的牙肉不再痛了，反而痛 的感覺開始貫穿全身。當讀到趙甲「硬著頭皮彎下腰去，摳出錢的一個睪丸」時，我也下意 識把手放在跨下，彷彿這凌遲之刀也猛然向我挺進了。
就這樣，文學的想像力催動了肉身的想像力，我的身體也開始懂得想像痛苦，而不是單 純的消費。
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莫言創作動力來源於對飢餓的體驗。童年時莫言經歷過飢荒，有兩年多的時間，他跟其 他孩子每天所想的，都是如何找到食物。他說自己像飢餓的狗，在大街小巷嗅來嗅去，找到 什麼能吃的不能吃都放入口。 「長期的飢餓使我知道，食物對於人是多麼的重要。什麼光榮、 事業、理想、愛情，都是吃飽肚子之後才有的事情。因為吃我曾經喪失過自尊，因為吃我曾 經被人像狗一樣地凌辱，因為吃我才發憤走上了創作之路。」
我唯一的飢餓經驗大概只有年少時參加「飢饉三十」 。餓的感覺不假，但「飢餓」的體驗 卻真不了，因為那時我很清楚知道飢餓的期限，時間一到，我便可大快朵頤，無須為掙口飯 吃而受任何凌辱。於是這所謂「飢餓」 ，對我而言不過是把「遲了吃飯」的感覺稍稍放大而已， 肚子戚然，胃液暖暖地流動，唾液在口腔裡黏稠著。但除此以外，我完全想像不到我跟童年 莫言的共通點，我的飢餓跟「尊嚴」沒有關係，跟「存在」也毫不相干。那時我坐在已坐滿 數千人的球場草地上，想像力漸漸從非洲飢民的痛苦上撒離，轉移到那些抽象的人道主義問 題之上。
那肯定是一次失敗的經驗。極端的飢餓感並不存在於我的感覺圖式裡，我所知道的只有 36
微弱的戚然和隱痛。感覺可以很纖細，卻跟別人差別不大。誰未試過牙肉發炎？誰未試過遲 了兩小時吃飯？又有誰未試過在擠擁的街上跟陌生摩肩接踵，卻突然被蠻力撞痛肩胛？至於 我最常思考一個關於身體的問題，卻偏偏跟痛的感覺無關：為何人總是不願走進車廂中間， 好讓更多乘客上車？
城市研究早就告訴我們，城市空間是一個特殊的感覺體系。有一年我在上海乘地鐵，繁 忙時間，車廂很擠，而令我驚訝的是，像我這個擠慣香港地鐵的人，居然仍覺得那擠迫感是 前所未有的。四周乘客的身體都緊貼著我，卻出奇地沒有太大的壓力，反而如跟親密的人擁 抱時差不多的貼密。我稍稍扭動頸項，轉動眼珠，掃視了車廂的密度一遍，只覺得人在空間 裡的分佈十分平均。數學上有一個叫「密鋪平面」的把戲，就是有一些形狀可以把一個平面 完全密鋪，如等邊三角形、正六角形等，但有一些則不能，不論你怎樣鋪，也總會留下空隙 的。五角形就是一例了。人當然無法密鋪車廂空間，卻可以因為人對別人身體的敏感度而盡 行逼近這個理想的密鋪狀態，那個上海的地鐵車廂差不多就是這種狀態了，每個人都長出了 昆蟲一般的觸角，偵測到人與空位的準確佈局，再把身子擠進空位，而全不影響別人。
在香港擠地鐵的經驗並不好，密鋪空間的功課很低分，這是令我再一次又一次心有戚然 的事。人對別人的身體很冷感，大家都只重視自己的身體，關注自己的感覺至鉅細無遺纖毫 畢現的程度，卻經常不懂避開撞肩之痛。於是我閉上眼睛，學習某些玄幻武俠小說所講的， 以心眼代肉眼，在極不規則的車廂空間裡如遊龍般蠕動，同時下定決心，好言相勸那些只用 肉眼看自己的乘客： 「麻煩走進去一點吧！」然後呢，一個應可寫入香港身體史的偉大情景出 現了：大夥兒冷冷地順應號召，把身體內挪移了一小步，然後馬上重回垂頭冥思之狀，任摩 肩接踵蠻撞胛骨繼續發生。而在車廂中間，則留下一大片可圈可點的無人空間。
我實在無法想像，他們在挪移這一小步時，到底有什麼感覺。
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翩翩淺說 （香港）電影的舞者身軀 羅玉華
現香港大學比較文學系講師。其研究及教學範圍為香港文 化研究，華語電影，視覺文化，動物研究及生態批評。
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全力去起舞吧 起舞吧 起舞吧 達旦 （黃耀明，〈舞吧舞吧舞吧〉）
O body swayed to music, O brightening glance, How can we know the dancer from the dance? (W.B. Yeats, “Among School Children”)
不知為何，在一閃而過的念頭間，總覺得當下的香港好像跟舞蹈總拉不上很密切的聯想。 也許我們都有點過於輕易地認為我們知道舞蹈是甚麼一回事；又或者我們都覺得舞蹈跟日常 生活有點距離，因而不想深究。也許就是這類自以為是的認知令我們很快地跳過仔細的思考， 因為世事好像都是非黑即白，我們都不想想得太多，因為有太多現成的二元邏輯取締思考， 而我們都只不過渴求娛樂而已。比如說，我們想像的舞蹈總不離開一種正統而有規律的藝術 形態，例如強調從小學習的芭蕾舞和其他傳統舞蹈；要不便是似是另一極端的街舞及其引伸 的反叛元素，每每跟次文化混為一談。雖然有不少中外電影孜孜不倦的談及這二元對立的不 可靠，例如如何在傳統框架內尋找創意及出路，或是在重複苦練中跳出堅毅，打破類型，並 從主角突破種種困難的過程中帶出勵志情懷。這種老掉牙的故事永不過時，也提供官能刺激， 讓人輕輕鬆鬆打發時間。那為何香港就是欠缺有關舞蹈的電影？難道香港人都不愛跳舞？九 七後的香港不是要「馬照跑，舞照跳」嗎？ 跳舞不總是跟都市繁華互相映托出一種熱鬧盛世 的社會氛圍嗎？“手舞足蹈”四字也是我們一般用以理解興高采烈的心境。不過，要是當跳 舞不再合時宜，是否我城繁盛不再，並漸漸老去？難道徐徐已老、傷痕纍纍的身軀不能隨心 所欲地載歌載舞？最近電影《狂舞派》也許令人重新思考舞蹈跟我城及其電影的種種關係。
也許我們太輕易地把舞蹈跟青春掛勾吧。若然脫離肉體上的年齡界限，把舞的概念看成 身體與時間和空間的調度和互動關係，並從歷史背景看過來，其實香港電影從不缺舞，無論 從粵語片國語片年代那種參照荷里活模式的流行歌舞片，到後來武俠功夫片以至時裝動作片， 身體的動作運動總是銀幕上的重要元素。這些從京劇引伸而出的唱念做打，或是武術世界的 各門派功夫，傳統舞／武台的即時性都一一演繹成光影的瞬間舞動。如此看來，電影這種漂 洋過海的新媒體把古老遙遠的視覺文化重新建立視點，並在這類跨界的文化交流間產生驚喜 ─ 類型電影從來都是一種從生活的混雜過濾而出的工整產物。但是，若果我們再把時光機往 39
後駕駛，便發現原來電影的由來與人類為了保存身體在空間內所產生的動作的慾望息息相關， 原來我們總是希望把動作／時光凝住（但為甚麼呢？）。看看攝影機的發明，再看看百多年 前英國攝影家 Eadweard Muybridge (1830-1904) 拍攝有關人體和其他動物的動作的一連串照片 （例如 The Horse in Motion，1878），便得知人類對瞬間即逝、可一不可再的身體活動極之迷 戀，並渴望把其徹底了解、控制、拿捏。這可說是電影的原型吧。
圖一：The Horse in Motion (1878)
在《狂舞派》中，腳傷了的阿花在舞林大會內化身為影子，利用光與影把她心中的舞步 把手指投射、放大、轉化成另一個舞者身軀。這小小把戲一點新意都沒有，因為這正正是百 多年來電影運行的最基本本質。要是香港動作片為南派北派武術舞台的轉化，把身體的力量 在水銀燈下無限放大，這部青春狂舞片便在提醒我們電影藝術最基本的魔法法則。魔術源於 利用眼睛的錯覺和盲點來製造幻覺，而在演繹幻象的過程中，四肢必須敏捷，動作必須靈巧。 那不是跟跳舞殊途同歸嗎？相信導演黃修平在他以前的電影如《魔術男》和《燦若繁星》中 已經暗暗把電影跟魔術和幻象的關係牽連起來。阿花以另類方法把她的舞跳出來，可想而知 她視舞如生命的一部分。但要知道，許多時候沉溺嗜痂都不會有好結果。如在 Michael Powell 和 Emeric Pressburger 執導，改編自安徒生童話的 The Red Shoes (1948)中，穿上紅色舞鞋的芭蕾 舞蹈員 Victoria 如同著了魔似的，只有不停地跳跳跳，往前跳動直至氣斷身亡。紅鞋子的惡咒 十分恐怖，在原著童話中，女主人翁要是停下來，便要把雙腿切掉。置諸死地而後生，也是 Rooftoppers 成員 Stormy （甚至飾演此角色的 Tommy Guns Ly 本人） 的寫照，但卻是走到另一端 — 為了繼續跳舞，便把腿子割掉，否則便一生與舞緣盡。這兩則極端的例子使人想起著名德國 編舞家 Pina Baush (1940－2009) 曾說“我在乎的是人為何而動，而不是如何動。”這句話一語
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中的點出舞蹈的重心並非在雙腿或者其他肢體。而是在於動作的根源，也是我們為何而生的 問題。而 Bausch 的答案便是“Dance, dance, or we are lost.”
圖二：The Red Shoes (1948)
圖三：Pina Bausch (1940-2009)
舞吧，舞吧，不然我們都陷於失落。這可是“I dance, therefore I live”的宣言。舞動就是生 命的彰顯，是一種力量由內到外的擴散，而電影也是一種把情感散播的方法。舞蹈遇上電影， 也好像是理所當然。但是另一方面，當年華老去，心境疲累，這副四肢無力的身軀（和內心） 必定與舞動無緣嗎？我們又可不可以把生命的宣言轉成“I live, therefore I dance”呢？香港導 演李公樂的《師奶唔易做》(2006) 便娓娓道來一群俗稱屋邨師奶的女子們由學習肚皮舞的過 程中重新跳進生命的故事。舞步的準確與否絕非故事的重心，而這群女子也沒有阿花等年輕 人的幹勁，沒有舞，她們不會死。但能（在屋邨內）跳舞，她們的生命卻變得再不一樣。 首 先擺脫頑固保守的觀念，把也許已經鬆弛的肚皮露出來，再扭動有點遲鈍的軀體，然後再以 公共空間作為舞場，師奶們顛覆了中國傳統婦女內斂靜態的形象，把自己解放出來，變成女
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舞者（更令人想起 Wagner 的女武神），從此以開懷態度為自己和她們所愛的人活著。在公共 空間內舞動，並非只有電影如《狂舞派》和《師奶唔易做》，或者現實中跳街舞的朋友所獨 美。去年一位選修 Modern Poetry: Hong Kong and Beyond 的同學便嘗試從身體舞動的過程中重 1
新體驗我城。 她隨心的在鬧市各處翩翩起舞，並把這次經歷化作詩句，當中最有趣的並非她 的膽量或者她如何在這過程中自得其樂的學了甚麼，而是在於起舞時候旁人的反應及與其互 動。舞者為之舞者，必然有其觀眾，並從觀眾的反應中換來下一步，否則表演便不成立。假 如以舞蹈為電影之暗喻，再觀乎《狂舞派》的熱烈迴響及想像香港電影的過去未來，不然要 問其實我們是否從來都跳得不夠狂？我們是否都因為沒夠豁出去而認為自己無能為力？我們 作為觀眾可以為舞者做些甚麼？我們又可否一同狂舞？
圖四：《師奶唔易做》My Mother is a Belly Dancer (2006)
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看: http://youtu.be/ZukLxZJLR5k 42
行歇如雨 黃鈺螢 Sonia Wong
因為活著鬱悶，所以不停書寫。
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I.
歇
其實謀殺往往是在最不經意的時候／ 在這個房間／或那個房間／ 這張／或那張床上／椅上／ 或死在／那幅牆上／ 像一隻等待被殺死的昆蟲／自覺但無力／ 因為其實都不要緊／ 在一個人的地方／或一班人的地方／ 你也一樣會／孤獨地流逝／ 喉嚨裡的呼喊／一聲／還給一聲／ 還給／早已蒸發掉了的呼吸／ 黏附在口腔內側／像長了青苔／或黴菌／ 在我體內／揮之不去的／ 是那種始終不能明白／ 被特意剪裁的衣服包裹至呼吸困難的感覺／ 是咽在胸口和胃之間／一隻掌心位置的／ 痛楚／你甚至不能明白那重量／ 是從何而來／ 但那不知名的仇恨／ 卻／把你確切地／囚禁在／自己的皮膚裡／ 至於他為甚麼要進入我／則無從稽考／ 我甚至／不能試圖去了解／ 除了那／留在我體內的／瘋狂的因子／ 而我也自然／ 因此而步向瘋狂
2013.07.11
II.
蛇
看到蛇身扭動的花紋／ 有一種天人永隔的心虛／
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雨落下／話靜了／ 在於卵子決定擺脫你／ 而你／決定擺脫我／ 而我／在尋求各自的解脫和超越／ 一些自己／和更多的你／ 匍匐蛇行／蜿然流過是血／ 你的／ 黑色的蛇／在我體內／由耳朵／偷溜進來的／ 蛇／ 又本是何等的漂亮／復而引人入勝／ 而其實我又是多麼的污穢／因為你的誣蔑／ 所以我死去／ 或永遠只能來回／在生死之間／
2013.07.17
III.
或
有人要拿走你的腎臟／ 有人要／拿走我的內在／ 或子宮／ 但我們都無力抵抗／ 因為最後／或許都無法完全／ 成功／和所謂失敗／
漸漸圓滑了的／山和石／ 和平坦無力的／小波紋／ 滑過／你微微隆起的小腹／ 但孩子／在我體內／ 沒有流出來／
2013.07.28
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What is it to be human? A Few Segments of Thoughts Inspired by Harald Hamrell and Levan Akin's Ä kta Människor
Miss Helena Wu
Helena Wu previously studied and worked in the Department of Comparative Literature in the main building as well as the new campus of the University of Hong Kong. She is now currently a PhD candidate at the University of Zurich.
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“We are all chimeras, theorized and fabricated hybrids of machine and organism.” --Donna Hathaway
1.
Figure 1: Hubots (Adapted from Ä kta Människor) Ä kta Människor (Real Humans; 2012- ), directed by Harald Hamrell and Levan Akin, is a Swedish series that envisions a world where hubots (human robots) are largely produced in the human society as consumer products as well as workforce. The series develops multiple strands of narratives involving different groups of humans and hubots striving for their own ways of existence. By drawing on the possibility of having a hubot as a servant, as a co-worker, as a companion, as a care-taker, as a lover, as a sex partner and so on, the series presents different potential yet problematic relationships between human and hubot, and the subsequent issues arisen on the personal as well as the collective level. From love to fear, hostility to intimacy, the varying and contradictory positionings taken by the humans towards their so-called non-human counterparts in the society, and vice versa, not only expose the fragility and the insecurity of human existence, but also the fluidity and the permeability in the line (if not border) between human and non-human (life)forms.
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2.
Figure 2: Humans: real or not? (Adapted from Ä kta Människor)
The series does not give very specific details concerning the timeframe, the location or factual information on the backdrop of the story, but the audience is immediately presented with a world, though seemingly ordinary and mundane, where hubots and humans (try to) “co-exist” with one another but in their own different ways. The series opens with a man being ambushed on his way home in the countryside. The man escapes the first attack and hides inside his house. Following the man to the house, the camera pans slightly at a label stating “äkta människor” (literally meaning “real humans”) on the door. The fear built up in the man’s look and the tension developed in this series of scenes convey that the gang that chases after him is no ordinary human, but someone or something possessing extraordinary power that makes human inferior. Soon after that, the gang, which turns out to be several ordinary-looking men and women, breaks in and takes control of the house. Yet what they are looking for is indeed the electric socket. Who are the “real humans” now? Anyway, it is time to charge.
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Figure 3: The human-centered family (Adapted from Ä kta Människor)
While the audience, without any prior knowledge of the plot, are left confused, the next sequence jumps to an ordinary family scene with an air of easiness and calmness. The household, which is decorated according to a modern “Ikea” style and equipped only with a standard-layman level of (necessary) electrical appliances and devices like coffee machine, computer and television, seems to suggest that the world where the story takes place is not that far from the way it is now (at least in the visual perspective); neither is the world dominated by some over-exaggerating machines (other than the invention of hubots). The setting of the series is not made to be typically futuristic as it is commonly found in any conventional science-fiction works. Instead, it gives a down-to-earth impression or, rather, a disenchanted mood in most of the settings and images, with a neither-dystopian-nor-utopian vision of the world. This certainly helps the series to induce emotional embodiment and the possibilities of identification from the audience across the fictional world visualized by the series and the situated reality in which hubots are not yet invented or popularized. [option 1: jump to segment 5; option 2: continue reading]
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3.
Figures 4-7: The (dis-)order of place (Adapted from Ä kta Människor) Another interesting observation comes from the depiction of public spaces in the series. From workplace, supermarket, shopping mall to residential area, all these locales are perfectly neat and tidy; local sites like work stations, buildings, and stores are aligned in uniformed grids, while objects like goods, books, and papers are always well kept in order. The images of these spaces are also filtered to give a paler tone, implying a slightly dreamy, unreal quality of the modernist obsession with rational, systematic order in the human society. Moreover, all these neatly-ordered places pose a stark contrast to all the un/identifying human and humanoid bodies onscreen, real or manufactured. On a deeper level, this indeed speaks to the connection between technological advancement and the modernist notion of progression. On the one hand, scientific innovations and breakthroughs bring about human progresses and further reinforce the forward-looking mentality that are generally shared by all humans, amidst the inevitable linear movement of time in modernity; on the other hand, technological inventions and its assimilations into our everyday life bring forth the question of the real, and inform the postmodernist challenges concerning the dissolution of the real, thus resulting in a chaotic mess of spaces and interrogations instead of the modernist ideal of a neat categorization and an order of everything. This dilemma of modernity is indeed reflected in the speculated yet fictional invention of hubots in the series. Addressing the pathetic condition of human existence, one liberated hubot in the series boldly proclaims to all mankind:
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“One day you’ll cease to exist. And nobody will remember you and your body will return to the cycle. All thoughts from your life, all emotions, all those you’ve loved will be lost forever. The only way to avoid the total annihilation is to become one of us.” 4. Another side of the picture is substituted by shifting subjectivity to the side of the hubots, thus granting them a voice to speak. Unlike some generic conventions of the science fiction genre, there is neither a particular hero nor a heroine in the series, be it on the side of the humans or the hubots. Humans and hubots in the series do not form two polar groups with respect to their physically-differing structures and features, but every single one of them represent different orientations towards one another and have very contrasting opinions regarding the current situation that they are facing. As the story unfolds more and more contacts and clashes between human and hubots, their thoughts and attitudes are also violently challenged, testified and even altered: for instance, what if you find out that the one you love is indeed a hubot (when you also hate them for replacing you in your job as you are less competitive and less capable than they are)? What if you start to question about the difference between you and a hubot (when hubots come to your life as a friend, a companion, or a lover)? What if you are a half-human half-hubot living in a world filled with conflicts and controversies on both sides of the power struggle (after all, who are you)? What if you are a hubot living in a world where your kind is forever subordinate to the human counterparts and that your kind can face any forms of violation by any means at any time (you start to ask why you are not treated the same way as the human)? After all, what is it to be human (and what is it to be hubot)? Bombarded by these ethical, social, cultural and political issues, we are asked to rethink about differences and how to deal with differences in actions. After all, what kinds of difference are we dealing with when it comes to human and hubots that are both the double and the other to one another? -“You can’t violate a car. It has no emotions.” -“And a hubot has?” -“Prove that we have emotions. Or is it a developed behavioural pattern that makes us socially accepted? Can you prove that human has a soul?” [option 1: continue reading; option 2: jump to segment 6] 51
5.
Figure 8: Collapsing the boundaries: facing One An(d-)Other (Adapted from Ä kta Människor)
In the series, hubots remarkably and uncannily resemble almost every single feature of an actual human-being. This results in a two-way positionings in our viewing experience of simultaneously identifying with and distancing from the hubots onscreen—therefore, it is almost sickening to see hubots being physically or sexually assaulted; yet at the same time the negative feeling built up is suppressed by the presumption that they are indeed not humans but hubots. The complexity in seeing and believing is delivered through different bodies of contacts and representations: at first, we are presented with the almost identical bodies of human and hubot onscreen for perceptions to conceive; then, while the story develops, it urges you to distinguish the “real” biological human bodies from the artificial scientific bodies of hubot; while the audience are visually and emotionally engaged in the viewing process, all these onscreen bodies, human or hubots, are indeed performed and mediated by the bodies of actors and actresses and transmitted through the camera and the screen; these flattened bodies delivered in images then come to us in a certain form of attachment and/or fetish, where we are free to humanize and dehumanize different bodies as such --all these shared bodies become a site of multiple meanings as well as a vehicle for meanings to be generated. [option 1: jump to segment 3; option 2: continue reading]
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6. - “What makes you so special?” - “What makes you so special?” - “My mother gave birth to me. I have a history. I have emotions. I am aware of my existence and will that I’ll die one day. I ask for ketchup instead of lingonberry jam for the meatballs. I’m embarrassed about my knees.” - “My name is Mimi. I was born of David [the creator of hubot]. I don’t know who I want to be in this world. It’s new to me. There are so many paths and I have tried so few.” The above is a dialogue between a human and a hubot, revealing the internal and external struggles of human and hubot in making sense of themselves, their existence and their surroundings. On the one hand, looking at the “othered” hubots allows us see simultaneously our selves and our other selves, and the desire and the nightmare of all mortals through the hubot body of perfection, precision, and immortality. On the other hand, facing the hubots urges us to ponder on a series of ethical, political, social, cultural and philosophical problems and questions: do hubots deserve their own rights? Should there be a law to protect them? How can they be defined? (a machine? A product? A species? A minority group?) How can human be defined? One major obstacle or confusion, as it is presented in the series, in publicly acknowledging hubots as its own kind comes from the ultimate fear and doubt of human concerning their own state of being and existence. When we need the other to define us, what can we do if the other becomes us, and even more so, a better us?
Figure 9: Touching the intouchable: a contact between human and hubot (Adapted from Ä kta Människor)
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After all, all these contestations and entanglements uncannily mirror what had happened or are happening in our society when the marginalized, the oppressed, the subaltern group and the other can finally speak up and call for a need to renew our way of seeing by introducing a new perspective in the paradigm shifts: just as how we use our own bodies to mobilize new rights, new sensibilities, new order and new equalities, as in feminist movements, human rights movement, LGBT social movements, democracy movements and so on. This is also how the hubots step in as a subject and talk back in their humanoid form, as if they are also speaking to the postcolonial condition of our world in times of globalization: “You created us and now we’ll create this world together.� - (This is Not) The End-
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Mirror, mirror on the wall: Bodies, mirrors and identity in Atwood’s “Tricks with mirrors” and Kureishi’s The Body
Miss Julianne Yang
Norwegian-born Julianne Yang holds a BA and MPhil from the Department of Comparative Literature at HKU, where she currently works as a teaching assistant. Her dissertation Towards a cinema of contemplation: Roy Andersson’s aesthetics and ethics analyses Swedish filmmaker Roy Andersson’s intermedial style in relation to modernism and the central themes in his films: the critique of modernity, the human condition, and traumatic history. Besides teaching comparative literature, she loves reading, writing, drinking Hong Kong milk tea, and drawing strangers in the city (see http://citylines.tumblr.com).
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In life, as in literature, human beings’ understanding of themselves is often derived from mirrors in one form or another. It is from looking at ourselves in physical mirrors that we come to understand how we appear. For better or worse, the mirror is one of the first places where we learn to judge how well our bodies represent our ideas. It is also where we begin to guess and speculate on how others see our bodies, that vital part of us that can hardly, for physical reasons, be entirely ignored. If interpreted more broadly, however, mirrors can also be said to exist in the form of other people. Besides the fact that human beings mirror each others’ behavior, our lives are also, as in theatre, made up of encounters with “dramatic foils”, characters whose strengths and weaknesses shed light on our own. To some extent, our selves are always social selves in this way: identities we construct through seeing others’ perception of us. Although today’s technology may seem to enable interactions where our bodies matter less and less, the fact that Instagram, Facebook and Google+ are filled with more and more photos in which we are physically present – and, let’s be honest, often the centre of attention – suggests that our bodies remain essential to how we construct our identities.
Figure 1: Illustration by Julianne Yang In his novella The Body (2002), Hanif Kureishi unsettles this close relationship between one’s body and identity by creating a scenario that raises the following philosophical question: if you could transplant your brain into another person’s body, 56
would you still be you? In the novella, Adam, a famous, aging writer in his late 60s, meets a stranger who introduces him to a secret, illegal network of brain surgeons. What they sell is the chance for you to live temporarily in another person’s body. Unable to predict or know all the risks, Adam decides to switch from his own body to that of a young, handsome man in his mid-20s. Narrated through Adam’s musings, The Body is driven not so much by plot as by the narrator’s reflections on the issues of identity, desire, love, belonging and aging. Reminiscent of other “body swap” stories, such as Kobo Abe’s novel The Face of Another (1964) and Kim Ki-duk’s film Time (2006), the novella deals with the impact that our physical appearances have on our relationships with others as well as ourselves. In one of Adam’s reflections, he considers how mirrors in particular may shape the human identity, and thus echoes psychological as well as sociological theories of the self. “A theory-loving friend of mine has an idea,” he begins, that the notion of the self, of the separate, self-conscious individual, and of any autobiography which that self might tell or write, developed around the same time as the invention of the mirror, first made en masse in Venice in the early sixteenth century. When people could consider their own faces, expressions of emotion and bodies for a sustained period, they could wonder who they were and how they were different from and similar to others. (28) As Adam later adds, his friend also believes that “if a creature can’t see himself, he can’t mature. He can’t see where he ends and others begin. This process can be aided by hanging a mirror in an animal’s cage” (ibid.). If this latter idea sounds like a reference to Lacan’s concept of the “mirror stage”, it might be because it is: Kureishi quotes and pokes fun at his fair share of Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalysis in his other work. (In his most recent novel Something to Tell You, the narrator is a psychoanalyst.) That said, Lacan’s concept also echoes key sociological theories on the individual’s relationship with others, particularly Charles Cooley’s famous concept of the “looking-glass self”. According to Cooley, our sense of self is shaped by three principal elements: “the imagination of our appearance to another person, the imagination of his or her judgement of that appearance, and the resultant self-feelings, such as pride, shame or mortification” (184). Despite these parallels to Kureishi’s passage, however, attempting to locate which theorists Kureishi might be influenced by is arguably less interesting than exploring the idea that his novella is dealing with: that seeing yourself reflected back at you in mirrors may radically change how you perceive your identity/-ies. 57
Mirrors may be described as a way to perceive ourselves “from the outside”, that is, to see ourselves as objects. This process can be empowering, as it may give us the necessary distance to be self-reflective and self-critical. Within literary and cultural studies, however, the word “object” often bears more negative than positive associations. The act of being seen (or seeing oneself) as an object often recalls feminist and postcolonial critiques of representation and uneven power relations. We talk about gazes, we ask “whose gaze?”, and often get the sense that representations produce more victims than we were previously aware of. We might get the feeling that the human world is entirely shaped by the circulation of gazes, many of which are condescending or hostile to the person being gazed at. Since our perceptions of each other, our subjectivities, can be a source of power, it follows that it can also lead to disempowerment and entrapment. A poem that tries to deal with this issue, the power of subjectivity, is Margaret Atwood’s “Tricks with mirrors”. Using the mirror as a central metaphor, the poem illustrates how representations (and the power relations that underpin them) can be dominating, yet also unsettled. In this cleverly constructed poem, Atwood starts out using the mirror as a metaphor for a person, only to gradually reveal that it is a flawed, deceiving analogy. Split into five parts, the poem has each new section present new ways in which humans are more than merely mirrors. The poem’s structure thus mimics how we as readers uncover one layer of meaning after another, until we discover that the poem’s initial image – that people resemble mirrors – was placed there only to show how unconvincing it is. For this structure to work, the poem needs to first introduce the idea that sometimes, people do resemble mirrors. Atwood does this already in the first three stanzas, where she establishes the image of a mirror. In addition, we meet the poem’s two characters, the speaker (“I”) and an ambiguous “you”, whose relationship gradually appears be that of two lovers: It’s no coincidence this is a used furniture warehouse. I enter with you and become a mirror. Mirrors are the perfect lovers,
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What does it mean for a person to become a mirror? Mirrors are flat, one-dimensional surfaces, objects that only display what is in front of them. For a human to transform into a mirror is thus, one might argue, to become dehumanized, robbed of the subjectivity that sets humanity apart from pebbles, grass and car tires. Taking this into account, how may we understand the third stanza, “Mirrors / are the perfect lovers”? One of the most evocative stanzas in the poem, it appears to say that the perfect lover is like a mirror. However, judging from the rest of the poem, it is not entirely unclear if it can be taken at face value. When you “fall into me”, the speaker later says to her lover, “it will be your own / mouth you hit, firm and glassy, / your eyes you find / you are up against closed closed”. This can hardly be called a romantic description of why we fall in love or desire other people. Is it really ourselves we want to “fall into” when we fall in love? As I would argue, “Mirrors / are the perfect lovers” might be a statement that is meant to sound off, as though it is said with irony rather than conviction. The fact that Atwood uses the adjective “perfect” seems to support this interpretation. For what in this world is perfect? With the exception of ideas and ideals, not much – and certainly not our lovers. In other words, when the speaker says that mirrors are the “perfect lovers”, she might be signaling that I’m using hyperbole, so take my words with a pinch of salt from now on. Another noteworthy detail about the poem’s speaker is the matter-of-fact-ness of his/her language in the very first stanza (“It’s no coincidence”). The diction suggests the speaker understands what is going on. It seems to argue that something understandable is happening, perhaps even something common, when a person becomes a mirror upon entering certain spaces (“a used furniture warehouse”) with certain people (“you”). When we are told that the warehouse in which this is happening is “no coincidence”, Atwood seems to imply that the setting contributes to the event, that the context for the change from human to mirror matters. If the context in question is interpreted as the relationship between two lovers, this stress on context can be read as a comment on what love, or desire, does to us. Relationships, Atwood seems to suggest, are precisely where people (metaphorically) transform into mirrors and power relations play themselves out – perhaps especially when gender is thrown into the equation. As Macpherson notes, the gendered aspect of the power relations in “Tricks with mirrors” makes the poem’s image of the lover as mirror highly comparable to a line in Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own (106), in which Woolf famously reminds us: “Women have served all these centuries as looking-glasses possessing the magic and delicious power of reflecting the figure of man at twice its natural size” (37). Like Atwood’s poem, Woolf’s quote addresses the intricate relationship between gender, power and subjectivity, notably describing women’s subjectivities as a 59
“magical” and “delicious” source of power. As Atwood’s poem continues, we see a similar depiction of mirrors as unstable representations and people as more than merely passive objects. Part II of the poem opens with lines that state how “there is more to a mirror” than we think, and advise us to consider, among other things, the frame that surrounds each mirror (“Think about the frame. / The frame is carved, it is important”, “it does not recede and recede, it has limits”). We are also told to remember the nail behind each mirror, arguably representing that which allows the mirror to be where it is, to reflect what or who it reflects. This imagery of frames and nails recalls the issue of representation, particularly their limits and the importance of positing. When we are reminded to “pay attention to the nail / marks in the wood, / they are important too”, Atwood also points out that mirrors can be moved, and that the sharp nails that once kept them still are, once released, potentially dangerous objects. In the middle of Part IV, the speaker suddenly admits that the mirror analogy was wrong all along, breaking the metaphor altogether by stating that the speaker is not a mirror. Stressing the theme of entrapment and the lover’s inability to recognize what the speaker needs, these stanzas create a telling description of how one person’s perception of another can be oppressive and debilitating: I confess: this is not a mirror, it is a door I am trapped behind. I wanted you to see me here, say the releasing word, whatever that may be, open the wall. Instead you stand in front of me combing your hair. If the poem is read as a meditation on power dynamics within relationships, this part of the poem also appears to tackle how attraction and desire is often driven not only by love for another person, but also by self-love and a desire for self-preservation. As I have argued, “Tricks with mirrors” is a poem that hands us a flawed metaphor, one that the poet knows is problematic but plays around with anyway. She knows that in doing so, she can show us how the metaphor one the one hand falls 60
short – that a person is far too complex to be a mirror – and on the other, how it also applies. Evidently, humans are equipped with subjectivity and none of us are mere mirrors of other people, yet under certain circumstances, people can be seen, treated as and consequently become reduced to mirror-like objects. Atwood’s poem illuminates that in certain contexts, we voluntarily or involuntarily come to represent more of other people, their presences and ideas than we represent our own. As Kureishi’s novella progresses, the ways in which other people’s subjectivity can lock us into certain roles or identities also becomes a crucial theme. Living inside a young man’s body lets Adam regain certain freedoms – granting him access to a world of debauchery and youthful hedonism – but he also finds himself trapped by his new attractive appearance and others’ desire for it. Formerly a writer, Adam is no longer judged based on his intellectual, creative talents but his looks and physical abilities. His ambivalence towards his “old” life also becomes a source of entrapment, as he variously recognizes the value and the cost of what he lost when he abandoned his old body: his wife, his son and his work, elements that he does not want to, and probably cannot, separate from his own identity. Despite Adam’s initial enthusiasm for being young again, for getting “a second shot” at life, after “two and a half months of ease and pleasure” he gradually develops a wish “to prepare for my return – for illness and death, in fact” (62). His old body represents, it seems, his own history as a human being: “as my old body and its suffering stood for the life I had made, the sum total of my achievement made flesh, I believed I should re-inhabit my body. I was no fan of the more rigid pieties, but it did seem to be my duty” (62). The sense of obligation he describes touches on the idea of an authentic self, a notion that we often consider to be strongly related to the body. Our bodies, like landscapes bearing the marks of the changing seasons, alter and adapt to the various stages of our lives. Moreover, we sometimes deliberately change our appearances to match both our own and others’ perception of us. As Atwood and Kureishi’s texts remind us, however, whether our identities and senses of self can, firstly, coincide with how other perceive us, and secondly, change at the same pace as our bodies grow and encounter new experiences, is a different matter.
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Bibliography Abe, Kobo. The Face of Another. 1964. Trans. E. Dale Saunders. London: Penguin, 2006. Atwood, Margaret. “Tricks with mirrors.” Poems, 1965-1975. 1976. London: Virago, 1991. 183-186. Print. Cooley, George Herbert. Human Nature and the Social Order. 1902. New York: Schocken, 1964. Print. Ki-duk, Kim, dir. Time. Parsippany, N.J.: Life Size Entertainment, 2007. DVD. Kureishi, Hanif. The Body: and seven stories. London: Faber and Faber, 2002. Print. ---. Something to Tell You. London: Faber and Faber, 2008. Print. Macpherson, Heidi Slettedahl. The Cambridge Introduction to Margaret Atwood. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. Print. Woolf, Virginia. A Room of One’s Own. 1929. London: Penguin, 2002. Print.
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Comparative Literature Festival 2013 Exhibition: “Dismemberment” Society of Comparative Literature, A.A.H.K.U.S.U. Session 2012-2013
The Comparative Literature Festival continues to be our highlight this year. With the theme "The Body"(
), we hope to see our body from
multiple perspectives and in a new light. In particular, we aspire to examine how the corporeal body influences our identity formation and experiences throughout the life cycle. We are also interested in scrutinizing the dynamic relationships between the body and the city.
Focusing on “Dismemberment”, this year’s Exhibition presented both positive and negative notions of the dismembered body, be it in literal or metaphorical senses.
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Dismemberment Dismemberment refers to the act of removing limbs of a living thing or dividing the body into parts and pieces. The sight of amputated bodies usually evokes dread, discordant feelings or deep sympathy. Have you ever thought that it can be both constraining and enabling? This exhibition aims to explore how society and popular culture shape our knowledge and perception of our bodies, presenting dismemberment in positive and negative notions. 1. “Turtles Can Fly” – Dismemberment in War War puts innocent people in precarious situation and incurs numerous casualties. In the film “Turtles Can Fly”, a group of orphans earns their livings by clearing minefields under the leadership of Satellite. On the Iran-Turkey border where bombardment can start any time, many have lost their limbs. Yet, the way how these characters accommodate their mutilated bodies demonstrates that such misfortunes can also reinforce positive values in our existence. Hengov, though having lost both his arms, manages to dismantle land mine with his mouth. Pashow, despite his defunct leg, manages to run in swift strides with the aid of his crutch. He even holds his dismembered leg and points it as a gun playfully in an attempt to comfort the crying toddle Riga. When Riga is found dangerously wandering in a minefield, Satellite rescues him without hesitation and risks losing his limbs or even life. Their resilience and altruistic virtue, despite their double-marginalized identity, are all admirable qualities which radiate hope in a state of constant terror.
“127 Hours” – The Unfinished Body During the solo trip through Utah's Canyonlands, the hiker Aron has his arms pinned between a boulder and a canyon wall. Having undergone more than five days’ mental 64
and physical struggles, he makes the decision of amputating his own arm so as to free himself for rescue. His courage to do so reinforces his survival instinct and celebrates mankind’s tenacity against adversity. In face of the inevitability of death and the capriciousness of life, the egotistic Aron is compelled to confront the limitedness and frailty of human body, realizing that it is impossible for him to do everything himself. All his flashbacks and hallucinations signify how the prospect of death evokes the dread of personal meaninglessness and urges him to reconnect his fond memories. It cultivates insight into our existence. Nick Vujicic, though his body without limbs may seem incomplete, manages to live a fruitful life. It reminds us of our body being in a constant process of becoming as an unfinished phenomenon. Our attempt to invest ourselves, our actions and our world with meanings is to acquire the sense of completeness - to make life worthwhile.
Physical Impairment ≠ Disability In modern society, human body is measured and evaluated in economic terms of utility and productivity. As idle and uncoordinated bodies are condemned, we expect human bodies to be constructive and contributive to production activities. As French philosopher Michel Foucault suggests, we become docile bodies habituated to external regulation, aiming to maximize human body’s capabilities and usefulness. While we often reduce dismembered people as vulnerable victims, disabled weaklings or assistance recipients, such physical impairment is presented in a completely different light in “Turtles Can Fly” and “127 Hours”, challenging the abled/disabled dichotomy. Blade Runner Oscar Pistorius, the first double leg amputee to compete with able-bodied athletes in the Olympics, is a real-life example.
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2. Dismemberment can be both constraining and enabling. It is closely related to scientific and medical uses. While human dissection plays an important role in various body reconstruction projects, the dismembered people also need prosthetic body components. “The Island” – The Uncertain Bodies Lincoln Six-Echo in “The Island” is a member of a community living in an enclosed and strictly monitored facility, being told that the rest of the world is seriously contaminated and thus unsuitable for living. In reality, they are human clones grown by a private corporation for the sale of organ-replacement service to wealthy clients. They will be surgically dissected with the target body parts harvested for their clients. It resembles how people extract living animal organs such as heart valves and lungs for replacement. Patients who have undergone these surgeries can be considered as chimeras, a hybrid creature which is part human and part animal. In scientific projects, chimeras are made by the fusion of human stem cells and other creatures with the possibility of creating animals with human brains.
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Whether or not it is ethical to terminate the life of a conscious being with intelligence, emotions and memories, farming its body for organs used in transplant surely sparks controversy. What's more striking is that, as we gain more knowledge about the body and how to reconstruct it in this era of high modernity, we simultaneously become more uncertain about what human body is. “Sixty Million Dollar Man” – The Cyborg Having offended a local crime lord, Sing in “Sixty Million Dollar Man” is shredded to pieces by explosion with only his brain and mouth remains functioning. A maniacal scientist, who has eye balls and palm with consciousness walking around in his laboratory, manages to create a new body for Sing with medical wastes – the discarded anatomical body parts in hospitals, and a chip, which enables him to morph into other objects. Similar hybrid entities combining elements of technology and organic tissues are common in our daily life as well. Examples can be Prosthesis users and patients with pacemaker. Even the integration of sports participation and sportswear technology is also an instance of cybernetic relationship.
Living in this post-human society, boundaries between nature and culture or the real and the artificial have dissolved, if they existed. Some suggest that one resolution is to transcend such binary thinking which often assumes one factor being privileged over the other. That said, as the corporeal body has long been the site for human identity fixation, is it truly possible for us to abandon all these boundaries and bifurcations when making sense of ourselves and the complex world in which we live? 3. Women in fragments Dismemberment can be in both literal and metaphorical senses. The way how women are presented as separate body components in media is also a form of dismemberment. 67
In this consumer society, the notion that the body is not a given is advocated. Lips, eyebrows, hands, hips are all areas available for continuous modifications. With the idealized body form upheld, ordinary women’s body is treated as an entity which can always be perfected by consumption of skincare products, cosmetics, gymnastics programme services and so on. The ATV Miss Asia Pageant is an example illustrating this phenomenon. Contestants have their breasts, waists, legs, hair and faces shown in separate sections to gain score, reducing femininity to mere body fragments. Such reduction detracts the audience from considering women as individuals with intellect, emotions and aspirations. Women become objects for consumption.
To think deeper, men or women who endeavour to eliminate the discrepancies between their bodies and those represented in the media are in fact the inmate of Panopticon. While the clones in “The island” are literally imprisoned in a building with all aspects of their life being closely monitored by the managerial power, many people in real life are also subject to the gaze of surveillance and unknowingly internalize the standards of bodily acceptability prevalent in the society. As they believe that their bodies are deficient, they engage in self-surveillance and self-discipline – body becomes a self-policing project. 68
4. More food for thoughts Bodies in terrorism Black widows, the Chechen female suicide bombers, illustrate that complete fragmentation of body does not necessarily denote the total annihilation of meanings. They challenge the traditional binary opposition that presupposes women as vulnerable victims of violence who are in need of defense by men in wartime. Instead of being the appendages of men, these women transform themselves as body weapons on the frontline. They are freed from being subjugated at an inferior position by patriarchy. That said, what remains questionable is that - while these black widows are equal to men in death, are they equal in life?
Visual ageism Old age is often associated bodily decay and physical incompetence. The prospect of being a wobbling man with wrinkles and dry inelastic skins seems to evoke fear and reluctance. In this contemporary period when visual presentation is central to modern people’s experiences, there are anti-aging skin care products which claim to have the science to fight against the erosion of time. Many publicity images of the old age are meticulously refined and rejuvenated. Such efforts directed to resist ageing to a certain extent reveals how old age and physical decline induced are marginalized and defined as a social deviance.
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Film review: Caterpillar Kelly Chui
Currently a BA Year 2 student, majoring in Comparative Literature and English Studies. Academic Secretary of the Society of Comparative Literature, A.A.H.K.U.S.U., Session 2012-2013.
Caterpillar Director: Koji Wakamatsu Starring: Shinobu Terajima, Keigo Kasuya Year: 2010
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The film carries an explicit anti-war message as it narrates the miserable physical and mental struggle of a limbless soldier Tadashi Kurosawa (Keigo Kasuya) and his wife Shigeko Kurosawa (Shinobu Terjima) with archive footages in sepia tone and World War II casualty statistics inserted in between to further reinforces the sanguinary and dehumanizing nature of war. When Lieutenant Kurokawa officially resigns from the front line and is sent home from the Sino-Japanese war, his first (re)appearance in the film is horrific both to his relatives and to us the audience. The camera pans along to capture how his father, siblings and wife are all fixated on him at terror and disbelief. The jubilant and anticipant look in their eyes for a family reunion amid the chaotic world is totally absent. It is then revealed that their intricate and ambivalent gaze illustrates how they find it hard to accommodate his severely mutilated limbless body.
Figure 1,2: Adapted from Caterpillar This gazing relationship continues to be at work throughout the film – the relatives’ inspecting gaze as an attempt to make sense of Tadashi’s abnormal uncanny body, the villagers’ mythologizing gaze when they pay homage to Tadashi who devotes himself to the country and miraculously survives, Shigeko’s disdainful gaze at the disabled, unproductive and yet demanding husband and Tadashi’s self-examining gaze when he sees himself in the reflection on the pond. The reciprocal of Tadashi’s is equally noteworthy for his gaze has gradually changed from a reproachful one when Shigeko fails to feed him well or satisfy his sexual desire to a terrified and hollow one when he recalls the memory of raping Chinese women and identifies with them.
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These exchanges of gazes lead us to ponder over and reflect upon what gazes we are using when we look at bodies that deviate. Joseph Carey Merrick who exhibited himself as the Elephant Man, Nick Vujicic who is famous worldwide for his motivational speeches on life without limbs and William Chan who performs with his body spotted with cancerous moles in MV of the indie band My Little Airport are some of the examples. Are we trying our best to normalize these deformed bodies so as not to discriminate against them? Are we treating them as other beings, the divine for example, so that his identity as the abnormal eludes us? Are the gazes made sentimentalizing deliberately for the sake of extracting sympathy from others, the audience in particular? Back to Tadashi’s first appearing scene, the discussion of dehumanization has already been established. Just as his father comments right in the beginning, Tadashi “is nothing but a pile of flesh”. What does this torso mean to different people? What does it mean to be a human? Positioned against the wall right in the middle, Tadashi is presented as a torso without limbs, deaf and mute, and with burn scar over half of his face. Such mise en scène reminds us of a deity statue placed in a temple. Tadashi is treated as a non-human. He is either worshiped as a living War God or, ironically at the same time, reduced to a mere symbol epitomizing the Japanese militarism, a stabilizer for the army morale, a standard of loyalty and courage for soldiers to follow as well as a material for patriotic propaganda throughout the country.
Figure 3: Adapted from Caterpillar To his wife Shigeko, Tadashi is nothing more than a larval-like living corpse with three honorable medals and a framed laudatory news article hanging on the wall, spending much of his life eating, sleeping and having sex. He is like a caterpillar which is notorious as a voracious feeder, being unable to participate in any agricultural activities and yet even consuming Shigeko’s portion of food. She has always been questioning “who can say you're alive”. The line “a good soldier doesn't survive to be a shameful prisoner” then becomes sarcastic. Is it more shameful to be a 72
captive in the battle or to be a man who has once killed countless of others but ends up with his retribution to be a limbless man at the mercy of others to feed, clothe and bathe him throughout the rest of his life? As for Shigeko herself, she is also upheld as a prototype of a faithful, acquiescent and diligent wife. She is told by everyone else in the village that her taking care of Tadashi is another form of military service “for the country” and she should set “a role model for all wives of the Imperial soldiers”. Taking compliments from villagers and repeatedly singing propaganda songs are what she does to remind herself to be a dutiful wife. Both of them are dependent on the identity of “War God” and “the wife of War God” to live. Are they living as authentic individuals or as parts of the larger system? More pathetically, Shigeko becomes a mere tool for revenge as the film progresses. She has suffered from domestic violence before Tadashi is enlisted. There is an undercurrent of resentment and discontent deep in her heart. Driven by a desire for vengeance, she dresses her husband in military uniform with medals and parades him around the village, claiming that “It's your obligation as a War God”. Not only is she gaining benefits, food in usual for basic survival need, in his glorified name, but she is also trying to prove how useless he is when compared to other abled-villagers. When she feeds him with a precious bowl of rice during wartime, she grins contentedly not out of kindness in taking care of him but due to the very fact that she derives sadistic pleasure in seeing how the honourable War God is begging her for food. In addition, the way how their sexual intercourse are, in the beginning, all initiated by Tadashi in the missionary position later changes to Shigeko’s taking the lead in the woman-on-top position reflects how Shigeko manipulates her own body to gain a more superior position in the power-relation of this unfulfilled marriage through sex.
Figure 4: Adapted from Caterpillar
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Just as how Shigeko is depicted to be always weaving at midnight, this film complicates, perplexes and evokes a hardly articulate, intermingled feeling of love, resentment, helplessness, melancholy and sympathy. What remains vividly in mind after watching it is the sight of a torso bawling, twisting and slithering on the floor. There is always such an inexplicable vigorous urge in us that issues related to the body are so difficult to evade from. Is it truly possible for us to imagine how Shigeko and Tadashi feel in their situation? Is it truly possible for us to manage to come to terms with our disabled bodies one day? Is it truly possible for us to develop empathy at the sight of the deviant bodies? And, is it truly possible that we can answer these questions?
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Book review: 《哀悼乳房》 林穎汶
香港大學文學院二年級生，主修比較文學及日本研究。 二零一二至二零一三年度香港大學學生會文學院學生 會比較文學學會出版秘書。
《哀悼乳房》 作者：西西 出版社：洪範 出版年份：1992 年
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《哀悼乳房》 。初中時，曾拿起過這書，原因不外乎乳房二字。翻揭時，還要四下張望 是否無人在旁。無他，一個坦蕩蕩裸露乳房的女子，大概會被說是「不知廉恥」；一本坦蕩 蕩裸露「乳房」的書，又怎能逃離世俗的偏見、歧視、側目，以及對性的幻想？初中，恰好 又是青春期，幻想少不了。偷偷摸摸地翻開了，一看，只有文縐縐的文字，不禁大失所望。
既然是失望，為何如今卻定睛細看？既然滿足不了肉慾，那乳房在本書又是為了甚麼而 裸露？答案，其實就在「哀悼」——乳房吸了我們的眼睛，哀悼卻被拋諸腦後，但它卻才是 本書的主調和色彩。會哀悼，是因為死亡，因為失去，因為悲哀，因為還活著，所以才會哀 悼。所以才能哀悼。 《哀悼乳房》所講述的，其實是一個乳癌患者從患病，到發現、看診、 治療以至復康的心路歷程。本文欲探討的，是肉身與自我、疾病、權力與科技間的種種關系。
「正常」的肉身
自古以來，人的肉身都不是我們敢於直視的東西。能正當地坦胸露臂的，似乎都是〈顏 色好〉一文中那些繁殖女神的專利。古希臘畫作中也多出現女性裸體（female nude） ，畫家 以女性的裸體去象徵純潔、理想，以及真善美。隨著往後的發展，女性的裸體在父權社會下， 成了性欲、繁殖、禁忌等意象的意符。當裸體映入眼簾，即使我們沒有歪念，但放進眼底的 這動作，也已足夠不道德。倘若一個完好的胴體叫人不敢直視，那麼，一具缺了一邊乳房、 添了一道瘡疤的身體，我們又會如何看待？她還完美嗎？她還是女人嗎？
事實是，社會並不會因一個人缺了性徵，便會停止投射在他／她身上的目光（gaze） 。 反之，正因為他／她在身體上的殘缺，令目光更能合理地停留在他／她身上。用以標籤病患 者的字眼，總是和「正常」 、 「完美」作二元對立，譬如「缺陷」 、「不完美」、「不正常」。在 權力的操作下，我們都只想當個「正常」的人。「不正常」叫我們不安，連患者自身也擺脫 不了將自己異化的目光。 〈浴室〉一文便有說：
「十八世紀法國的一個伯爵名叫比封的怎麼說呢？人和妖怪的分別是：第一 類是器官過多而形成的妖怪；第二類是器官欠缺而形成的妖怪，第三類是各 器官顛倒或錯置形成的妖怪。……我是妖怪，我失去一個乳房，也是器官欠 缺而形成的妖怪。」 （六九至七十）
在這將「正常」規範化了的社會，人人都被加諸了「有需要變得正常」的意識。於是， 人便會對各種機構服從。社會因而有序，商品因而暢銷。 〈湘蓮〉中談及的假髮、 〈東廠〉中 的義乳，正好反映了商業社會如何以「正常是種需要」作招徠，向病人推銷義乳、假髮。因
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為我們需要「正常」 ，所以我們服從、守法、購買、接受治療。
身體的自主性
社會的操縱叫我們有意無意修飾自己的身體，那麼，我們對身體還自主嗎？仔細思考， 我們的身體首先已被古老的基因所影響。我們從沒選擇良好基因的權利。在上千萬個基因秘 密背後，誰曉得哪一組會在哪時出問題？就如生活作息良好的人，也會莫名其妙地患癌症一 樣。這是本來潛藏在我們體內的不可知，使我們被天生的因素左右。
再者，身體又是被社會、常規與環境所支配。在科技進步的現代社會，此情況就更甚， 我們甚至被影響了也還是糊裡糊塗。誰說患癌症是毫無道理？看看〈可能的事〉，當中羅列 的致癌因素多得叫人吃驚：工廠的黑煙、廢氣、廢料、食物中的莧紅素、鮮藍素、靛黑素…… 而以上僅是外在因素中三十三項的其中六項，還未計算內在、遺傳、內分泌等因素。原來， 光是走到街上便足以叫我們患癌。在街上愉悅地閒逛、呼吸得理所當然的我們，有多少個會 在意？
再談與身體關系密切的食物。食物是組成肉身的材料、維持生命的基本元素。作者在全 書各處如〈數學時間〉 ，也展示了健康飲食的重要性。但，是否人人都能說清楚自己到底吃 了甚麼？眼前是一碗白飯的模樣，吃下去的也是白飯的味道；然而，白飯背後的成分、組成 結構、加工過程、進食後的化學作用，便未必人人在意。現代生產中，食物常被摻雜各種化 學品、色素、抗生素、人造糖精、氟、鉛、鎘、鈹等等，以添其色香味。因此，在進食之際， 我們也不知不覺把這些化學物都吃進肚子。而我們可能還以為它只是簡單一碗「白飯」 。
倘若身體出了毛病，那麼求醫的過程，亦同樣展示了我們對身體的不自主。在書中，縱 使作者在文學研究上深有見解，但在患癌過程中，也同樣顯得一無所知，只能依賴作為權威 的醫生。譬如〈庖丁〉一文，作者如此描述做手術的過程：
「護士一早就把膠布貼在我的腿上，替我褪下了衣袖，我聽見醫生用英文說 了要個『滴盤』，不知道是甚麼東西。……當我再眨眨眼睛，原來已經躺在 病房的床上，那是四個小時以後的事，手術做了兩個小時。」 （九六至九七）
由此可見，病人是被動的，他／她們的身軀只能通過醫生的治療，才能回復健康。醫生 所用的語言，例如英語、專業醫療用語，其實已將缺乏知識的病者排除在外；但他們討論的 身體狀況，卻的確是自己的。何以與自己有切身關系的事，我們竟只能如此的無知？作者聽
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懂英語，所以才曉得「滴盤」 ，但還是「不知道是甚麼東西」 ；知識一般的病人，大概只曉得 聽從指示，躺著「任人魚肉」 。
大概，身體的自主有很大程度都與知識的多少掛鉤。培根說： 「知識就是力量。」自主 的力量其實來自我們對一件事有多少認知、有多少著緊。因此，從今天起，好好看重肉身吧， 畢竟，這是我們靈魂的載體。
收結：肉身與靈魂
肉身之所以重要，是因為它是我們靈魂得以安頓的場所。在〈皮囊語言〉中提及： 「絕 對精神的科學既由藝術、宗教和哲學組成，其他的就被排斥貶低，誰還去注意自己的身體呢。」 人們總愛把身體與精神對立起來，非把身體與靈魂分割開來不行。在二元對立之下，身體是 污穢的，精神是崇高的；身體是腐朽的，精神是不朽的。自此，身體開始不為人所重視，有 時甚至是被鄙視。然而，沒有一個健康的身體，何處能安頓我們的靈魂？
且用作者在〈序〉中一句作結： 「所謂『哀悼』 ，其實含有往者不諫，來者可追，而期望 重生的意思。」生命，其實都是消亡與重生的過程，身體如是，思想如是。
祝願大家都有健康的身體，去實踐自己理想。
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
Dr. Esther M.K. Cheung 周耀輝 Prof. Katrien JACOBS Prof. Eva Man 鄧正健 羅玉華 Sonia Wong Miss Helena Wu Miss Julianne Yang Kelly Chui 林穎汶
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Society of Comparative Literature, A.A.H.K.U.S.U., Session 2012-2013
Executive Committee
Chairperson
Hui Chi Shun
Internal Vice Chairperson
Chiu Jessica Wing Man
External Vice Chairperson
Ho Wang Yuen (Alvin)
General Secretary
Lo Hoi Ching Janice
Financial Secretary and Social Secretary
Lee Chiu Yue (Yvonne)
Academic Secretary
Chui Man Sze (Kelly)
Publication Secretary
Lam Wing Man (Wilma)
Publicity Secretary
Chan Long Dung (Zoey)
Welfare Secretary
Cheung Chung Yan Vivian
Student Representative
Cheuk Kwun Yiu (Kelvin)
Date of publication: October 2013 Editor: Lam Wing Man (Contact: wiingman@hku.hk)
Contact of Society of Comparative Literature, A.A.H.K.U.S.U.: Address: Room 2A01, Fong Shu Chuen Amenities Centre, the University of Hong Kong Email: scomplit@hku.hk hkuscomplit@gmail.com Website: http://www.scomplit.hkusu.hku.hk/
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