ABSTRACT

As Heather J. Hicks suggests, recent post-apocalyptic fiction has engaged with modernity and its perceived problems. Frequently read alongside or even categorized into this emergent genre, David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas (2004) recycles and yet appropriates its conventions to create small fissures in the predominance of negative feelings about modernity in our imagination, without falling for the temptation of utopian solutions. Indeed, Mitchell focuses on our affective responses to modernity, fear, and shame, most notably in Ewing’s and in Zachry’s episodes. Translating affective, personal, and even physiological experiences into a trans-historical and planetary narrative, Cloud Atlas attests to the ubiquity of fear and anxiety about the consequences of modernity and the shame of our own powerlessness and inaction. However, the novel also attempts to break the hold of such negative feelings in small ways; at important points, the rule of fear and shame collapses into what I call “minor ethical moments”. This paper, then, seeks to understand this affective and ethical dimensions of Mitchell’s text that have rarely caught critical attention and, I argue, distinguish it from the grand narrative of the end time often evoked in the emergent genre of post-apocalyptic fiction.

摘要

正如希瑟·J·希克斯 (Heather J. Hicks) 所暗示的那样，最近的后世界末日小说与现代性及其感知到的问题有关。大卫·米切尔 (David Mitchell) 的《云图》 (2004)经常与这种新兴类型一起阅读，甚至被归类为这种类型，它回收并挪用了它的惯例，以在我们想象中对现代性的负面情绪的主导地位产生小裂痕，而没有陷入乌托邦解决方案的诱惑。事实上，米切尔专注于我们对现代性、恐惧和羞耻的情感反应，尤其是在尤因和扎克里的情节中。将情感、个人甚至生理体验转化为跨历史和行星叙事，Cloud Atlas证明了对现代性后果的恐惧和焦虑无处不在，以及我们自己的无能为力和无所作为的耻辱。然而，小说也试图通过一些小的方式打破这种负面情绪的束缚；在重要的时刻，恐惧和羞耻的规则崩溃成我所说的“次要道德时刻”。然后，本文试图理解米切尔文本中很少引起批评关注的情感和伦理维度，并且我认为，将其与后世界末日小说的新兴体裁中经常唤起的末日宏大叙事区分开来。