Gender, Home, and Irish Nation-Building in Brian Friel's Dancing at Lughnasa ; 愛爾蘭劇作家布萊恩.傅利爾的《在盧納莎起舞》-性別、家園與國族

Abstract

Exploring the spatial politics of home in post-independence Ireland, the Irish playwright Brian Friel's Dancing at Lughnasa (1990) represents the naturalized relationships between women, home, and nation in the 1930s, contending how the idealized national womanhood practiced in the domestic sphere of a home is always a socio-spatial disempowerment of women. Moreover, the homely, socially appropriate and ideal, home is also in a perpetual process of being transfigured by other socio-spatial dynamics beyond an Irish home in addition to Irish nationalism and Catholicism. This play unravels the contested ways in which the social imaginary, materiality, identity and power relations of the Mundy home are constituted and negotiated within and without their home. Constituted by diverse social processes in the context of nation formation, the Irish home is never private and enclosed but in fact an open and porous public sphere. ; 本文試圖經由布萊恩.傅利爾的劇作《在盧納莎起舞》來探討愛爾蘭獨立後家的空間性別政治,並進一步申論此劇如何再現並質疑一九三零年代國族、性別與家的連帶關係:所謂理想的國族之家是如何不可避免地造成大部分愛爾蘭女性在空間與社會上的侷限,以及劇中女性角色如何個別戮力尋找與建構一個具有歸屬感的家園。此外,本文也將探討此理想的國族之家是如何建構而成,以及家事實上作為一個開放流變的空間是如何受到愛爾蘭國族主義、愛爾蘭天主教與兩次大戰期間的經濟狀況等等與其它的社會發展所形塑。家作為個別主體的一個生存場域,不僅具有物質性,同時也是個社會空間,也意味著家在不同的時空脈絡裡受到發展不均的社會關係所形構,也與其它不同層次的空間彼此交織共生。家對不同的社會主體來說因此有不同的意義、情感和功能。一味認定家就是性別分工下應該提供暫時或長期離家之人溫暖、認同、歸屬、與親密等正向情感支持的避風港無疑犯了家與家以外的空間二元分立本質論的謬誤。家在愛爾蘭國族建構的過程中也不再僅是維持蓋爾文化傳統、天主教道德規訓與國家穩定秩序的女性私密空間,反而是一個在想像、概念與實踐上不斷生成辯證的既私人又公共的特殊場域。《在盧納莎起舞》一劇於是不僅讓讀者看到了家的多元面貌與女性在身分及權力關係上與之協商的過程,也了解家作為一個社會空間是如何不斷地處在動態流變之中:越是希望達成一個單一穩固封閉的理想之家卻越無法成家的弔詭。