醃製歷史與時間: 魯西迪《午夜之子》中身體的再銘寫

Abstract

This thesis explores the alternative historiography of modern Indian history in Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children. The protagonist Saleem’s chutnification of history and pickling of time become a philosophy of history in which the alternative genealogy challenges not only official history but also the myth of origin. Chapter one develops the notion of history in genealogical framework in Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children, especially through the perspective of the protagonist Saleem Sinai. The construction of alternative genealogy suggests historical disparity buried under the master narrative of national documentations and exposes the fictionality of the myth of origin. The point of alternative genealogy is to explore the discordant nature of time in narrative, and therefore to reach the effects of interrogating historical truth and uncovering possible ways of interpretation of history at the same time. Chapter two explores the relation between body and history, and supposes that the body serves as the inscribed surface of history. When the body is deformed under historical violence and becomes grotesque, it shows the image of India’s pathological history and reflects the grotesque realities of the larger body of community with physical diseases. The supposition looks for the symbolic signification on the grotesque body outside linguistic construction and examines how the grotesque body becomes the prime agent of the interactive process between individual body and public history.