115 年 國立中央大學英美語文學系碩士班《文化與文學分析》
第 1 題
國立中央大學 115 學年度碩士班考試入學試題
系所: 英美語文學系碩士班不分組(一般生)
科目: 文化與文學分析
*本科考試禁用計算器
Essay Question: Please carefully read the following passage and explain, in your own words, what the main idea is, paying particular attention to autobiography as a literary mediation of liberalism in relation to the paradoxical effects concerning slavery and emancipation. (100%)
"The canonization of Equiano's text as the first autobiography in English by an enslaved African produces a structural paradox in which its elevation as a paradigm for liberal freedom has often involved the burial of the more complex currents of the transatlantic world on which that freedom rests. The intense social value accorded the autobiographical genre illustrates how liberal emancipation required a literary narrative of the self-authoring autonomous individual to be distilled out of the heteronomous collective subjectivity of colonial slavery. This is as much a literary critical question of how the autobiography is interpreted—whether we read it as a fluid story of a unitary author's successful development of reason, sentiment, industry, and freedom, or whether we read for the ellipses, interruptions, contradictory shifts in voice or tempo that sur- round particular episodes as it is a historiographical matter of which archives, events, temporalities and geographies will be privileged in the situating of Equiano's story. Moreover, it asks us to consider how liberalism requires mediation through an aesthetic form that encourages readers to understand the emancipation of the individual as if it were a collective emancipation. As the autobiographical subject writes his life, and comes to possess the meaning of slavery as his own "past," the genre does the work of subjugating the history of the collective enslaved within a regulative temporality in which slavery is only legible as a distant origin out of which the free modern subject can emerge. As such, autobiography, a genre of liberal political narrative that affirms individual right, may precisely contribute to the "forgetting" of the collective subject of colonial slavery, a heteronomous subaltern collectivity necessary to colonial slavery and its abolition. When abolitionists like Wilberforce promoted Equiano's tale of individual liberty as the representative slave narrative, the exemplary qualities selected to illustrate the humanity of the slave may have subsumed the persistence of slavery, for those still in bondage at the time of the autobiography, as well as for those who would be 'emancipated' in the aftermath. The exemplary tale of individual freedom had the power to defer the larger scale transformation of slavery as a collective condition in the empire."
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這是一道典型的文化與文學分析考題，要求考生閱讀一篇關於 Equiano 的自傳文本如何在中介自由主義、奴隸制與解放的過程中產生矛盾效應的學術論述，並用自己的話解釋其主旨。重點在於分析「自傳」這個文學體裁如何在自由主義的脈絡下，處理「個人解放」與「集體解放」之間的張力，以及這種處理方式可能帶來的歷史遺忘。
核心觀念：
- 自傳作為自由主義的中介（Autobiography as a Mediation of Liberalism）： 自由主義強調個體權利、自主性與理性。自傳作為一種文學形式，特別是關於「被解放者」的自傳，恰好能體現這些自由主義的理想，將個體從奴隸制的束縛中解放出來，成為一個「自我賦權的個體」（self-authoring autonomous individual）。
- 文學體裁的結構性矛盾（Structural Paradox of the Genre）： 文本指出，Equiano 的自傳被「經典化」（canonization）為英語世界第一部奴隸自傳，並成為「自由的典範」（paradigm for liberal freedom），但這種「個人解放」的敘事，卻可能「埋葬」（burial）了跨大西洋奴隸貿易及其背後更複雜的歷史現實。
- 個人解放敘事 vs. 集體解放敘事（Individual vs. Collective Emancipation）： 自由主義傾向於將重點放在個體解放，而自傳體裁也特別適合講述一個個體的奮鬥與成長。然而，奴隸制本身是一個深刻的「集體性」（collective subjectivity）問題。當自傳將重點放在個體（如 Equiano）如何透過理性、勤奮等品質獲得自由時，這種敘事模式可能會忽略或淡化那些仍然處於奴役狀態的個體，以及奴隸制作為一種「集體性條件」（collective condition）的持續存在。
- 歷史的「遺忘」（Forgetting of History）： 透過將奴隸制敘事化為個體「過去」（past）的某個階段，並且強調從中「emerge」出來的「自由的現代主體」（free modern subject），自傳體裁無形中將集體奴隸的歷史「壓制」（subjugating）在一個特定的時間框架內，使其僅被視為通往現代性的遙遠起源。這就造成了一種「遺忘」，即忽略了奴隸制在當時以及「解放」之後仍然持續存在的集體性面向。
- 解放者的論述策略（Abolitionist Rhetoric）： 文本特別提到像 Wilberforce 這樣的廢奴主義者，他們推廣 Equiano 的故事來宣揚「個體自由」（individual liberty），以此來爭取公眾支持。然而，這種「典範性」的敘事，選擇性地突顯了奴隸的「人性」（humanity）和「模範性特質」（exemplary qualities），卻可能因此掩蓋了當時仍遭受奴役的群體的困境，以及「解放」後那些被「解放」者（emancipated）所面臨的新形式的壓迫或不平等。
主旨闡述：
這段文本的核心論點是，Equiano 的自傳在被文學化和政治化（特別是作為自由主義的典範和廢奴運動的宣傳工具）的過程中，產生了一種結構性的矛盾。一方面，它成功地展現了個體從奴隸制中解放出來，成為一個自主個體的理想形象，這契合了自由主義的價值觀。但另一方面，這種強調「個人解放」的敘事，卻可能無意間「埋葬」或「遺忘」了奴隸制作為一種複雜的跨大西洋、集體的壓迫體系及其持續存在的歷史現實。自傳體裁透過將奴隸制的經驗轉化為個體的「過去」，並將個體的解放描繪成集體解放的象徵，實際上可能延緩了對奴隸制作為一種「集體性條件」的根本性變革。