《無肉日》（Meatless Days）刻劃人民如何每每以日常展演，抵禦巴基斯坦獨立建國的動蕩。當國家主義論述剝奪人民自決權，化約各異生命歷史為國族歷程下的大敘述（grand narrative），使其認同想像共同體（imagined communities），旅美多年的蘇勒律（Sara Suleri）卻不得不書寫這部離心的（de-centered）回憶錄，於演練巴巴播散（dis-semination）詩學的同時，仍能彰顯群體倫理之羈絆。背負離散經驗的時空殊異不僅讓她得以轉譯為親朋擁有的各異時空（chronotopes），更讓她得以質疑國家主義論述內對歷史詮釋權的壟斷。故本論文的研究課題將從這回憶錄為起點，思考蘇勒律作為一女性離散作家，如何探測她的「鄉關何處」。
　　本論文試圖證明《無肉日》以「詩」寫「史」，以美學命名，是為指出後殖民國族歷史下認同政治的問題。先爬梳現代性「國家」建構於（西方）線性史觀，第一章以為文本的環形結構，實是蘇勒律為承載親朋們各異的、非目的論之生命歷史的對等結構。既以九個篇章揭露（ex-pose）風格殊異的親朋們的各色日常，這回憶錄便不僅空間化（spatialize）了國家的線性歷史，更也時間化（temporalize）了人民文化場域的「生命世界」（life-worlds）。第二章從《無肉日》層疊的敘事詩學出發，為與後殖民的巴基斯坦，宣稱以國家主義所謂「史實」建國相對照。既然殖民主義損傷改寫了人民的文化經驗，國家主義者挾歷史以令人民的族裔政治多是任意自利；那麼，藉回憶錄中族裔食物的奇詭軼事，或誤認或背叛，蘇勒律其實對位音地（contrapuntally）質疑後殖民建國的合法性。若將敘事者對族裔食物的誤認作為「事件」（event）且類比以巴基斯坦建國，本章試圖提出：面臨文化失落，蘇勒律化虛空為想像，轉譯消失中的文化經驗為綿長的美學之思。那麼《無肉日》這回憶錄，既以諸多隱喻寓言與意象承載歷史，不啻是將人民歷史文化經驗的斷簡殘篇為食材，轉化以詩學饗宴，與讀者共享這豐饒且不可化約的文化意涵。

In her memoir Meatless Days (1987), Sara Suleri writes about the everyday lives of Pakistani people against the background of Pakistan’s struggle to establish itself as an Islamic nation. Whereas the postcolonial narratives of the nation strip the people of their autonomy, subsume the multiplicity of their life stories to the teleological structure of the nationalist writing, and make them to identify with the nation, the “imagined community,” Suleri, as a Pakistani-American immigrant, however, writes a de-centered memoir both to practice a poetics of dis-semination and to propose an ethics—instead of politics—of communal bonding. Her diasporic life not only prompts her to write the memoir Meatless Days in terms of the varied chronotopes of her fellowmen, but it also bids her to recognize the futility of believing the credibility and legitimacy of the hegemonic history of the nation fathered by nationalist authors. How she, as a diasporic female memoirist, responds to her motherland is the research question that prompts my study.
My thesis reads Suleri’s memoir as her aesthetic response to the political problematic of the post-colonial nation. Starting by examining the idea of the nation, Chapter One takes the circular structure of her memoir as Suleri’s endeavor to narrate the non-teleological lived histories of the people. As she writes nine chapters to “expose” the idiosyncratic everyday practices of her fellowmen, I argue that Suleri writes her memoir both to spatialize the chronological history of the nation and to temporalize the “life-worlds” of the people. Chapter Two reads how, in the post-colonial world of Pakistan, “factual” realities prove to be dominated by nationalist writers. Given that colonization has changed the materiality of cultural experiences in Pakistan, the ethno-political legitimacy of nationalist discourses proves capricious and suspect. If so, then Suleri, by contrapuntally telling the culinary tales of misread ethnic food, calls into question the nation-building project in the post-colonial world. By drawing an analogy between the Independence of Pakistan the nation and the “event” of culinary betrayal, I argue that in the face of cultural loss, Suleri makes use of loss as a relatively productive spur to launch off her imaginative faculty. Meatless Days—in the vehicle of parables, allegories, metaphors, and images—records, and translates, those cultural and historical “remains” of the people into a poetic feast to render rich significations available to her readers.

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