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霍桑《红字Ａ》的两个分身：一种福柯式的论述
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论文名称: 霍桑《红字Ａ》的两个分身：一种福柯式的论述
论文名称: The Double in the Letter A: A Foucauldian Discourse on Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter
关键词:
论述 discourse
歧义 ambiguity
自传体 autobiography
讽刺性档案 ironic archive
杰克逊时代 Jacksonian society
传奇故事 historical romance
作者之死 death of the author
表象 representation
[摘要]
论 文 摘 要
这篇论文尝试以「福柯式的论述」，重新阅读《红字》文本。从福柯「作者／功能」（
author-function）的概念出发：一方面，把Ａ字定义成一种霍桑式的文字风格、写作策略
，它展现的是一种超脱冷静的表象关系，客观地在高处安排世界秩序。另一方面，又把Ａ
字解读为一种霍桑式的历史性格、自述方式，它流露的是一种身陷其中的深层焦虑，主观
地试图在当下了解自己。Ａ字就是一种化身功能、一个自我解译的过程、矛盾心理的内部
反照、自我澄明的镇定效果。Ａ字就是这种兼具当局者迷与旁观者清的自传体。通过它，
作者、读者、角色人物都能在其中找到自己和自己的化身。我们才发现，原来发自神殿的
Ａ字，一面是暗藏真理的恶魔，一面是展现权力的守护神，一种根本的二元性。
第二章「歧义的作者：一种文化整合策略」，我们试图藉由福柯式的「表象」（
representation），把这居扉页又无所不在的红字Ａ，定义成一个特定社会时空中，某种
预设的「边陲位置」。它让读者身在其外，又悠游其中，忘情于一个井然有序、结构严谨
的金字塔图表里，在它的顶端是「作者／上帝」综览一切，颁布命令。这种全景敞视的穿
透力，就历史而言，就成为一种预示能力。
第三章「讽刺性档案：书写现时的历史」，假福柯「系谱学」之便，把Ａ字神秘暧昧的本
质等同于一种「诠释过程」（interpretation）。它自顾自地在故事开场就预示既定结局
，似乎，角色人物动观定见的一切行为标准，全刻在神谕般的Ａ字里面。如是，Ａ字既是
客观表象的符码，又是主观诠释的神谕﹔既是考古者的超脱物外，又是系谱家的献身投入
。它是作者权力的标记，也是读者真理的载体。介乎此二元对立，才让我们开始以一个读
者的身份反思，身为一个主角、一个英雄、某种悲剧人物的必要性与可能性，尤其是在一
个传奇故事（Romance）里。
第四章「关于他的故事：传奇故事的迷思」，我们试图把Ａ字如金字塔般稳固的一套「解
译─定位方式」，释放还原成其初始状态，一片朦胧的断头空白（anonymity）。去尝试勾
勒传奇故事的有效范围。此间，作者既身陷其中，动弹不得，又是超脱而神圣的表征。作
者假上帝之名，径行匿名游戏﹔实则，其文本根生于读者众声。
如是，我们才来总括所谓「现代性」（modernity）的内涵。就Ａ字而言，与其说它是「作
者之死，读者之生」的宣读者，不如说它揭示了两者的共谋。就《红字》来说，或许它曾
意味着一个具体历史事件的隐喻，但对当代的读者而言，它毋宁是一种历史转折点的可能
。就一个作者而言，正由于霍桑于「歧义」（ambiguity） 与「反讽」（irony）技法的巧
妙结合，才使其既对自身进行创作，又对所处时代做出反映﹔正由于其于客观表象与主观
诠释的巧妙混用，于自传体 （autobiography）与传记体（biography）的似是而非，于考
古者与系谱家得失之间的平衡损益，才使其超越传奇故事的框限、英雄主义的迷思，又能
严肃地面对内在于历史传统、故事文类与作者身份的矛盾冲突。站在这样的二元性，所谓
的「现代性」，我们才来呼应福柯所言：
「所谓现代人，并不需要远走高飞，以便发现自身─去发掘其秘密，去揭发隐藏的真理﹔
现代人是试图创新自身的人。现代性并不旨在『释放自身』﹔现代性迫使人面临创造自身
的难题。」
对这篇论文而言，我们的「现代性」，在赫斯特踏出狱门的第一步，在她进驻海边小屋的
门坎上，在她蓦然回首来时路的回忆里，就已被预言：在外面，亦在里面﹔无须远走高飞
，亦不假他人─「现代性」是反求诸己，化身游戏。
[摘要]
ABSTRACT
This thesis is a Foucauldian discourse on The Scarlet Letter (1850), the
letter A. As a sophisticated cultural artifact, the letter A is brilliantly
woven with the same cultural cloth that by 1850 it had produced Nathaniel
Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter: A Romance. We attempt to identify the
ambiguity of the letter A, the significant plurality and the diverse meaning,
with Foucaudian “author-function.” We associate the letter A with three
kinds of “author-functions” in The Scarlet Letter: namely, “work on oneself,
” “responding to one’s time,” and a vehicle of “his-story.” As a
linking of society, the historical moment, and critical use of romance
tradition, what the letter A denotes stands for the ambiguous author, the
ironic archive, and the author’s confession in his autobiography as well.
Hawthorne’s reinterpretation of the letter A in The Scarlet Letter can be
taken as a challenge to his literary life.
Firstly, the letter A is burdened with the necessity of discourse on the
self. The task entails one’s work on himself with, in Foucault’s words, “a
technology of representation.” The representation brings forth certain unity
of writing in The Scarlet Letter—all differences in the text, “having to be
resolved, at least in part, by the principles of evolution, maturation, or
influence” (Foucault, WA 204). It is an authorial imperative through which
characters—adulteress Hester Prynne, the Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale, the
leech Roger Chillingworth, and the elf-child Pearl—are all placed in proper
positions in the community of the novel. The imperative yields “perfect
certainty by perfectly ordering representations and signs to mirror the
ordering of the world” (Dreyfus and Rabinow, MF 19). The letter A is a table
for ordering, and the fictitious community in The Scarlet Letter is built
firmly on this table.
Secondly, the letter A is imbued with the necessity of responding to one’s
time. The task entails one’s work on himself in a process of interpretation.
The interpretation serves to “neutralize the contradictions” (Foucault, WA
204) that may emerge in the narrative of The Scarlet Letter. The letter A is
the very center point in this process: around it, contradictions in the
narrative revolve, and “incompatible elements” in the text are tied
together, or, at last, “organized around a fundamental or originated
contradiction” (Foucault, WA 204). It is an authorial directive to absorb
his readers into the narrative of the novel, and thus setting them on a
presupposed liminal position in a given society. That given society is the
Jacksonian society. As the readers of The Scarlet Letter, we are at the edge
of the Jacksonian society, but not go beyond. Then we come to acknowledge
that, we are nothing but “our” history—American history—and that
therefore, we will never get a total picture of who we are. We will never get
a detached picture of our history. As the letter A moves from the mid-
nineteenth-century customhouse back to its Puritan origin, it serves as the
cultural genealogy. It functions to recall a major cultural shift in the
Jacksonian society.
Thirdly, the letter A functions as the vehicle of “his-story,” the vehicle
of the author’s autobiographical impulse. Or in Foucault’s words, the
letter A, as a linking of one’s discourse on himself and response to his
time, is the task of one’s “producing himself” in his own text. Hawthorne
chose to introduce The Scarlet Letter with an essay, “The Custom-House.” In
this introductory essay, we meet both Hawthorne’s “story” and the history
behind his story. We are informed both his personal story, his employment and
dismissal in the Salem Custom House, and the history of political changes that
brought about these happenings on him. The letter A as “his-story” would
suggest paradoxes of The Scarlet Letter as a historical romance: “just as he [
Hawthorne] injected fiction with history, so he injected history with fiction
” (Murfin 330). When his fiction is as true as the history, we meet the
empirical characteristics of the author. Hawthorne the author is taken as “a
historical figure at the crossroads of a certain number of events” (Foucault,
WA 204). The letter A is thus “the posthumous papers.” The Scarlet Letter
is the author’s confession in his autobiography. When his fiction is as
false as the history, we find that author’s persona is maintained in its
transcendental anonymity. Hawthorne is taken as a “decapitated surveyor,”
preserved in its own realm soundly. The letter A denotes the ambiguous author
in an ironic archive.
In conclusion, it is not by confining his autobiographical impulse that
Hawthorne the author is justified to write a national romance. But rather, it
is his unique combination of the autobiographical impulse with the biographer’
s viewpoint that enables him to go beyond the romance tradition, and yet to
take paradoxes of romance seriously. The modernity of Hawthorne lies not in
his attempt to apply objective method to studying himself—his nature, his
language, and his society—but rather, in his very ability to understand
himself in his-story. The letter A is this long-standing technique of self-
knowledge. With the letter A, we are ready to read ourselves in the process
of ego-split. We are readers on the liminal position—fully inside and fully
outside of our cultural field. On this liminal position, Hawthorne the author
has transformed his autobiographical impulse into the double in the letter A.
The letter A is first to be the power that wards off “the death of the author,
” then to be the truth that brings forth “the birth of the reader.” The
birth of the reader is not necessarily at the cost of the death of the
author. The “author-reader” doublet makes possible our very ability to
understand ourselves in our reading of The Scarlet Letter. For Sacvan
Bercovitch, his historicist approach to the letter A is his very ability to
understand himself in his own book. This book is The Office of The Scarlet
Letter. Contemporary reading of the letter A is also set in particular
historical situation. It is an ever-elusive background, against which the “
author-reader” doublet in The Scarlet Letter—mute yet ready to speak—is
perpetually summoned towards American self-knowledge.
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