GlobalかUniversalか

ジュンパラヒリの動画を探していて見つけたものです。2014年にインドで開催されたトークショーで豪華なメンバーが揃っています。フランゼンがインドにいってこういうイベントに参加しているとは意外ですね。商業化優先、英語覇権はトレンドは文学の世界でも同じなようで、文学に興味がない人でも関心を持てる内容になっています。

11分25秒あたりからのジュンパラヒリの話は共感します。グローバルという言葉に我々が反感を覚えるのは商業主義に染まっているためで、ユニバーサル＝普遍性という言葉の方がしっくりくる。作家としては個別性を超えた普遍性を求めているといった内容を語っています。

もちろんフランゼンが警告しているようにuniversalであることは同一化することともちがいますし、普遍性を求めれば普遍性を獲得できるという単純なものではないでしょう。

THE GLOBAL NOVEL
January 19, 2014 · by randomhouseindia

The question of whether ‘global’ is a private or a public category is cast on Jhumpa Lahiri, who says, “I think that we might want to distinguish between the word ‘global’ which to me seems almost at the point of commercial term…the word ‘universal’ which is the more aesthetic question…I think that’s what we as writers, as artists want to do is to try to transcend the barriers of ourselves, of what makes us specific and unique and limited as people…and reach people inspite of who they are.”

Global is an intimidating word which sometimes leaves things unrooted and as an African writer it might make things difficult for writers like Maaza Mengiste, who might not be comfortable becoming catalogued under such a term.

（中略）

The whole question of universality or ‘global’ brings us to Jim Crace who says that “As a writer I don’t really introspect or feel I am inhabiting literary categories or literary theories. I don’t even think of the reader. For me it is kind of a private act that becomes embarrassingly public when it is published”. But as a reader he adds on, he has more clarity of what a ‘Global Novel’ can be. He says reading novels by non-English writers changes his perspective of a country, like reading ‘Things Fall Apart’ by Chinua Achebe changed his perception of colonizers and the colonized. Jonathan Franzen agrees and adds that, “the worst way to be universal as a writer, seems to me, is to seek to be universal.” He also admits that the scariest thing of this increasingly globalized world is the homogenization of global culture.

ラヒリは違う文化を伝える翻訳者の役割に期待を寄せていますが、中国作家のXiaolu Guoは英語で書かないと存在しないものとみなされる危機感を強く感じているようです。