• 作者： 蘇榕
• 作者服務機構： Department of English National Dong-hua University Hua-lien, Taiwan, R.O.C.
• 中文摘要： Midnight's Children is a novel about origin. Centering on Saleem's quest for his lineage and his erroneous narration of family and national histories, the novel deals with three interrelated themes: the quest for origin, the mockery of the idea of authenticity, and the imminent crisis of the emergent Third World nations. In interweaving imagination and distortion into the family anecdotes and historical events in India, the novel unfolds its plot along two axes: the personal/national longing for the Origin and the mockery of the adherence to authenticity. The ethics of authenticity, therefore, serves as the underlying structure of the novel. Emerging from the Enlightenment, the idea of authenticity is often linked to the metaphor of Origin, forming the powerful discursive practice of the Third World nation. In mimicking and parodying the idea of authenticity, Midnight's Children attempts to highlight the Third World nation's appropriation and expropriation of the ethics of authenticity. While appropriating the idea of authenticity to emphasize difference and the metaphor of Origin to strive for autonomy, the Third World nation has to confront a self-alienation in constructing the national subjectivity-the undeniable rift between its mimic reality and its local difference. Saleem's palimpsestual narration therefore implies this phenomenal rupture and the heterogeneity and overlapping nature of post-colonial culture and history. His unreliable narration creates a Foucauldian genealogical history, which destabilizes the "authentic history" by de/scribing the national history with critical memories. Midnight's Children uses Origin as a metaphor to unravel the Third World nation's struggle between adopting the legacy of modernity and longing for autonomy as well as its imminent crisis caused by the expropriation of the ethics of authenticity. In splitting the continuity of the official version of the national history with ruptured contradiction, Midnight's Children cultivates an "interstitial space" for the neglected heterogeneity of culture and history, creating a polyphonic world where different histories contest one another.
• 英文摘要： 午夜兒女》是一部有關起源的小說。藉由敘述者薩林穆‧西奈 (Saleem Sinai) 對血源、家族史，以及國家歷史謬誤的臆測，小說環繞三個主要議題：追溯起源、嘲弄真實性、第三世界新興國家的潛在危機。薩林穆以不可靠的敘述混雜自傳、想像、史實、杜撰、家族軼聞等，形成小說發展的兩條主軸：個人/國家尋覓起源的渴望；事實的曲解對真實性概念造成的嘲弄。真實性的道德 (the ethics of authenticity) 因而成為貫串小說的隱性議題。真實性的道德源自啟蒙時期，常與起源的隱喻相結合，成為第三世界新興國家有力的論述依據。藉由對真實性的模擬 (mimicry) 和嘲仿 (parody)，《午夜兒女》企圖凸顯第三世界國家對真實性的依賴和徵用。在以真實性強調差異、以起源強調自主的同時，第三世界國家論述面臨了國家主體建構的自我疏離──模擬的現實和強調差異間存在的裂縫。據此，小說以層層刮覆的敘述暗示文化、歷史的重疊軌跡和異質性。因此，薩林穆不可靠的敘述扮演了傅柯所謂反抗論述 (counter discourse) 的角色，以平民大眾的小寫歷史改寫了官方論述建構的大寫歷史，不僅重/解構「正史」，更以批判記憶提示真實性過度徵用的危機。《午夜兒女》以尋覓起源為隱喻，點出第三世界新興國家在繼承現代性(modernity) 遺產和尋求自主性間面臨的矛盾，以及以真實性的道德壓抑少數族裔文化造成的危機，以傅柯式的系譜史 (genealogical histories) 概念，在國家論述的隙縫間開闢異質論述，無疑踰越了線性歷史的單向度空間，創造了眾聲爭鳴 (polyphonic) 的小說世界。
• 中文關鍵字： origin; authenticity; nation; critical memories; narration；
• 英文關鍵字： 起源；真實性；國家；批判記憶；敘述