「分享獨白之際，正是時間的來臨」吳爾芙作品《波浪》中的列維納斯之他者時間

Abstract

本篇論文試探維吉尼亞‧吳爾芙，透過其作品《波浪》，勾勒出對時間意識 的向內深掘，不僅適切地回應了現代主義時間觀著眼於當下之封閉性，亦蘊涵了 倫理主題的根源。柏格森所謂的「沒有一件事是被遺忘的」，在在呈現了現代主 義的共時性想像，是如何地運作以抗衡其獨特的時間斷裂經驗；現代主義時間觀 因而展現於過去與現在的疊合、兩者時間差異的消弭。藉由勾勒倫理時間對非當 下、非現在事物的開放性格，吳爾芙所要回應的便是這樣一個為「這是此時此地」 之當下性所拖撈的時間結構。本文對吳爾芙時間觀之詮釋，步伍列維納斯的倫理 思維，指出兩者對「斷裂」概念的關注，終將體現對倫理時間的根本實踐。 在《波浪》中，共時性與異時性的張力總是併陳交疊。第一章引用列維納斯 的主要論點，界定吳爾芙的時間觀為（因）他者（而存在的）時間，不同人物皆 在當下成就了與他者的異時性時間關連：當下遂因他者的到來而迸裂。第二章則 試圖探究時間斷裂何以成為現代主義主體建構的一種隱喻力量，從此一面向出發 我們可以說，對吳爾芙而言，唯有透過對主體性的重新思索，才得以獲致對現代 主義斷裂時間的深刻理解。第三章藉由與儂西「死亡共同體」概念的相互參照， 論述吳爾芙對他者之死的關懷，具體地顯現了列維納斯所謂的「責任」倫理如何 必然地朝政治面向開展。因此，Percival 之死所揭露的真相無非是：倘若真有 也必須有一「共同體」的存在，它充其量只能是一「死亡共同體」------- 在其 中，除了死亡，我們毫無其他共同本質。

The goal of this study is to explain that for Virginia Woolf, time-consciousness, if properly approached, provides ethical sources that can serve as adequate responses to the modernist closure of the present moment. The time of modernism, for its Bergsonian assumption that “nothing is forgotten,” becomes a synchronous experience of discontinuity in which the temporal distinctions between past and present disappear. In response to this modernist preoccupation with the saying, “This is here and now,” Woolf attempts to trace some of the ethical moments of openness to the non-present in The Waves. Given an exposition of Levinas’s ethical thought, Woolf’s approach might be compared fruitfully to that of Levinas in their shared emphasis on the concept of interruption for their project of an ethical time. The tension between synchrony and diachrony is what is at stake in The Waves. Chapter one suggests that Woolf’s conception of time in this novel should be read as a time for the other. Read in light of Levinasian ethics, the characters achieve an ethical relation with the other in the present through the diachronic temporality. In Chapter two, my contention then is that, since temporal interruption has long been used as a metaphor in the formation of modernist subjectivity, it is thus viable to argue that the only way to confront the violent interruption of modernist time is through a rethinking of subjectivity. With its theoretic route through Jean-Luc Nancy’s idea of “a community of finitude,” in the third chapter, it will be demonstrated that Woolf’s attention to death of the others can therefore be read as instantiating a Levinasian ethics of responsibility which offers a passage to the political. In this sense, what Percival’s death uncovers is that if there is any community, it can only be a community of death where “we” have nothing in common, except our own mortality.