机械发明时代的身体政治——短篇故事《被用光的人》的文化解读

Body Politics in the Age of Mechanical Invention: A Cultural Reading of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Man That Was Used Up”

摘要: 在埃德加•爱伦•坡的短篇故事《被用光的人》中，外表俊美的名誉准将约翰•ABC•史密斯是个肉身几乎“被用光的人”，但是他在社交圈中却广受欢迎。在战争中被肢解后，史密斯将军不仅用最时尚的各种假体将自己组装成美男子，而且获得了一定的政治和社交资本。在特定的历史境况中，史密斯的身体已然成为一种文化符号，既反映出主流社会对科技产品的追捧，又折射出美国白人对待印第安人的立场。在坡的笔下，史密斯将军光鲜的外表和残缺不全的肉体形成了巨大反差，成了讽刺美国政坛自信自傲和技术崇拜的绝好范例。

Abstract: In his short story “The Man That Was Used Up”, American classical writer Edgar Allan Poe presents a popular figure General John A. B. C. Smith who, after having been dismembered in the Indian War, not only reconstructs himself into an amazingly fine-looking man with the help of prosthetic devices, but also gains political and socializing capitals with his war experience. As a cultural code of the particular historical moment, his assembled body not only reveals the craze for technological products, but also reflects the way the white Americans viewed the frontier conflict. The huge discrepancy between Smith’s sublime body and his mutilated flesh actually becomes a perfect case with which Poe mocks the self-adulation and pompous arrogance of the political world and the fetishism of technological products in the American society.