"Feeling the Space" by Yoko Ono

At YOKO ONO: Lumière de l'aube (Musée d'art contemporain de Lyon, 16/04/2016)

        A man came up to me and said "May I shake hands with the hand that shook hands with John Lennon?" 

        I said, "Well, we've done a lot of things in our time but we haven't got around to doing that yet . . . so what are you going to do about that?" 

        He just mumbled, sort of, and shook my hand anyway. Hey, yoke, yoke, yoyo, yoho! A is for Anger, B is for Brute, C is for Cunning, D is for Death. Actually, I'm a Lenny Bruce married to Greta Garbo, if you must know. Two people in love never shake hands. 

        The shortest distance between two dots is a direct line. Direct line is out of order. Snow in New York City—in our heads. Central Park is still summer. The air smells wise and tender. It surrounds me without giving me any pressure—like a kind friend. It makes me feel innocent again. 

         I was never able to get hold of my mother without touching her manicure and fur. My father had a huge desk in front of him that separated us permanently. There was always such a space around me. I would play sitting in the deep gaps between tall and fat chairs. I never liked ringing the service bell because it often made me realize that there was nobody at the other end. 

         In the middle of the night I wake up in the dark. Is this Tokyo, London, where is it? It doesn't seem to matter as long as it's on this globe. Would I care if it was on the moon? Yes, I think I would be lonelier then though I don't know why. Sometimes the moon looks closer than Tokyo. What would happen if I called my mother now. Would I hit her manicure again?

■

         The phone is glowing in the dark like an entrance to a mysterious space. Is there anything that is real I would hit if I reached into space through that wire? Shall I call my cousin? What time is it in Paris? I might wake up the woman he is with. Curse the day when I was taught to be considerate—it's so much like death. But that was decades ago. Now there's nobody in Paris to call. 

         I think of this friend and that friend. I want to call them and tell them how beautiful they are, how much I love them, how much I care for them . . . and, that when I said this, I actually meant that. What I really wanted to say was . . . but I just couldn't . . . and if I had . . if I had . . .

         Why is calling somebody such a difficult thing to do? They say if you write your thoughts down on paper you don't have to send it. They get the message anyway. Shall I do that? I doze off for awhile. I'm up again at dawn. I feel something strange is happening that I can't put my finger on. At the breakfast table, I find that one of the friends I wished to call had died during the night. What if I had called and spoken to her? Would it have changed anything? Things that I wanted to tell her . . . they'll never be resolved now. Never is a long time. Maybe death has resolved it all. 

         Don't leave me words, they haunt me. Leave me your coat to keep me warm. I like secondhand clothes because that is like wearing a person. 

         I miss you. I've written twenty letter to you in my mind but never mailed them. Anyway, I don't know your address. I don't even know your name. And if you do exist, why should you care about me? —an electric fan. 

         A musician came up to me and said he was very glad to work with me, because he liked foreigners. 

         "Foreigners?"

         "I mean, foreign people, specially the Oriental people." 

          I was going to snap back and say, "Well, I like to work with foreigners, too," but then the whole thing suddenly hit me as being so funny, and I just said something to thank him for liking to work with foreigners. It's hard to remember about you slanted eyes and your skin in the melting pot of a recording session, but I suppose that is the first thing that hits them when they try to communicate. "That Jap. you never know what she's thinking.” Next time you meet a "foreigner," remember it's only like a window with a little different shape to it and the person who's sitting inside is you. Anyway, in my mind I'm a singing Sylvia Plath, half her head out of the gas stove still looking for a pencil to write her last beauty. 

          In the evening I watch the city lights from my apartment that hangs in the air, and become overwhelmed with the incredibility of it all. Behind each shining dot, there is a room, an apartment, a person or people who are all having a life show of their own. Every person's life can be a book thicker than an encyclopaedia and still you couldn't explain all that they took to survive. I would probably not meet even one-thousandth of those people. The odds of not meeting in this life are so great that every meeting is like a miracle. It's a wonder that we don't make love to every single person we meet in our life. We take meetings like riding a cab. You know that you would probably never meet the driver again. Yet if the car crashed, that driver is the person you are going to die with. In fact, your life is in the driver's hands while you're in the car. But when you get to the destination, you give a bit of metal and slam the door behind you.   

■

          When I'm on the stage, I freak out thinking about the strangeness of the gathering. In four hours or so all the seats would be empty again. In ten years nobody would remember that these people were here, or it wouldn't matter to anybody. In a hundred years, they would all be dead. 

          People say that for the last five years I had been a hate object of the world. It was sort of fashionable to put me down. You don't hurt me though, because I know you and I love you. I can take hatred, because I don't believe that people are capable of real hate. We are too lonely for that. We vanish too quickly for that. Do you ever hate a cloud? How could anyone hate people who are on their deathbeds? That's where we all are since the day of birth. 

          Hate is just an awkward way of love. We spit on people when we want to kiss them. We hit them when we only want to be held. We talk about misunderstanding and hurt. But how could we hurt or misunderstand each other when we are so much alike, when we are the only people who share this world for this decade, this year, this day, under the same sky? Deep down inside, and far outside, none of us really misunderstand anything. We don't miss a trick. We know. But we all pretend, to ourselves and to others, that we don't. 

          All we have to do is admire each other and love each other twenty four hours a day until we vanish. That's what we really want to do. The rest is just foreplay to get to that.

          "I told 'er she should quit working' now, ya naw, now that she's married. An' you know what that bitch said, she said, 'would you quit working if you ever got married?' I mean, what's gonna 'appen to the music industry?" In my mind I'm really an eternal sphinx. 

          Shake my hand for what it's worth. There is a wind that never dies. 

(Published in The New York Times, August 24, 1973) 

超譯阿岡本之一：〈電影史上最美的六分鐘〉

        桑丘.潘沙走進一間鄉下小鎮的電影院。他尋找著唐吉軻德，發現其獨自一人坐在影廳一頭，眼睛直盯著大銀幕。廳內近乎滿座，上方酷似一個巨大包廂的樓廳則擠滿喧鬧的孩子。桑丘多次試著接近唐吉軻德。無法。不得已他只好在影廳內先坐下來，旁邊坐著一個請他吃棒棒糖（是杜希內亞？）的小女孩。電影已經開始：是一齣古裝劇，在銀幕上我們可以看到帶著武器的騎士奔來赴去。突然間，一位女子出現了，她身處絕境。唐吉軻德唰地一聲站直起來，拔劍出鞘後便衝向銀幕開始劃破布幕。此時，我們仍然看得到銀幕上的女子與騎士，但那被唐吉軻德的劍所割開的漆黑裂隙卻依然不斷擴大並終以無可挽回之勢吞噬了影像。最後，銀幕上再也沒有任何東西：我們只看得到背後支撐的木造結構。觀眾們紛紛憤而離席，但樓廳上的孩子們依然興奮地鼓譟著唐吉軻德。唯一只有影廳裡的那個小女孩以斥責似的眼神瞪著他。

        究竟該拿我們的幻想怎麼辦呢？愛它、信它直到毀滅並扭曲它的地步（這或許就是歐森. 威爾斯電影的意義）。但終究也只有在幻想揭示自身的空乏與不滿，只有在其向我們顯露出那構其所成的虛無之時，我們才可能償清認識真相得付出的代價，並理解到多希內亞—那個我們所拯救的多希內亞—不可能愛我們。



註：原文收錄於Martin Rueff的譯本：Giorgio Agamben, Profanations, Payot & Rivages, 2005。因為還不懂義大利文（卻有強烈的翻譯阿岡本的慾望），只得從法文來下手，是為超譯。

«À quoi sert la publicité?»: Une petite réflexion d’après Debord et Benjamin

Antonioni, Zabriskie Point (1970)

           À quoi sert la publicité? C’est une question difficile à répondre dans la mesure où l'on peut vraisemblablement avoir deux réponses complètement contraires à ce sujet: tout, ou rien, dépendant de nos idéologies et des lieux d’où l'on regarde. Comme tout le monde le sait, la société de notre époque est implacablement marquée par une totalité des pratiques et des croyances intriquées, c’est-à-dire le système capitaliste. Selon l’analyse de Marx, la première caractéristique d’une modalité capitaliste, c’est une introduction d’une rupture dans des objets séparés désormais par sa «valeur d’usage» et sa «valeur d’échange», ce qui nous ramène à la séparation entre l’homme et son travail et, finalement, à sa propre aliénation. Et c’est dans cette perspective que l’on peut comprendre mieux le rôle significatif que joue la publicité dans notre société capitaliste. Tandis que le système capitaliste industriel du XVIIIe siècle qu’analyse Marx introduit dans le processus de la production une rupture entre les ouvriers et ses travaux, maintenant le capitalisme médiatique— avec son dispositif total qui consiste en le journal, le radio, la télé et finalement l’Internet— vient envahir complètement le processus de la consommation tout en y introduisant une autre rupture, séparant ainsi une nouvelle sphère purement spectaculaire qui est, cependant, radicalement sans aucun usage, à savoir celui de la publicité. 

         Concernant ce point, le lecteur peut demander: «Qu’importe qu’il y a des pubs partout, si je n’en regarde jamais sérieusement à la télé, ou bien si je ne tombe pas jamais dans son piège et en consomme?» Mais tout comme le système capitaliste ne consiste pas simplement en des pratiques réglées par la logique du marché, mais aussi en une certaine croyance théologique, utilitariste et hyper-optimiste (on pense dans ce cas au concept du « rêve américain » et l'observation de Walter Benjamin que le capitalisme est une seule religion «sans trêve et sans merci»), de la même manière le piège ultime de la publicité ne se situe pas aux expositions des marchandises extérieures de nous mais plutôt aux un culte et une culture des « exhibitions » intériorisées par des hommes. Le CV, par exemple, est un des meilleurs exemplaires de la publicité intérieure que fait l’homme à lui-même. Quiconque a fait l’expérience d’écrire un CV, il est évident qu’il doit arriver à un point où il ne peut que mentir un peu, où il éprouve à  contrecœur un besoin de se présenter mieux en se conformant au format prescrit. Ce qui est ironique là, c’est que les patrons à qui des CV sont destinés, eux aussi, savent aussi bien que les solliciteurs ne peuvent jamais coïncider avec les images crées par leurs CVs. Ainsi, le format de CV se transforme en un règle autonome, une performance dépouillée de aucun sens possible qui est, pourtant, nécessaire pour sa seule exhibition et sa présentation pure. Et en fait, ce «règle CV» ne se confine pas dans le monde d'emploi mais, aujourd’hui, on a déjà constaté sa ramification partout dans notre vie quotidienne: sur Facebook, où on doit «uploader» toutes les meilleures photos de ce que l’on fait et de nous-mêmes afin de séduire les gens; ou bien sur Couchsurfing, où on doit également se présenter (sinon se vendre) comme une marchandise charmante pour que quiconque puisse nous accueillir et nous recueillir. En somme, la sphère spectaculaire de la publicité comprend non seulement les pubs au sens littéral, mais tout ce qui existe en prenant comme sa raison d’être une pure valeur d’exposition et qui, surtout, exhibe toujours précisément ce qui lui manque. 

          Maintenant, on comprend enfin pourquoi la publicité peut servir en même temps à tout et à rien. Elle ne sert à rien parce que, si l’on a raison dans notre analyse susdite, la publicité est, par définition, ce qui ne possède absolument aucun usage en soi et qui, comme le CV, présente cependant toujours son propre néant comme un grand spectacle inexorable. Néanmoins, c’est exactement grâce au spectacle de la publicité— cette création ex nihilo— que le capitalisme de notre époque peut trouver son moteur au cours de se transformer en une «société du spectacle» totale. En ce sens, la sphère de la publicité sert à tout, puisque  le capitalisme ne survit pas sans le spectacle inutile. Et c’est pourquoi, en décidant une réponse à la question «À quoi sert la publicité?», nous choisissons aussi le sens de nos vies, car, finalement, le choix est entre la lucidité et le capitalisme, entre la résistance (quelles que soient les manières) et la soumission et entre l’homme et le mur. 

"Essayez donc de tousser, maintenant!"

ANTOINE: Lorsque j'ai ouvert la portière, votre mari vivait encore... et il a dit... Je n'arrive pas à comprendre. Il a dit: "Essayez donc de tousser, maintenant..."

Julie le regarde attentivement, un instant, puis commence à rire. Elle ne peut plus s'arrêter. Antoine la regarde sans comprendre. Julie, riant encore, lui explique.

JULIE: Mon mari était en train de nous raconter une histoire drôle. C'est l'histoire d'une femme qui va chez le médecin, elle tousse, elle tousse, elle ne peut plus s'arrêter. Le médecin lui donne une pilule: "Voilà exactement ce qu'il vous faut." La femme avale le cachet. "Qu’est-ce que c'est?" demande‑t‑elle. "C'est le laxatif le plus puissant que la médecine connaisse actuellement" répond le médecin. "Un laxatif, contre la toux?" demande la femme, étonnée. "Oui", répond le médecin, "Essayez donc de tousser, maintenant." Ça nous a fait rire. Au même moment, la voiture a rebondi...

La chute de l'histoire fait sourire Antoine. Julie se fait sérieuse.

JULIE: Mon mari faisait partie de ces gens qui racontent toujours la chute deux fois...

 —Krzysztof Kieslowski et Krzysztof Piesiewicz, Trois Couleurs: Bleu (1993)

哀悼的倫理與恐懼的義務：巴黎自殺恐攻事件下的危命

        “One way of posing the question of who “we” are in these times of war is by asking whose lives are considered valuable, whose lives are mourned, and whose lives are considered ungrievable. We might think of war as dividing populations into those who are grievable and those who are not. An ungrievable life is one that cannot be mourned because it has never lived, that is, it has never counted as a life at all. We can see the division of the globe into grievable and ungrievable lives from the perspective of those who wage war in order to defend the lives of certain communities, and to defend them against the lives of others—even if it means taking those latter lives."

—Judith Butler, Frames of War: When Is Life Grievable?

        "If something like a demonic element survives in the world of [Kafka and Robert Walser], it is rather in the form Spinoza may have had in mind when he wrote that the devil is only the weakest of creatures and the most distant from God; as such, it can not do us harm, but on the contrary it is what most needs our help and our prayers. It is, in every being that exists, the possibility of not-being that silently calls for our help (or, if you wish, the devil is nothing other than divine impotence or the power of not-being in God.) Evil is only our inadequate reaction when faced with this demonic element, our fearful retreat from it in order to exercise—founding ourselves in this flight—some power of being. Impotence or the power to not-be is the root of evil only in this secondary sense. Fleeing from our own impotence, or rather trying to adopt it as a weapon, we construct the malevolent power that oppresses those who show us their weakness; and failing our innermost possibility of not-being, we fall away from the only thing that makes love possible. Creation—or existence—is not the virtuous struggle of a power to be against a power to not-be; it is rather the impotence of God with respect to his own impotence, his allowing—being able to not not-be—a contingency to be. Or rather: It is the birth in God of love."

—Giorgio Agamben, The Coming Community

        因為上上週五（13/11）發生的巴黎自殺攻擊事件，在這裡先和大家報一聲有些晚的平安：謝謝大家的關心，我很好，依然在被我戲稱為「冷酷異境」的里爾安靜地進行學士厚顏咎。然而其實從星五晚上回到家消息開始進來後我就感到非常恐懼—尤其當自己事發前的一個週末才在巴黎，甚至下榻的青旅就在鄰近恐怖攻擊的第十區的同時; 我不禁要想：如果策動者把計劃提前了一個星期，如果我不小心把車票錯訂成了下一週，又如果當天在 Le Bataclan 開演唱會的不是 Eagles of Death Metal 而是 Damien Rice，那麼很可能那就是毫無中介地直接發生在自己身上的事，而大概我也不再能夠在這邊奢侈地想著關於自己的任何事了罷—於是我感到恐懼。然而這裡的問題除了我的恐懼之外，我想更重要的還在此自身的恐懼如何可能穿越個體存有的疆界延伸到他者（從吶喊「我的恐懼」到呼喚「我們的恐懼」），在於這新擴張、新劃出的「我們」的邊境何在（誰將屬於那之中，以及誰已然被排除於此看似普世的恐懼吶喊），更在於這「我們的恐懼」是否終究也會成為某種力量—就如同大家對巴黎的祈禱與哀悼終究也會成為某種力量一樣。如同文章的最後我會復述的，對於恐懼的肯認其實就是一種言說「我們」之行為、一種形塑共同體的想像：它使人們更切身地見證傷者、亡者與創痛本身（雖然同時必須認識到要無限地貼近直至完全見證終究是不可能）也同時在在提醒著我們任何（包括哀悼在內）言說的行為從來不僅僅是一項能力，更是一種義務 ： I speak not because I can—but because I must. 

        因此在這裡首先想提出來討論的恰好就是關於臺灣 Facebook 平台上祈禱/哀悼的問題。如同大家都知道的，在攻擊事件的新聞消息與死傷人數逐漸開始穩定後，我們首先看到來自世界各國的 Facebook 使用者貼出註有 Pray for Paris 的相片或文字，而同時 Facebook 作為平台本身也提供替大頭貼加上法國三色國旗濾鏡的服務以示支持與祈福。然而也就在這裡我們開始看到 Facebook 上輿論的聲音（至少很明確地在臺灣）漸漸出現分歧：一方面，我們看到一則則以「你關心巴黎為什麼不去關心其他（特別是發生在第三世界的）攻擊/屠殺」為形式對 Pray for Paris參與者的批判，試圖指出其行動在西方中心主義與權力、傳媒資源極度不對稱等條件下產生的局限性與矛盾; 而在另一方面，我們同時也聽到更多對此一批判的反思，也就是正面肯認 Pray for Paris 參與者的祈福多半來自直接的「同情共感」（https://www.facebook.com/prof.chungilin/posts/1664697753778329），或者反過來進一步質疑批評者在談論Pray for Paris時嘲笑或譏諷的口吻，認為其批判自詡來自一道德制高點，然本質無非一種文青的「為反對而反對」罷了—那並無助於事，且他們才是此輿論角力中真正偽善的一群。

        的確，以嘲笑與譏諷的口吻談論 Pray for Paris 並不妥當，好似事件本身的創痛還不夠，我們還要用語言的暴力在其傷口上撒鹽一般。然而在另一方面我希望提出的疑問則是：是否只要真誠地發自內心，「同情共感」，在 Facebook 上 Pray for Paris 真的就是他人無從置喙的？是否的確只要我喜歡替自己的頭貼加上三色濾鏡，沒有任何人有資格從所謂「道德的制高點」對我指三道四？事實上我絲毫不這麼認為。我不這麼認為因為，首先，在 Facebook 此一（理論上）開放的公共平台上祈禱、哀悼就必然是一種帶有政治性的宣言。這裡的政治性指的並非是說公開祈禱或哀悼就代表支持或直接影響了特定政/霸權或民族/主權國家在國際政治上的角力; 相對地，我想強調的只是其內包的公眾、社會、與感性分享的特性：一則又一則的貼文不但一方面加強巴黎自殺攻擊事件的曝光率，另一方面它們也一再地以「我們」為主格形塑一想像共同體的發聲 （「我們」與巴黎同在、「我們」譴責恐怖攻擊、Je suis [Nous sommes] Paris、“We” are all humans、La solidarité entre “nous” etc.）。 從這個觀點看來，Pray for Paris 就是一個具有影響我們每個人感知、詮釋所身處之世界方式，並使參與者逐漸歸屬於一「我們」的同一社群想像的政治事件，也因此其也無可避免地將帶出一個問題：當「我們」祈禱與哀悼的同時，究竟誰屬於這個「我們」，而誰又已然無聲地被排除在此「我們」的想像秩序之外？

        而若回過頭來再進一步思考 Pray for Paris 的祈福與哀悼儀式，我們也會發現所有公開祈禱與哀悼的行為本身也必然是複數與政治的，因為其機制內皆已預設了他者的介入，並揭示我們的共在存有中個體與他者間必然的依存關係。以基督教的祈禱為例，祈禱永遠是向一絕對且不可知的他者—也就是上帝—的祈禱（而就算是從佛教觀點來看，祈禱也必然是對眾生—超乎一己甚至超乎人類社群範疇之外的所有他者—持有悲心的祈禱 [https://www.facebook.com/ngawangjungney721/posts/1095250863820688]）; 換言之，我們的祈禱從來不只屬於自己，而當他者的異質性透過祈禱進入每一個體的瞬間，其彰顯的不僅僅是我與他者間根本的依存關係，更重要的還有我對其必得肩負的倫理責任：因為當我禱告的同時，他者也正透過祈禱將其存有赤裸裸地暴露在我的面前。相似地，我們同樣知道「公開哀悼」的儀式從古希臘開始就一直是一個具有重大政治意義的問題：Antigone公開哀悼自己弟弟Polynices死亡的行為本身就已然帶有足以顛覆城邦社會律法的政治力量。而我的重點是，既然公眾哀悼與祈禱的儀式必然是一具有政治性的倫理議題，我們當然有義務回過頭來檢視那些最初推動我們如此行動之情感（即使它們感覺再怎麼直觀）與附加於其之上的價值判斷（即使那樣似乎有些教條），因為所有我們發自內心的真實感受必然是受到ㄧ公眾且既定的詮釋框架所歸範，而相對地每一則在 Facebook上的公開貼文、哀悼、或祈禱也在在以其方式鞏固或重塑了此認知結構的運作。我們也因此看到 Pray for Paris 與 Judith Butler 所謂「道德反饋的政治」（the politics of moral responses）間緊密的關聯性： 「我們的道德反饋—那些首先以情動力出現的反應—事實上暗自被某些詮釋的框架所管制 . . . 我們所感受到的有部份是被我們詮釋身邊世界的方式所制約，而我們如何去詮釋自己所感知的事物能夠（且也的確）改變了我們的感受本身」（“that our moral responses—responses that first take form as affect—are tacitly regulated by certain kinds of interpretive frameworks [. . . ,] that what we feel is in part conditioned by how we interpret the world around us; that how we interpret what we feel actually can and does alter the feeling itself.”）。

        講得更明確一點，「同情共感」也許能部份正當化 Pray for Paris 貼文的動機，但它卻絕不應（也不可能）將其徹底地去政治化。 所以回到我們最初的提問：Facebook 上諸多對 Pray for Paris 的批判真的只是酸民毫無建設性的廢文或文青無能的「為反而反」嗎？我的答案應該是否定的。必須明確指出的是，其批評縱使缺乏同理心、縱然過於嚴苛、又或者自詡站在道德的制高點，但它們的確具備了以下兩個重要的倫理與政治意義（就算言說批判的批判者自身也許並不自覺）：

1. 透過批判 Pray for Paris 祈禱對象的局限，我們某種程度便顛覆了臺灣網民下意識悅納歐美國家「我們」共同體的同一性平滑想像。事實上，唯有透過這樣無限擾動「我們」觀念組成的過程，祈禱哀悼中「他者」的倫理向度— Levinas所謂的「基進他異性」(radical alterity)—才真正有可能出現。誠如 Butler在文中解釋的，「『我們』的觀念無法（也不可能）辨明自身，因為它最初便是斷裂的，是被他異性擾動的 . . . 而其義務事實上恰好正是去干擾任何確立鞏固『我們』觀念的事物」（“the ‘we’ does not, and cannot, recognize itself, that it is riven from the start, interrupted by alterity . . . and the obligations ‘we’ have are precisely those that disrupt any established notion of the we’）。更簡化一點，也許我們可以說：真正的祈禱永遠沒有明確對象，或說總以無對象本身作為其終極對象（我們知道有明確目的、對象與條件的祈禱不叫祈禱，叫賄賂）—是批判者的發聲讓我們看清了這一點。
2. 事實上，「你關心巴黎為什麼不去關心其他攻擊/屠殺」的批判不單單只破壞或搗亂了「我們」的預設秩序，他們同時更明確道出了那些原被排除在「我們」想像之外之他者的身分與姓字：敘利亞、巴勒斯坦、黎巴嫩貝魯特、土耳其安卡拉、肯亞‥‥‥。正是透過這樣建設性的反思過程，「我們」的共同體才得以不斷增補、不斷重塑而彰顯其悅納異己的倫理向度，至此其觀念模型也才終將從一反射性、匿名、便宜行事的單數「我（們）」（On） [Adorno: “To say ‘we’ and mean ‘I’ is one of the most recondite insults.”] 逐漸過渡至反思且具備獨立個體意識的複數的「我們」（Nous）。 

            最後，當 M. Hollande 在攻擊事件後立即宣布發動「毫無悲憫」（impitoyable）的戰爭（而隨後我們也馬上看到法/美軍轟炸後敘利亞滿目瘡痍的圖片）時，我想我們對攻擊事件的討論就無論如何不能只停留在「對 Pray for Paris 批判是否語帶譏諷」或「我換 Facebook 頭貼屬於我私人的權利與否」的層次。 相對地，藉由檢視巴黎自殺恐攻事件的討論—透過認清祈禱的限制、反思可與無可哀悼的生命與揭露其儀式中「我們」之共同體的實踐—我們必須更進一步看到的是語言與生命的政治如何透過社群的想像緊密地聯繫在一起，而本應平等存在的生命又如何在一既定輿論的詮釋框架裡暗自被區分為「非常活著」（“very much alive”）及「可疑地活著」（“questionably alive”）兩種，就如同異質的「他者」也逐漸被分流劃定為「那些我們生活所仰賴的他者」（因此幾近喪失他者所能帶進的倫理他異性）及「那些威脅我們的生活的他者」（至此他者不再為人，不再被視為擁有平等故事或至少生命的獨立個體）。這是一個重要的問題因為，如同 Butler 所述，「如果戰爭（或至少當前的戰爭）仰賴並持續將生命分割為那些值得捍衛、珍視、或哀悼的（當其失去生命時）以及那些稱不太上生命、不太有價值、不太可辨明、或者（沒錯）不太能被哀悼的，那麼那些不可哀悼的生命的死亡必然會在那些理解到自身生命並不被視為完整或有意義的人們的心中產生無比巨大的憤怒」（“But if war or, rather, the current wars, rely on and perpetuate a way of dividing lives into those that are worth defending, valuing, and grieving when they are lost, and those that are not quite lives, not quite valuable, recognizable or, indeed, mournable, then the death of ungrievable lives will surely cause enormous outrage on the part of those who understand that their lives are not considered to be lives in any full and meaningful sense.”）。

        而事實上，這也正是為什麼我通篇文章始終堅持並置「恐怖攻擊」與「自殺攻擊」來指稱巴黎攻擊事件的原因。沒錯：ISIS（Daech）是恐怖組織，他們發動的是「恐怖攻擊」也毋庸置疑（且我們不應也無法以西方霸權的暴力與壓迫來正當或合理化其行為）。但當攻擊事件中八名嫌犯之中有七名引彈自殺（另外一名遭警察擊斃：我們可以合理推斷若非警力的介入其大約也將以相同的犯行手法自殺），這很明顯地就是攻擊者枉顧自身的自殺攻擊。而以「自殺攻擊」將其稱呼，我們肯認的最終也不過就是他們同樣身為人，同樣曾是活生生、血淋淋的八條生命的事實—這並不因他們犯下的罪行或他們的信仰多麼極端有所改變。而也只有在此時—只有理解到不只受害者，其實加害者也同樣是生命，也因此同樣可能屬於以「我們」為名所行之祈禱與哀悼的共同體想像之中時—我們才能看見我們的恐懼在根本上為何物：我們恐懼，因為我們都是脆弱不安的危命，因為我們不只有被毀滅更有毀滅他者的能力—而正是此凝視深淵時「墜落」與「成為怪物」夾縫間的（不）存在使我們恐懼。如此巨大的恐懼可能帶領我們走向兩種截然不同的反應：我們可以選擇以同樣（甚至更強）的力量還擊以逃避那恐懼內包的不存在與不確定性（也就是的確讓自身成為怪物）; 又或者，我們可以堅持站定，定睛凝視那盪在空中的、自身與他者共享的脆弱的危命。我們能做的也許並不太多，但我們可以呼喊，可以哀悼，可以言說，可以祈禱—而唯有在肯認自身恐懼、言說他者死亡的同時，我們才真正有超越深淵之所以為深淵，恐怖攻擊之所以恐怖的報復邏輯的希望。

註：

1. 文中對 Judith Butler 的引用來自其在Verso網站上發表的文章 “Judith Butler: Precariousness and Grievability—When Is Life Grievable?” [http://www.versobooks.com/blogs/2339-judith-butler-precariousness-and-grievability-when-is-life-grievable]
2. 「厚顏咎」一詞雙關語的用法來自黃崇凱的小說，《壞掉的人》
3. “I speak because I can” 的說法來自 Laura Marling 第一張專輯的名稱與其同名歌曲 〈I Speak Because I Can〉。
4. 法文裡的兩種「我們」—匿名的 “On” 與個體化的 “Nous”—之倫理區分來自Gérard Wormser, Sartre: Violence et éthique: « Tout le poids de la question morale chez Sartre tient à l’effort pour rendre effectif le Nous personnalisant à la place de l’annonymat du On » (30).
5. Adorno的引用來自 Minima Moralia: Reflections on a Damaged Life (190).
6. 深淵與怪物的寓言來自尼采: « Celui qui lutte contre les monstres doit veiller à ne pas le devenir lui-même. Or, quand ton regard pénètre longtemps au fond d’un abîme, l'abîme, lui aussi, pénètre en toi » (Par-delà le bien et le mal, VI [146] ). 

Hemingway, Pascin and the Dark Girl

Jules Pascin, "Girl with a Doll" (ink/watercolor)

"Look," Pascin said. "if you think I'm in love with canvases, I'll paint you tomorrow in water colors."

"When do we eat?" her sister asked. "And where?"

"Will you eat with us?" the dark girl asked. 

"No. I go to eat with my légitime." That's what they said then. Now they say "my régulière." 

"You have to go?" 

"Have to and want to."

"Go on, then," Pascin said. And don't fall in love with typewriting paper."

"If I do, I will write with a pencil."

"Water colors tomorrow," he said. "All right, my children, I will drink another and then we eat where you wish." 

"Chez Viking," the dark girl said. 

"Me too," her sister urged. 

"All right," Pascin agreed. "Good night, jeune homme. Sleep well."

"You too." 

"They keep me awake," he said. "I never sleep."

"Sleep tonight." 

"After Chez Les Vikings?" He grinned with his hat on the back of his head. He looked more like a Broadway character of the Nineties than the lovely painter that he was, and afterwards, when he had hanged himself, I liked to remember him as he was that night at the Dôme. They say the seeds of what we will do are in all of us, but it always seemed to me that in those who make jokes in life the seeds are covered with better soil with a higher grade of manure. (103-4)

—Ernest Hemingway, "With Pascin at the Dôme" from A Moveable Feast (1964)

Metonymy, Taishun

"I know what to do with the play now.I have an idea. I think if everyone--"

So I used to date this girl who's a painter. 

Now, you know what people always say. "Don't get too involved with artists. Finally they are just unbearable" or "The more beautiful their art is the messier they will be"--those are kind of the phrases. But you know what's interesting? In my case, certainly the gap is there--I mean, that supposedly irredeemable gap between art and life--but somehow I just enjoyed it. I really did! I mean, Dog, how I loved to watch her struggle with pieces and pieces of paper torn from her scrapbooks, getting the room all dirty and herself all moody just to get the touch of a stroke right. . . And the point is--despite all this messiness and awkwardness during the process--at the end of the day, it still did not prevent me from admiring her works or being touched by them, y'know? In fact, not only wasn't the charm--this "aura" or "mana" as they call it--diminished in the slightest from her final pieces, but, on the contrary, I've always felt that something more--something magic even--was being added up to them and that, exactly because I was there in almost every aspect of her life, this something belonged to me alone, y'know? It's like, among the seven billion people in this crazy world of ours, I am the only one who actually witnesses her secret mutation from the scruffiest to the purest, from the most quotidian of life to the most earth-shattering of art, y'know?

And finally I remember thinking to myself that, perhaps, that's the point of art, and perhaps that's why we cannot but keep creating it. It's not life itself--it can never be life itself, it always falls short--yet neither is it simply not life. Rather, I'd imagine what matters is this infinitely close yet minutely distant connection we create between art and life, see? It makes you think. It gives you an idea of man's potentiality and transformation. 

It's this very gap between "the chaos of life" and "the beauty of art" that shows us what, as finite human beings, we aspire and are capable of.