加拿大當代作家瑪格麗特·阿特伍德在其小說《羚羊與秧雞》中對后人類未來作出了描繪,通過聚焦人與非人的邊界地帶,探討了語言對人性的決定性作用,為從語言哲學視角檢視人性與文明本質提供了獨特的文本基礎。這部作品透過科幻故事的表象呈現出三個重要的深層語言哲學議題:小說首先凸顯了語言和言語的雙重屬性,借用主人公的語言無能刻畫出人與非人的語言臨界狀況;其次,通過詳細描寫新生人類的語言游戲暗指能指的不間斷延異和對不在場的召喚和操控;第三,能指符號進一步指向符號象征體系和話語網絡的建構,并最終指向藝術、人文等元素。這三個層次的思考對探索人性本質作出了深層、立體的嘗試。《羚羊與秧雞》所涉及的人類學、哲學和語言學思想為審視語言在人類主體構建中的作用以及對后人類狀況進行理論管窺提供了不可或缺的思考素材。

The paper elucidates the posthuman thought in Margaret Atwood’s novel Oryx and Crake, and presents reflections on the essence of language and its interconnection to humanity. Focusing on the human/inhuman boundary, the novel provides insights into the nature of humanity and civilization. There emerge three major philosophical concerns in this speculative fiction. Calling attention to the dual properties of langue and parole as well as the status of "infancy" located between the human and the inhuman, the novel depicts Crakers’ language games and alludes to the ceaseless chain of signifiers along with its perpetual différance and its manipulation of absence. In addition, it also investigates the interrelation between discursive network and its quintessential construction of humanity. Oryx and Crake thus serves as a site for hermeneutical reflection on the role of language in the formation of the human subject and humanity on the whole. A reading of the philosophy of language embodied in the novel, in connection with contemporary theories in anthropology, philosophy and linguistics, offers a few theoretical glimpses of the posthuman condition.