本論文企圖考察幾部九○年代以後華文小說中的「後現代巫者」，這個可能來自對於某一當代文化中新興認同族群之觀察的文學形象，他們包括朱天文〈世紀末的華麗〉中的現代巫女米亞，《荒人手記》中復興「以巫為醫」部落傳統的新時代巫醫，《巫言》中巫言巫語的「巫人」敘事者，朱天心〈預知死亡記事〉中「拿起靈芝和木偶，學做女巫，預言休咎」的「老靈魂」們， 也可能是香港作家李碧華的都會怪誕小說〈糾纏〉中歷經「巫病」的考驗啟蒙後，取得占卜與靈視法力的後現代「尪姨」。 我們首先將探討這批「後現代巫者」繼承的東西文化遺產，或回應共鳴的當代思潮與書寫策略，上自屈原、中國古典文學的怪誕傳統、新儒學、胡蘭成的「妖氣女子」神話、下至巴赫金的「神聖語言」詩語言觀、西方中世紀巫道、現代巫術運動與新薩滿崇拜，藉此勾勒巫的系譜學雛形，同時也考察巫者在諸時代面貌的變遷。 此外，「後現代巫者」之所以成其後現代風貌，在於他們既繼承遠古巫人精神血脈，卻也心醉神迷於全球化資本主義席捲的現代都會中的消費享樂潮流，本論文欲先行探討其中三個後現代特點：神聖性的失落與由「嘆老」而「遠遊」，儀式的後現代轉向，巫人們貌似頹廢的神聖，又或是偽裝為神聖的頹廢。

Focusing on several Chinese-language novels published around or after the 1990s, this essay aims at studying the literary figure of “postmodern shaman,” figure probably based on the actual identity group emerging in certain historical as well as contemporary cultural conditions. It might best embody itself in several characters in Tien-wen Chu’s novels: Mia, aromatherapy aficionado and modern prophet in “Fin-de-Siecle Splendor”; the several New-Age wizards who reinvent, consciously or not, the tribal tradition of shamanistic healing in Notes from a Desolate Man; the narrator self-professed as elite intellectual shaman in The Words of A Witch. The figure can also be manifest in the “old souls” in Tien-hsin Chu’s “Chronicle of a Death Foretold,” who cultivate themselves to be prediction-making witches in an enlightened secular world. In Hong-Kong novelist Bi-hua Li’s urban-grotesque short story “Entangled,” we also witness a modern woman’s apprenticeship, struggling through the ordeal of “shamanistic illness,” to be a diviner and medium. We would like to explore first the cultural heritage these “postmodern shamans” inherit from both oriental and occidental traditions. It can be traced to the ancient Chinese shaman literature such as Qu Yuan’s poetry, to the classical Chinese fantasy and grotesque literatures, to the aspiration for restoration of the holy order in New Confucianism, to the literary myth of “demonic woman” recurring in Lan-Cheng Hu’s modern prose writings, to Bakhtine’s view of poetic speech as sacred language, to the medieval European witchcraft, to the modern countercultural and feminist Wicca movement and to the Neo-shamanism as one of the diverse New-Age cults. By following back the lineage of the postmodern shamanism, we try to figure out the evolution it has been undergoing through cultural and literary history. In the second half of essay, we would like to investigate the “post-modern” characters of the postmodern shamans. While carrying on some of the core beliefs and ultimate concerns of their ancient spiritual ancestors, they are nevertheless charmed in the mean while by the modern secular world with its obsession about material consumption and sensational pleasures. It’s exactly such a state of being that we find self-contradictory while fascinating in the postmodern shamans and their coexistence with the advanced capitalism in the age of globalization. To look into the question more in detail, we single out only three aspects in the present research: first, the shaman’s lament for lost sanctity and a compensatory longing for physical as well as imaginary wandering; the post-modern turn of ritual’s form and significance; aestheticized decadence and solemn playfulness as paradoxical expression of nostalgia for the sacred.