呼喚紈褲女的隱藏名字？：1920年代柏倫妮斯．艾比特的同女作家肖像攝影

Abstract

柏倫妮斯．艾比特（Berenice Abbott, 1898-1991）在1920年代下半葉，拍攝了一些旅居巴黎河左岸的美國女同性戀文學家肖像，這些著名肖像經常作為插圖出現在當時與後世的許多書籍、期刊與影片當中，卻沒有任何論文深入探索它們的歷史、社會與文化意涵。本文將從生產與接受的角度，來探索這些肖像攝影在當時是以哪些特殊策略建構女同性戀的社會主體性？筆者在耙梳這些女同性戀文學家的研究之後，發現了攝影學者們尚未提出的事實：這些肖像攝影潛伏著當時河左岸女同性戀的社會網絡。筆者將藉由重建與揭示這些網絡，來作為分析這些肖像攝影的歷史、社會、與性／別意涵的基礎。艾比特拍攝這些女同性戀文學家的肖像，經常展現留短髮、穿著男性化的套裝與配飾的公眾形象。為了解讀這類公眾形象，筆者將追溯紈褲子（dandy）的系譜學，以及探析目前散見各處的紈褲女（female dandy）論述，以建構轉化自紈褲子外觀的紈褲女形象，從19世紀末到1920年代的遞變。筆者將分析，艾比特如何與美國女同性戀文學家合謀，透過對19世紀紈褲子形象的再詮釋與擴充，以生產／再現她們紈褲女的自我再現？而當這些紈褲女的形象在當時透過社會網絡的綿延，轉變成她們的公眾形象之時，觀者是如何接受這些公眾形象？在1920年代的巴黎與倫敦，紈褲女的形象是否就是女同性戀的標誌？從奔絲朵克（Shari Benstock）到朵安(Laura Doan)，女性主義學者對這個問題的探討有戲劇化的發展。奔絲朵克在1980年代中期提出，在當時的巴黎河左岸文藝圈，外表男性化的女人展現了「女同性戀主義最普遍的意象」。朵安在1990年代末期，卻一反這個很多人相信的說法，強調從1918到1928年，在英法女性陽剛不一定就是女同性戀的標誌。筆者將藉由分析艾比特的紈褲女肖像攝影，從接受的角度對這個論辯作出回應，提出這些紈褲女的肖像其實建構了女同性戀又現又隱的社會主體性。也就是說，這些肖像攝影以「矇混的」（passing）時尚，將拍攝對象的女同性戀認同隱藏在顯而易見的地方，呼喚那些知道如何觀看的人們，看到紈褲女的女同性戀指涉，但是那些不知道如何觀看的人們，卻只看到既優雅又時髦的現代女性文人肖像。

Berenice Abbott (1898-1991) took portrait photographs of American lesbian writers of the Left Bank Paris in the 1920s. These famous portraits, as illustrations, appear in many books, journals, and films, but no articles have examined their historical, social, and cultural significations. This paper explores how these portraits construct the social subjectivities of these lesbian writers from the perspectives of production and reception. After investigating historical materials on these lesbian writers, I discover a hidden fact which has not been pointed out by photography scholars. Abbott's lesbian clients came from the same social networks of the Left Bank. My interpretations of these portraits are based on a re-construction of these social networks.Abbott produced the public images of these lesbian writers donning short hair, masculine suits and accessories. I trace the genealogy the female dandy from the late 19th century to the 1920s, which has been acknowledged by scholars only on a piecemeal basis, in order to interpret such public images. I analyze how Abbott colluded with these lesbian writers to produce their self-representations as female dandies through reinterpretating and expanding the images of the dandies in the 19th century? I also explore how the spectators might have received these portraits of female dandies, which tuned into their public images through the expansion of social networking?Was the imagery of the female dandy the mark of the lesbians in Paris and London in the 1920s? Feminist scholars, from Shari Benstock to Laura Doan, have had a dramatic debate on this issue. In the middle of the 1980s, Benstock claimed that ”[t]he most pervasive image of lesbianism in these years is of women who appear at first glance to be male.” At the end of the 1990s, Doan, challenging Benstock's line of thinking, emphasized that one could not tell if female masculinity was the mark of the lesbians in Paris and London from 1918 to 1928. I respond to this debate through reading Abbott's portraits of female dandy from the perspective of reception. My thesis is that these portraits constructed these lesbian writers' social subjectivities that shifted between visibility and invisibility. By the strategy of the passing fashion, these portraits called those who knew how to read the lesbian codes of female dandyism to see these writers' lesbian identity. However, for those who did not know how to look at the lesbian codes of female dandyism, these portraits only exhibited elegant, chic, and modern women writers.