Exploring the“Cosmopolitan”Innovation of Overseas Chinese Student“Autofiction”: On the Multi-dimensionalities of Lyu Xiaoyu’s Man Under the Water
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摘要: 在充满自传色彩的中国留学生文学传统中，主人公的国族身份焦虑及其发散出来的感时忧国的思想情怀往往成为故事焦点。学者作家吕晓宇于2023年发表的小说首作《水下之人》结合虚构和非虚构元素，塑造了主人公L非典型的中国留学生形象并刻画了一个由背景迥异的各国学生组成的牛津“共同体”，用国际群像的多声部叙事突破了中国留学生文学的国族焦虑传统。《水下之人》以贯穿多层时空语境的第一人称叙事在叙事者“我”、L以及L好友们的不同视角间不断切换，在作者吕晓宇、叙事者“我”与故事人物L的重合关系中重申理解他者之可能与世界主义理想之必要。本文将该小说放置在中国留学生文学的脉络中，并重点关注其“自小说”的文类特质与“世界主义”取向之间的矛盾辩证。通过对小说在人物安排、叙事声部、语言风格三个不同层面上的文本表现的分析，笔者试图厘清《水下之人》在读者接受中被指“自恋”的原因，并指出这种“自恋”特质暴露出的、当代中文跨文化写作时常遭遇的模式困境。在肯定《水下之人》在叙事形式和主题思想上的创新性和拓展性的同时，本文也关注到本书在文本效果方面的一些局限性，并展望其代表的新一代中文跨文化书写可以在翻译中获得新的接受视野，激发新的创作动能。Abstract: Within the tradition of overseas Chinese student literature grounded in the autobiographical style, the protagonists’anxiety over their national-racial identity and their political concern for the motherland in crisis often sit at the centre of the whole narrative. Scholar-writer Lyu Xiaoyu’s debut novel, Man Under the Water, published in 2023, blends elements of fiction and nonfiction to portray the protagonist L as an atypical Chinese international student. More importantly, it depicts an Oxford “community” composed of students from diverse national backgrounds. Through the multi-perspective narratives of this international ensemble, the novel signals a complete shift from the traditional focus on national-racial anxiety in Chinese overseas student literature. Employing firstperson narration throughout multiple contexts featuring memories from imaginary futures, Man Under the Water constantly shifts between the perspectives of the narrator “I,” L, and L’s friends, reiterating —through the overlapping identities of the author Lyu Xiaoyu, the narrator “I,” and the character L—the possibility of understanding the Other and the necessary pursuit of cosmopolitanism.This paper situates the novel within the context of Chinese overseas student literature, with a particular focus on the dialectical tension between its “autofictional” characteristics and its cosmopolitan orientation. By analysing the novel’s textual effects across three dimensions, namely character choices, narrative voices, and linguistic style, the author aims to explain why many readers perceive the book as “narcissistic” and highlight how this attribute of “narcissism” exposes the paradigmatic predicament contemporary Chinese transcultural writing tends to be caught in. While affirming the innovativeness of Man Under the Water in both its narrative forms and thematic concerns, this paper also points out certain limitations in its textual effects. It concludes with the hope that different interpretive modes and receptive horizons may arise from the translation of a new wave of Chinese transcultural writing led by a younger generation of cosmopolitan writers like Lyu.
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