This thesis aims to explore whether Monica Ali’s novel Brick Lane (2003) and Sarah Gavron’s controversial screen adaptation of the same name (2007) can open up avenues to discuss a new, if problematic, inclusion of Bangladeshi women in the transnational world. One of the striking features of Ali’s novel is its prominent foregrounding of Naila Kabeer’s The Power to Choose: Bangladeshi Women and Labour Market Decisions in London and Dhaka (2000)―a comparative study of the lives and working conditions of two groups of Bangladeshi women workers in the garment industries―as a main source of inspiration in the novel’s acknowledgements. In Kabeer’s pathbreaking study, she has attempted to locate those women in what she could find out about the broader structure of their lives and asks “more dynamic questions about how the internal features of a community interact with the larger context in which it finds itself” (222). Her case studies consistently reveal that, compared with Bangladeshi women in East London, women in Bangladesh are more able to experience an increase in their “power to choose.” However, it becomes apparent that Ali’s literary production reverses the findings of Kabeer’s case studies and takes particular delight in having her heroine Nazneen surmount socially and economically excluded status and racist violence in Britain. The critical project of this thesis thereby attempts to problematize this cultural stereotyping―which becomes legitimized in the novel and intensely sanctioned in Gavron’s interpretation of the novel and hinders the possibility of understanding Bangladeshi women’s extensive economic participation in the transnational world. To investigate Ali’s and Gavron’s representations of Bangladeshi women in the transnational world from different vantage points, this thesis takes into account the inherently asymmetrical power relations between Global North and South embedded in transnationality―a broader power struggle that illuminates forced, unwitting competition between female homeworkers in Britain and garment workers in Bangladesh.
Chapter One introduces the history of the world system, the extensive economic restructuring led by the shift from the old to the new international division of labour, and the impact of this restructuring on women workers of color in the clothing industry. A more historical perspective on a global network of economic collaboration/exploitation solely for capital maximization (that still defines the transnational present) helps to explain why merely increasing Bangladeshi and, in general, other Third World women’s workforce participation is not an adequate development policy to promote women’s equal access to labour markets and decision-making. Chapter Two explores the straightforwardly mimetic and problematic relations between Kabeer’s research and Ali’s novel. My purpose in doing so is to argue that, although Ali provides a context for discovering the occluded lives of Bangladeshi women workers, her project of revelation paradoxically reproduces preconceptions of cultural otherness and is symptomatic of the tacit support of the exploitative ethnic/gendered economies. Chapter Three investigates the filmic adaptation of Ali’s literary narration by first addressing the fierce debates concerning the legitimacy of Gavron’s film production―debates within which Bangladeshi women are made to unspeak themselves. This chapter analyzes how Third World women, even though much in demand in a neo-liberal world economic system, are silenced by the ostensibly benevolent metropolitan feminist as well as their own relatively emancipated generation, who may work in complicity, “however remotely, in the ideological interest of the financialization of the globe” (Spivak, “Diasporas” 263). To engage in a more equitable process of understanding the specific social location of Bangladeshi women workers in the transnational present, Chapter Four, the concluding chapter of this thesis, touches upon the notion of “transnational literacy.” To be transnationally literate, according to Gayatri Spivak, is to rethink globality away from the favourable historical position and cultural advantages of the Global North and, more importantly, may comprise one small step to decolonization.

本論文旨在探討莫妮卡阿里(Monica Ali)小說《磚巷》(Brick Lane)以及導演莎拉加芙倫(Sarah Gavron)改編的同名電影中所再現的孟加拉婦女及她們在跨國世界中的勞動參與經驗和生存情境。筆者的研究動機來自於阿里小說與社會學家奈拉卡比爾(Naila Kabeer)以成衣工業為例、研究孟加拉非技術女工在東倫敦的家庭代工和在孟加拉當地以出口為導向勞動的專書(The Power to Choose)之間的矛盾，雖然阿里表示卡比爾的研究是其小說靈感的重要來源，但仔細閱讀卡比爾的著作後便不難發現其研究貢獻在於試圖推翻讀者已沾染偏見的「常識」，直指在東倫敦的家庭女傭深受語言溝通障礙、英國種族歧視、移民的孟加拉社群成員堅守深閨制度(purdah)等複雜結構因素之侷限，解放的程度和速度遠不及成千上萬在孟加拉為了生計、至成衣廠工作而必須對傳統深閨制度內涵做適度修正的女性勞工，因此她的論點和阿里對於英國社會風氣解放孟加拉女工的樂觀態度是背道而馳的。本論文試圖在現有、按照阿里情節安排對主角納芝寧(Nazneen)的成長和解放所做的論述之外提供另一解讀的可能，「問題化」(problematize)小說和電影中對於英國和孟加拉既有的文化刻板印象，並將第三世界女人對新國際分工所付出的血汗勞動放入日益深化的新自由主義發展趨勢、被簡單區劃為南/北兩方之權力不對等、以及南/北方第三世界婦女被迫的競爭(她們本身並不會意識到此一現象)等脈絡中重新思索，強調僅只讓第三世界的女人擁有工作算不上真正地將發展帶給她們，而善意卻無知的北方女性主義者或藝術家對於她們在跨國化世界中參與經濟活動的各種再現，往往只不過是另一種形式對於剝削的噤聲。
論文第一章首先介紹以國際合作分工為核心的世界體系並追溯其歷史，關於此一體系之相關理論系統化地指出北方的核心國家如何為了攫取更多的利益而以各種手段將邊陲國家納入此一系統；隨著國際貿易中新自由主義的崛起，更使得第三世界婦女的廉價勞力服膺於全球資本，並將之美其名為「發展」。史碧華克(Gayatri Spivak) 理論分析的跨國性並不僅限於隨著資本主義全球化而擴大的跨界流移，也特別關注世界銀行此類強國的御用工具如何操弄南/北方(孟加拉)女性勞工之間被迫的競爭，從而壓制去殖民化的可能。因此第一章將小說與電影中跨國化的孟加拉(南方)和英國(北方)放入其自身歷史脈絡中檢視不對等之權力關係，試圖分析孟加拉女性勞工在全球經濟重構中不可或缺的角色與其面臨之困境。第二章我分析了阿里小說和卡比爾著作「可疑」的對照關係，尤其是記敘了留在孟加拉的妹妹荷希娜(Hasina)顛沛流離和貧困遭遇的書信，否定了卡比爾研究中強調孟加拉婦女在成衣工廠中獲得能動性之可能；此外，我強調小說刻意翻轉卡比爾的研究結果實為合理化結局中納芝寧選擇留在英國的決定，並間接地支持了英國資本主義中剝削的族裔/性別經濟。第三章探討電影《磚巷》，首先回顧圍繞電影再現英國的孟加拉社群所衍生的關於正確或錯誤再現的問題，並指出電影中納芝寧和荷希娜角色的呈現其實早已被好意欲替她們發聲的大都會女性主義者所操弄，不但使得她們被迫不能說出自身的狀況，更使得重新思考跨國性與孟加拉女性勞工在其中所扮演的角色的可能性被摧毀。此章並討論這些出於善意卻無知的再現者以及移民的新世代―包括納芝寧的女兒莎哈娜(Shahana)―皆可能在不知不覺中成為史碧華克所稱的「全球的金融化」利益的共謀者，鞏固了女性超級剝削的族裔化這一個全球的故事。論文第四章總結此論文，並談及史碧華克所訴求的跨國族讀寫能力(transnational literacy)人文素養，或許可以提醒我們一定要把南方及第三世界女性勞工放入其自身「現在」的歷史中，而不只是將之視為懷舊情懷或人類興趣的處所，惟有如此，我們才能跳脫以優勢北方為基地的思維、用更批判的角度去思考與理解孟加拉與其他弱勢女性勞工在跨國世界中的真實處境，進而提供支持的下層結構或相關的福利措施。

Materials in English
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Materials in Chinese
鄭佳燕[Zheng, Jia-yan]。〈同根同果：《磚巷》與《紫顏色》〉[Same Root and Same Result: Comparing Brick Lane with Color Purple]。《龍岩學院學報》，二十五卷一期 (二OO七年二月)。頁六九〜七二。
李有成。〈磚巷風波〉。《在甘地銅像前：我的倫敦札記》。臺北：允晨文化，二OO
八年八月。頁四七〜六六。