'Violent conclusion[s]' versus 'hopeful return[s]': Zadie Smith's The Embassy of Cambodia and the Performative Border-Crossing of the Narrative Voice
暴力结局 "与 "充满希望的回归"：扎迪-史密斯的《柬埔寨大使馆》与叙事声音的表演性跨界

Europe has always represented itself as somehow autochthonousproducing itself, by itself, from within itself; whereas we have always been obliged to ask: 'How does Europe imagine its "unity"? How can it be imagined, in relation to its "others"? What does Europe look like from its liminal edge, from what Ernesto Laclau or Judith Butler would call its "constitutive outside"?
欧洲总是以某种自生自灭的姿态出现在我们面前，而我们总是不得不问：'欧洲是如何想象其'统一性'的？如何想象欧洲与其 "他者 "的关系？从欧洲的边缘，从埃内斯托-拉克劳（Ernesto Laclau）或朱迪思-巴特勒（Judith Butler）所说的 "构成性外部 "来看，欧洲是什么样的？

-(Hall 2002, p. 60)
-霍尔 2002 年，第 60 页

The so-called migratory crisis is among the events in Europe's recent history that have most impacted the continent's historical identity and prevailing self-representations. For European nations, the increasing movement of people towards their borders since 2011-with the Arab Spring uprisings, the outbreak of the Syrian war, the Taliban's return to power in Afghanistan, the Russian attack on Ukraine, the worsening of climate change, and the desire for better life conditions-have marked not only the revival of regressive political discourses, but also the start of a 'crisis of responsibility itself' (Chouliaraki and Stolic 2017, p. 1173). The countries currently at the receiving end of the migratory spectrum have historically characterised themselves as enlightened and morally responsible, and many of their citizens have tried to retain this sympathetic self-image through their governments' adoption of increasingly restrictive and dehumanising border policies at the detriment of migrants. On the one hand, European communities have striven to establish who has the right to belong in European spaces and on what terms. On the other, the alleged moral agency implicit in modern European identity has been challenged both by the ways in which the migratory movement has been tackled (or not tackled) by European governments and by the migrants themselves as they struggle to make their voices heard. Several questions arise from this conundrum. How are the borders of empathy and action interrogated in Europe when migration is under the spotlight? How do Europeans construct such borders in and through language, both political and literary? What do their speech acts indicate about their ethics and practice? And who is involved in redefining a European identity in relation to these challenges?
所谓的移民危机是欧洲近代史上对欧洲大陆的历史身份和主流自我表述影响最大的事件之一。对欧洲国家而言，自 2011 年以来，随着阿拉伯之春起义、叙利亚战争爆发、塔利班在阿富汗重新掌权、俄罗斯袭击乌克兰、气候变化恶化以及人们对更好生活条件的渴望，越来越多的人涌向其边境，这不仅标志着倒退政治话语的复兴，也标志着 "责任危机本身 "的开始（Chouliaraki 和 Stolic，2017 年，第 1173 页）。目前处于移民接收端的国家在历史上一直将自己描述为开明和有道德责任感的国家，许多国家的公民也试图通过政府采取日益限制性和非人性化的边境政策来保持这种令人同情的自我形象，从而损害移民的利益。 一方面，欧洲各国努力确定谁有权属于欧洲，以及以何种条件属于欧洲。另一方面，欧洲各国政府处理（或不处理）移民运动的方式，以及移民本身为表达自己的声音而进行的斗争，都对现代欧洲身份所隐含的所谓道德力量提出了挑战。这一难题提出了几个问题。当移民问题成为焦点时，欧洲如何审视同情与行动的边界？欧洲人是如何通过语言（包括政治语言和文学语言）构建这种边界的？他们的语言行为对其伦理和实践有何启示？ 谁在参与重新定义与这些挑战相关的欧洲身份？

The present chapter looks at these issues through the narrative world of The Embassy of Cambodia, a 2013 novella by Zadie Smith that directly focuses on the post-migratory experience of an illegalised immigrant in the UK. While probing the world-making and world-changing powers of postcolonial literature, Smith's text is also a perfect case study for the critical debate that addresses the negotiation of political, cultural, identitarian, and discursive borders. In particular, the chapter analyses the performative and political potential of the narrative voice to illuminate Smith's interrogation of the values of a supposedly enlightened British (and European) community facing the perspective of a young migrant woman who narrates the world differently. The analysis is built on the notion that the phenomenological aspect and narrative strategy of some literary texts imply a potential performative quality that might have a direct impact onto the real world. Drawing on Mary Louise Pratt's insights into the 'simultaneously world-creating, world-describing and world-changing undertakings' (1986, p. 71) of the narrative voice, and on Susan Lanser's reflections on what she terms a 'communal voice' (1992, p. 21), I aim to demonstrate that Smith employs a unique dynamic of alternative and overlapping narratives in order to test the potential blurring of consciousness boundaries and generic conventions, and to unveil the ineffectiveness of local European communities' self-celebrated ethics.
本章通过扎迪-史密斯（Zadie Smith）2013 年创作的长篇小说《柬埔寨大使馆》（The Embassy of Cambodia）的叙事世界来探讨这些问题，该小说直接关注一名非法移民在英国的移民后经历。 在探究后殖民文学创造世界和改变世界的力量的同时，史密斯的文本也是探讨政治、文化、身份认同和话语边界协商的批判性辩论的完美案例。特别是，本章分析了叙事声音的表演性和政治性潜力，以揭示史密斯以一个年轻移民妇女的视角对所谓开明的英国（和欧洲）社会的价值观进行的拷问。分析建立在这样一种理念之上，即某些文学文本的现象学层面和叙事策略意味着一种潜在的表演性特质，可能会对现实世界产生直接影响。借鉴玛丽-路易斯-普拉特（Mary Louise Pratt）对叙事声音的 "同时创造世界、描述世界和改变世界的事业"（1986 年，第 71 页）的见解，以及苏珊-兰瑟（Susan Lanser）对她所称的 "共同声音"（1992 年，第 21 页）的思考，我的目的是要证明，文学文本的叙事声音是 "同时创造世界、描述世界和改变世界的事业"。21），我的目的是证明史密斯采用了一种独特的替代和重叠叙事的动态，以测试意识界限和一般惯例的潜在模糊性，并揭示欧洲当地社区自我颂扬的伦理道德的无效性。

The socio-geographical setting of The Embassy of Cambodia does not come as a surprise to regular readers of Smith: the facts recounted in the novella mostly take place in that North-West London microcosm that is the author's signature narrative space. In particular, the action moves along Brondesbury Park Road, at the heart of Willesden Green, which hosts the actual Royal Embassy of Cambodia in the United Kingdom. However, rather than focusing on the experiences of Londoners, as is the case with Smith's most famous novels, this text is concerned with the displacement and failed integration of a marginalised, racially marked, and violently gendered migrant-someone who is, as Stuart Hall would put it, 'in but not of Europe' (2002, p. 60). As many scholars including Walters (2009), Tew (2010), and Jansen (2018) pointed out, Smith is renowned for her keen preoccupation with multiculturalism and with the need to complicate entrenched identitarian schemes. Jansen, for instance, remarked that 'writing from a hybrid black English subject position, Smith primarily engages in a postcolonial revision of Englishness' (2018, p. 209).
史密斯的老读者对《柬埔寨大使馆》的社会地理背景并不感到意外：长篇小说中叙述的事实大多发生在伦敦西北部的微观世界中，而这正是作者标志性的叙事空间。尤其是，故事沿着威尔斯登格林中心的布朗德斯伯里公园路展开，那里是柬埔寨王国驻英国大使馆的所在地。然而，这篇小说并没有像史密斯最著名的小说那样关注伦敦人的经历，而是关注一个被边缘化、带有种族特征和暴力性别的移民--正如斯图尔特-霍尔（Stuart Hall）所说，"身处欧洲却不属于欧洲"（2002 年，第 60 页）--的流离失所和融合失败。正如 Walters（2009 年）、Tew（2010 年）和 Jansen（2018 年）等许多学者所指出的那样，史密斯因热衷于多元文化主义以及需要将根深蒂固的身份认同方案复杂化而闻名。例如，Jansen 指出，"史密斯以英国黑人混合主体的立场写作，主要是对英国性进行后殖民修正"（2018 年，第 209 页）。

Yet, if the author has constantly addressed the theme of cultural identity and the traps of belonging, The Embassy of Cambodia seems to hold a special significance. The fact that this is Smith's only novella to have been published in book form by itself signals that its narrative structure and the issues it articulates in a limited number of pages are for the author of the utmost importance-something that she confirmed in a 2020 interview,
然而，如果说作者一直在探讨文化身份和归属陷阱的主题，那么《柬埔寨大使馆》似乎具有特殊的意义。这是史密斯唯一一部以书籍形式出版的长篇小说，这一事实本身就表明，它的叙事结构和在有限篇幅中阐述的问题对作者来说至关重要--她在 2020 年的一次采访中也证实了这一点、
by stating that she 'feel[s] fondly about [this novella] because it's very small' and yet is 'a good example of when my mind is not changed: [it] does exactly what I wanted it to do' (Smith in Ford and Smith 2020). Published before the 2015 and later peaks of the refugee (or migratory) crisis, The Embassy of Cambodia hits the nerve of some of the crucial issues at stake in the current debates over migration and borders. The protagonist, Fatou, has recently arrived in the UK from Italy after taking what is possibly the deadliest current migratory route from Africa, including the northbound travel from sub-Saharan territories (in this case Ivory Coast and Ghana) and the passage through Libya. Besides dramatising Fatou's post-migratory situation in North-West London, the story lays stress on the local community's contradictory attitude and ambiguous attempts at making sense of her story. In other words, Smith's novella is concerned with spatial, social, and identity borders in a supposedly enlightened arrival country, in which nonetheless race and gender hierarchies seem to violently determine life opportunities, especially for migrants.
她说自己 "对（这部长篇小说）充满好感，因为它非常小"，但它 "是一个很好的例子，说明我的想法没有改变：（它）做了我想做的事"（Smith in Ford and Smith 2020）。 柬埔寨大使馆》出版于 2015 年难民（或移民）危机高峰期之前，直击当前关于移民和边界问题辩论中的一些关键问题。故事的主人公法图最近从意大利抵达英国，此前她走的可能是目前最致命的非洲移民路线，包括从撒哈拉以南地区（本例中为象牙海岸和加纳）北上和途经利比亚。除了描写法图移民后在伦敦西北部的境遇外，故事还强调了当地社区对她的故事所持的矛盾态度和模棱两可的尝试。换句话说，史密斯的这部长篇小说关注的是一个本应开明的移民国家的空间、社会和身份边界，在这个国家里，种族和性别等级似乎以暴力的方式决定着生活机会，尤其是移民的生活机会。

As Abigail Ward (2016) and Beatriz Pérez Zapata suggest, The Embassy of Cambodia can be defined as a tale of modern slavery that goes to great lengths to re-inscribe historical memory into the present. The story is set at the time of the 2012 London Olympics, a moment in British recent history when the public celebration of the country's supposed multiculturalism was at its height. Fatou is a girl from the Ivory Coast with a traumatic migratory experience and a discouraging present as an alienated domestic worker in Willesden Green. In Ghana, where she worked as a hotel cleaner to raise the money for her travel, she was raped by a Russian tourist who expected all African women to be sexually available. The violent act occurred while the man's wife was paying a visit to the infamous Cape Coast Castle, whose connections with a slavery past acquire symbolic undertones. Later on, both in her transition through Italy and on her arrival in the UK, Fatou can only find markedly gendered types of jobs, relegating her to the constraining sphere of domestic or cleaning work. When working as a toilet cleaner in Rome, she enquires about the Bengali street performers and what seems to her their fascinating job, only to find out that 'it was a closed shop, for brown men only. Her place was in the toilet stalls' (Smith 2013b, p. 50). In other words, Fatou is a victim of that 'sexual politics of border control' that Billy Holzberg, Anouk Madörin, and Michelle Pfeifer identify as 'a key strategy for the capture, containment and regulation of mobility and movement' (2021, p. 1485): she is only tolerated in the European space on the condition that she performs the cleaning and caring tasks assigned to womenespecially racialised women-by the traditional patriarchal and racist system in place.
正如阿比盖尔-沃德（Abigail Ward）（2016 年）和比阿特丽斯-佩雷斯-萨帕塔（Beatriz Pérez Zapata ）所言，《柬埔寨大使馆》可以被定义为一个现代奴隶制的故事，它不遗余力地将历史记忆重新植入当下。故事发生在 2012 年伦敦奥运会期间，正是英国近代史上公开庆祝该国所谓的多元文化主义的高潮时刻。法图是一个来自象牙海岸的女孩，她曾有过一段痛苦的移民经历，现在在威尔斯登格林（Willesden Green）做一名被疏远的家庭佣工，生活令人沮丧。在加纳，她做酒店清洁工以筹集旅费，却被一名俄罗斯游客强奸。这起暴力事件发生时，该男子的妻子正在参观臭名昭著的海岸角城堡，该城堡与奴隶制历史的联系具有象征意义。后来，无论是在意大利还是在抵达英国后，法图都只能找到明显带有性别色彩的工作类型，将她限制在家政或清洁工作的范围内。在罗马做厕所清洁工时，她询问孟加拉街头艺人的情况，以及在她看来很吸引人的工作，结果却发现 "那是一家封闭的商店，只对棕色皮肤的男人开放。她的位置在厕所的隔间里"（Smith 2013b，第 50 页）。换句话说，法图是 "边境控制的性政治 "的受害者，比利-霍尔茨伯格、阿努克-马多林和米歇尔-普费弗（Michelle Pfeifer）认为 "边境控制的性政治是捕获、遏制和监管流动性和移动性的关键策略"（2021 年，第 21 页）。 1485）：在欧洲的空间里，她只能被容忍，条件是她必须完成传统的父权制和种族主义制度分配给妇女（尤其是种族化妇女）的清洁和护理任务。

As a domestic worker for the Derawal family in Willesden Green, Fatou is particularly dehumanised. She is stripped of her passport, confiscated by her employers at the beginning of her stay, and her wages are retained to cover the rent and expenses for the room she has been given to sleep in. Her situation is thus possibly akin, as she herself speculates, to that of the modern 'slave' Mende Nazer, of which she learns from a newspaper, even though, unlike Nazer, she can walk out of the house to do the family shopping and other tasks, and is allowed a few free hours on Sundays. Paradoxically, the fact that she saves the family's youngest child from choking to death results in her almost immediate dismissal, because her employers cannot accept the embarrassing situation of owing her a debt of gratitude. As Sam Okoth Opondo and Michael Shapiro remark, by saving the child, Fatou has in fact 'exited the Derawals' servant imaginary, which locates her in a zone of indiscernibility between a person and a thing', so that they cannot help but 'remov[ing] the body/person that threatens to expose their hierarchical allocation of personhood' (2019, p. 584). In other words, Fatou's right to move and develop is not only restricted in terms of space, gender, and class borders; it is her very possibility to be recognised and treated as a proper human subject that is denied by her Indian employers on the basis of a hierarchy of humanness organised around racial boundaries. 'Sometimes', Fatou recounts, 'she heard her name used as a term of abuse between [the Derawals children]: "You're as black as Fatou". Or, "You're as stupid as Fatou" (Smith 2013b, p. 16). Thus, even though she has crossed a number of geographical and existential borders, Fatou continues to be confronted with the violence of an inextricable entanglement of gender, racial, and social boundaries that hinder her desire to redefine her subjectivity on her own terms. In fact, to use Sandro Mezzadra and Brett Neilson's words (2012), she inhabits a grey space between inclusion-in the British capital-and exclusion - from legitimate choices and a free life. From a topological point of view, she appears to remain on a border-space internal to her arrival country even after she has trespassed into the UK through Northern Africa and continental Europe.
作为威勒斯登格林德拉瓦尔家的家庭佣工，法图尤其受到非人待遇。她的护照被雇主在她入住之初就没收了，她的工资被留作支付她所睡房间的租金和费用。因此，正如她自己推测的那样，她的处境可能类似于现代 "奴隶 "门德-纳泽尔（Mende Nazer）的处境，她是从报纸上了解到这一情况的，尽管与纳泽尔不同的是，她可以走出家门为家人购物或做其他事情，星期天也有几个小时的自由时间。 自相矛盾的是，她救了家里最小的孩子，使其免于窒息而死，结果她几乎立即被解雇，因为她的雇主无法接受欠她人情债的尴尬局面。正如萨姆-奥科特-奥蓬多和迈克尔-夏皮罗所言，法图救了孩子，实际上 "退出了德拉瓦尔人的仆人想象，这种想象将她置于人和物之间的不可辨认地带"，因此他们不能不 "移除有可能暴露他们对人格的等级分配的身体/人"（2019，第584页）。换句话说，法图的行动和发展权利不仅受到空间、性别和阶级边界的限制，她作为一个适当的人类主体被认可和对待的可能性也被她的印度雇主以围绕种族边界组织起来的人类等级制度为基础而剥夺。法图回忆说，"有时"，"她听到自己的名字被用作[德拉瓦尔家的孩子们]之间的辱骂用语："你和法图一样黑"。或者，"你和法图一样蠢"（Smith，2013b，第 16 页）。 因此，尽管法图已经跨越了许多地理和生存边界，但她仍然面临着性别、种族和社会边界不可分割的暴力纠缠，这阻碍了她按照自己的意愿重新定义主体性的愿望。事实上，用桑德罗-梅扎德拉（Sandro Mezzadra）和布雷特-尼尔森（Brett Neilson）的话说（2012 年），她生活在英国首都的包容与排斥（合法选择和自由生活）之间的灰色空间。从拓扑学的角度来看，即使她通过北非和欧洲大陆进入英国，她似乎仍然处于其抵达国的内部边界空间。

This liminal situation is epitomised by Fatou's weekly observation of the Embassy of Cambodia's high walls, which she perceives as surrounded by an aura of mysterious impenetrability. The presence of the walled Embassy also materialises the historical roots of the borderscape the protagonist is forced to navigate. As Pérez Zapata emphasises, the text's direct references to historical violence-the Cambodian genocide evoked by the Embassy, as well as the transatlantic slave trade implied in the mention of the Cape Coast Castle in Ghana, and the Holocaust Fatou discusses with her friend Andrew-are suggestions of the 'presence of slavery and neo-colonial practices as present-day phenomena' (2017, p. 202). In this sense, the recurring imagery of walls and speculations on what might be happening behind them reflect 'the covert nature of slavery itself and the uncertainty that surrounds it' (p. 206). This is particularly poignant in terms of the pervasiveness of modern forms of slavery, especially if one considers that it is not only the Embassy to be walled off from the neighbourhood street life: as the first narrator makes clear at the beginning of the story, 'many of the private houses [in Brondesbury Park] have high walls, quite as high as the Embassy of Cambodia-but they are no embassies' (Smith 2013b, p.2).
法图每周都会观察柬埔寨大使馆的高墙，她认为高墙周围笼罩着神秘莫测的光环，这就是这种边缘处境的缩影。高墙使馆的存在也将主人公被迫穿越的边境景观的历史根源具体化。正如佩雷斯-萨帕塔（Pérez Zapata）所强调的，文本对历史暴力的直接引用--大使馆所唤起的柬埔寨种族灭绝，以及提到加纳海岸角城堡时所暗示的跨大西洋奴隶贸易，还有法图与她的朋友安德鲁所讨论的大屠杀--都暗示着 "奴隶制和新殖民主义做法作为当今现象的存在"（2017 年，第 202 页）。从这个意义上说，反复出现的墙壁意象以及对墙壁背后可能发生的事情的猜测，反映了 "奴隶制本身的隐蔽性以及围绕奴隶制的不确定性"（第 206 页）。就现代形式奴隶制的普遍性而言，这一点尤其令人感慨，特别是如果我们考虑到被围墙隔绝在街区街道生活之外的不仅仅是大使馆：正如第一位叙述者在故事开头明确指出的那样，"[布朗德斯伯里公园的]许多私人住宅都有高墙，和柬埔寨大使馆一样高--但它们不是大使馆"（Smith 2013b，第 2 页）。

Fatou, however, performs actively her resistance to the violence of her border-space by obstinately trying to exert her physical and intellectual abilities to the fullest, in the unshakable conviction that 'the key to surviving [is] to make your own arrangements' (p. 21). For example, every Monday morning she transforms her weekly shopping duties in a chance to increase her strength by clandestinely using the Derawals' forgotten guest daily passes for the local swimming pool, which she found in a drawer. Wearing her black underwear, which she hopes will look like a swimsuit in the dim light, she tenaciously trains her swimming abilities to the point of outdoing not only the occasional 'big [African] men, paddling frantically like babies, struggling simply to stay afloat' (p.4), but also the athletic white men that mostly populate the pool. Having taught herself how to swim in the ocean while in Ghana, Fatou relies on this skill as a source of personal autonomy, something that proves particularly meaningful in the context of aquatic danger implied in both her personal story of migration and the century-long history of the slave trade. Her determination also seems a response to a dramatic event she witnessed in Ghana and later reports in the text: the death of several Ghanaian children, who, unable to swim, drowned in the ocean near her workplace while playing games in the water.
然而，法图积极抵制边境空间的暴力，顽强地将自己的体力和智力发挥到极致，坚信 "生存的关键[在于]自己安排"（第 21 页）。例如，每周一早上，她都会偷偷使用德拉瓦尔夫妇遗忘在抽屉里的当地游泳池客人每日通行证，把每周一次的购物任务变成一次增强体力的机会。她穿着自己的黑色内衣，希望在昏暗的灯光下看起来像游泳衣，她顽强地训练自己的游泳能力，不仅超过了偶尔出现的 "像婴儿一样疯狂划水的[非洲]大块头男人，他们只是为了浮在水面上而挣扎"（第 4 页），还超过了泳池里大多数身强力壮的白人男子。法图在加纳时自学了在海里游泳，她依靠这项技能获得了个人自主权，这在她个人的移民故事和长达一个世纪的奴隶贸易历史所隐含的水上危险背景下显得尤为重要。她的决心似乎也是对她在加纳目睹的一个戏剧性事件的回应，她后来在文中报告了这一事件：几名加纳儿童在她工作场所附近的海域玩水游戏时，因不会游泳而溺水身亡。

Another way in which Fatou reclaims her rights to a free subjectivity is by often engaging her only friend, the Nigerian part-time student Andrew, in fierce intellectual debates over the ethical and political topics that occupy her thoughts, while also, in secret, critically appraising his sexual (in)desirability and his openness to dialogue. 'I never met a man who didn't want to tell everybody how to think and what to do', she replicates to Andrew's critique of the Nigerian government's 'Big Man policy' (p. 55). And yet, she decides that 'there [are] good and bad kinds of weaknesses in men, and she [has] come to the conclusion that the key [is] to know which kind you [are] dealing with' (p. 55). In short, Fatou navigates her asphyxiating condition with subtle irony and determination, as well as a relentless curiosity for what seems out of her reach, including the mysterious Embassy of Cambodia with its 'strangely compelling aura' (p. 9).
法图重新获得自由主体性权利的另一种方式，是经常与她唯一的朋友--尼日利亚兼职学生安德鲁--就占据她思想的伦理和政治话题展开激烈的思想辩论，同时也在暗地里对他的（不）性取向和对话的开放性进行批判性评价。我从未见过一个男人不想告诉每个人该怎么想，该怎么做"，她重复了安德鲁对尼日利亚政府 "大人物政策 "的批判（第 55 页）。然而，她认为 "男人的弱点有好有坏，她得出的结论是，关键是要知道你面对的是哪一种"（第 55 页）。总之，法图以微妙的讽刺和坚定的决心，以及对似乎遥不可及的事物不懈的好奇心，包括神秘的柬埔寨大使馆及其'奇异的吸引力'（第 9 页），驾驭着她窒息的病情。

Excluded as she is from the view of the Embassy's internal structure and activities, the protagonist never tires of staring at the only visible sign of human presence inside it, i.e. the badminton game that takes place continuously in the building courtyard. The rhythmical movement of the shuttlecock, visible above the Embassy's walls as it is lobbed back and forth by the invisible players, soon seems to embody for her the idea of an ever-present perspective alternative that remains available even in the gloomiest situations. As Fatou observes, 'the shuttlecock floats in a wide arc softly rightwards, and is smashed back, and this happens again and again, the first player always somehow able to retrieve the smash and transform it, once more, into a gentle, floating arc' (p. 5). Later on in the text, on a day of wayward wind, Fatou speculates on the chances of a break in this game routine:
由于她被排除在使馆内部结构和活动的视野之外，主人公总是不厌其烦地盯着使馆内唯一可见的人类存在的标志，即在大楼庭院中持续进行的羽毛球比赛。在使馆的墙壁上，可以看到毽子在无形的运动员手中有节奏地来回飞舞，很快，她似乎想到了一个永远存在的视角，即使在最阴暗的环境中也能找到这个视角。正如法图所观察到的，"毽子向右轻轻地飘出一条宽大的弧线，然后又被砸了回去，这样的事情一次又一次地发生，第一个踢毽子的人总是能以某种方式捡回被砸的毽子，并再次将其转化为一条轻柔、飘逸的弧线"（第 5 页）。后来，法图在一个刮大风的日子里，猜测这种游戏规则是否有可能被打破：

at some point it seemed to Fatou that the next lob would blow southwards, sending the shuttlecock over the wall to land lightly in her own hands. Instead the other player, with his vicious reliability (Fatou had long ago decided that both players were men), caught the shuttlecock as it began to drift and sent it back to his opponent-another deathly, downward smash. (p. 22)
不知何时，法图觉得下一球似乎会向南吹去，将毽子送过墙壁，轻巧地落在自己手中。然而，另一名选手凭借其凶狠可靠的球技（法图早已认定两名选手都是男子），在毽子开始漂移时抓住了毽子，并将其送回到对手手中--又一次致命的向下砸击。(p. 22)

The male gender Fatou imagines for both players is symbolically interesting, albeit never proved. It seems to point to her awareness that the unforeseeable destiny, with its constant turning points that are decided behind impenetrable walls, is traditionally placed in the hands of men. Her obstinate waiting and observing out of the building walls signal her determination in breaking that impenetrability and making the borders of her destiny porous to her own will.
法图为两个角色想象的男性性别具有象征意义，尽管从未得到证实。这似乎表明，她意识到，传统上，不可预见的命运，以及在坚不可摧的墙壁后面决定的不断转折点，都掌握在男性手中。她固执的等待和走出围墙的观察表明，她决心打破这种不可逾越性，让命运的边界变得随心所欲。

The oscillatory movement of the shuttlecock, charged with the tension of its mysterious confrontation, is replicated at the structural level of the story through a peculiar choice of focalisation. Understood as 'mood' or 'point of view' in Gérard Genette's tradition (1980, p. 186), focalisation shifts continuously in the novella between Fatou's own perspective, narrated by a non-intrusive third-person voice, and a broader viewpoint voiced by an intrusive first-person-plural narrator. By giving, from the very first page, the self-definition 'we, the people of Willesden', this latter narrative voice claims to represent the entire neighbourhood community,
毽子的摆动充满了神秘对峙的紧张气氛，在故事的结构层面上，这种摆动通过一种特殊的聚焦选择得以复制。按照热拉尔-热奈特（Gérard Genette）的传统（1980 年，第 186 页），"聚焦 "被理解为 "情绪 "或 "视角"，在这部长篇小说中，"聚焦 "在法图自己的视角（由非侵入式第三人称叙述）和侵入式第一人称复数叙述者的广阔视角之间不断转换。通过从第一页开始就给出 "我们，威勒斯登人 "的自我定义，后一种叙述声音声称代表了整个邻里社区、
with its presumed shared attitudes and specific ethnic mix, foregrounded through the description of the 'number of curious buildings' (Smith 2013b, p. 12) in Brondesbury Park, ranging from an Arab mansion to a Roman Catholic nunnery, and from a Sikh institute to a faux-Tudor house occasionally rented by celebrities. As such, this 'we' point of view through which some sections of the text are focalised might appear to be an interesting case of what Lanser termed 'communal voice', or a narrator typology that 'articulate[s] either a collective voice or a collection of voices that share narrative authority' (1992, p. 21).
通过对布朗德斯伯里公园 "众多奇特建筑"（Smith 2013b, p.12）的描述，突出了其假定的共同态度和特定的种族组合，从阿拉伯豪宅到罗马天主教尼姑庵，从锡克教学院到偶尔被名人租用的仿都铎式房屋，不一而足。因此，文本中某些章节所聚焦的 "我们 "视角似乎是兰瑟所称的 "共同声音 "的一个有趣案例，或者说是一种叙述者类型学，"阐明了一个集体的声音或共享叙事权威的声音集合"（1992 年，第 21 页）。

In her elaboration of this concept, Lanser interestingly points out the radical potential that such a narrative voice could hold, considering that it can encompass characters of any gender, ethnicity, or social class. For her,
兰瑟在阐述这一概念时，有趣地指出了这种叙事声音所具有的激进潜力，因为它可以涵盖任何性别、种族或社会阶层的人物。在她看来

in articulating a plural consciousness irreducible to one sex or gender, this we-narration affords a kind of proto-utopian exercise in which gender, race, sexuality, and other conventional social classifications fail to signify discreet features; instead, the collective is forged by shared circumstance and intentional community. (Lanser 2018, p. 9)
这种 "我们 "的叙事方式在阐述一种不局限于某一性或性别的多元意识时，提供了一种原乌托邦式的练习，在这种练习中，性别、种族、性和其他传统的社会分类都不再是孤立的特征；相反，集体是由共同的环境和有意识的社区形成的。(兰瑟，2018 年，第 9 页）

In the context of The Embassy of Cambodia, Lanser's remarks would prompt one to posit the existence of a coherent local narrative community, which, albeit not homogeneous, might be unified by certain affective circumstances and express a consistent set of shared preoccupations. This is the interpretation given by Bettina Jansen, who sees Smith's deployment of the we-voice in the novella as 'a utopian vision of an inoperative, singular plural community where people tend to care for each other irrespective of the existence of familial, ethnic, religious, or any other essentialist ties' (2018, p. 237).
就《柬埔寨使馆》而言，兰瑟的言论将促使人们假定存在一个连贯的地方叙事社区，尽管这个社区并非千篇一律，但可能因某些情感环境而统一，并表达出一系列一致的共同关注点。贝蒂娜-扬森（Bettina Jansen）就是这样解释的，她认为史密斯在这部长篇小说中使用 "我们 "的声音，是 "一种乌托邦式的愿景，即一个无法运作的、单一的多元社区，在这个社区中，人们倾向于互相关心，而不论是否存在家庭、种族、宗教或任何其他本质主义联系"（2018 年，第 237 页）。

In my view, however, the communal voice deployed in The Embassy of Cambodia cannot be said to show Lanser's 'shared circumstance and intentional community'. Its referential limits are unclear, its coherence dubious, and it is difficult to regard it as reliable after we learn that the 'we-speaker' is actually contested as a legitimate representative of the community by its very members:
然而，在我看来，《柬埔寨使馆》中的共同声音不能说是兰瑟的 "共同环境和有意的共同体"。它的指涉范围不明确，连贯性可疑，而且在我们得知 "我们--发言者 "实际上被其成员质疑为社区的合法代表之后，很难将其视为可靠的：

Of the Old and New People of Willesden I speak; I have been chosen to speak for them, though they did not choose me and must wonder what gives me the right. I could say 'Because I was born at the crossroads of Willesden, Kilburn and Queen's Park!' But the reply would be swift and damning: 'Oh, don't be foolish, many people were born right there; it doesn't mean anything at all. We are not one people and no one can speak for us. It's all a lot of nonsense. We see you standing on the balcony, overlooking the Embassy of Cambodia, in your dressing gown, staring into the chestnut trees, looking gormless. The real reason you speak in this way is because you can't think of anything better to do'. (Smith 2013b, p. 40)
我代表威尔斯登的新老人民发言；我被选中代表他们发言，尽管他们并没有选中我，他们一定会问我凭什么有这个权利。我可以说'因为我出生在威尔斯登、基尔伯恩和皇后公园的十字路口！''但回答会是迅速而严厉的：'哦，别傻了，很多人就出生在那里；这根本不意味着什么。我们不是一个民族，没有人能代表我们说话。这都是胡说八道。我们看到你站在阳台上，俯瞰着柬埔寨大使馆，穿着睡袍，凝视着栗子树，一副无精打采的样子。你这样说话的真正原因是你想不出更好的办法"。(史密斯，2013 年 b，第 40 页）

The confrontation imagined in this excerpt, a rare case in the novella in which the we-narrative's first-person-plural is further contrasted with a first-person-singular, points to a heterogeneous neighbourhood community that refuses to identify as one people and seems to contest the necessity to speak altogether, at least to or about Fatou. In this sense, the reference to the dressing gown and the act of 'staring into the chestnut trees' is an obvious allusion to the inhabitants of a previously mentioned retirement home located in front of the Embassy. The speaker could thus be identified with an elderly person whose clarity of mind and reliability are questionable, while the reference to the 'Old and the New people of Willesden', which evokes the Cambodian Khmer Rouge ideology of country people versus city dwellers, adopts a much more ironic and domestic undertone.
这个节选中想象的对峙是长篇小说中罕见的 "我们 "叙事的第一人称复数与第一人称单数的进一步对比，它指向一个异质的邻里社区，这个社区拒绝认同为一个民族，似乎在质疑至少对法图或关于法图说话的必要性。从这个意义上说，"盯着栗子树 "和 "穿长袍 "的提法显然是在暗指之前提到的位于大使馆前的养老院的居民。而 "威勒斯登的老人们和新人们 "的提法则让人联想到柬埔寨红色高棉关于乡下人与城里人的意识形态，具有更多的讽刺意味和家庭色彩。

Most importantly, this excerpt shows some interesting sociological implications of the we-narrator's intrusiveness. While Fatou's own perspective is conveyed through a rather classical third-person voice that simply acts as a recording consciousness, and thus only draws the readers' attention towards her actions and feelings or the plot development, the we-voice overtly reflecting on itself manifests a deliberate theatrical twist. Besides thematising the story that is narrated, in fact, it calls attention to what Schmid (2005) terms the 'story of narration': i.e., it configures the narrative discourse as dramatised, and more particularly as a staged oral speech even including imagined dialogic confrontations. This performative quality of the we-voice moves the reader's attention away from the narrated events and towards the act of narrating itself, or, to phrase it differently, towards the theatrical scene of the speech act itself.
最重要的是，这个节选显示了 "我们 "叙述者的介入所带来的一些有趣的社会学意义。法图本人的视角是通过一个相当经典的第三人称声音来传达的，它只是充当了一个记录意识的角色，因此只会将读者的注意力吸引到她的行为和感受或情节发展上，而我们的声音公开反思自身则体现了一种刻意的戏剧性转折。除了将所叙述的故事主题化之外，事实上，它还唤起了人们对施密德（Schmid，2005 年）所称的 "叙述的故事 "的关注：即，它将叙述话语戏剧化，尤其是将其配置为舞台化的口头演说，甚至包括想象中的对话对抗。我们的声音 "的这种表演性质将读者的注意力从叙述的事件转移到叙述行为本身，或者换一种说法，转移到言语行为本身的戏剧场景。

That all written narratives can be seen as speech acts has been variously demonstrated by both linguists and literary scholars following the lead of Mary Louise Pratt (1977, 1986), who, in her seminal work on speech, ideology, and literary discourse, calls attention to the affective and power relations among reader, author, and text in a context in which language 'constitutes the world for people in speech communities rather than merely depicting it' (1986, p. 71, emphasis added). If all speech acts-and thus all narratives-function as constituting the world, moreover, some particular written texts can be seen as staging it in a quasi-theatrical way. The texts that mimic oral speech-i.e., that include the narrator's self-thematisations, explicit comments on the story or the act of narrating, or direct addresses to the reader-have a particular performative effect. As Alberica Bazzoni points out, a narrative is clearly performative not only when it is addressed to a physically present audience, but also when it 'realizes the narrator's own identity formation' (2017, p. 73), or, in other words, when it performs the narrator's opinions, social positioning, and identification.
普拉特在其关于言语、意识形态和文学话语的开创性著作中呼吁人们关注读者、作者和文本之间的情感和权力关系，在这种语境中，语言 "为言语社区中的人们构成世界，而不仅仅是描绘世界"（1986 年，第 71 页，着重号后加）。此外，如果所有言语行为--也就是所有叙事--都起到了构成世界的作用，那么某些特定的书面文本就可以被视为以一种准戏剧的方式上演世界。模仿口头语言的文本，即包括叙述者的自我陈述、对故事或叙述行为的明确评论或对读者的直接讲话的文本，具有特殊的表演效果。正如阿尔贝利卡-巴佐尼（Alberica Bazzoni）所指出的，叙事显然是表演性的，不仅是当它是针对亲身在场的听众时，而且当它 "实现了叙述者自身身份的形成"（2017 年，第 73 页），或者换句话说，当它表演了叙述者的观点、社会定位和身份认同时。

In transforming the reader into the implied audience of the theatrical scene where the speech is performed, these narratives also call for the readers' active engagement with the issues at stake in the story. In the case of The Embassy of Cambodia, where the central question discussed by both Fatou and the we-voice is that of the unfair hierarchies among different people's suffering and the many borders (political, sociocultural, and identitarian) that construct such hierarchies, this active engagement equals an assumption of responsibility for such borders and hierarchies on the part of the reader. When confronted with the neighbourhood voice's defence of 'narrow, local scopes' (Smith 2013b, p. 23) rather than global, historical considerations, readers cannot avoid defining their own positions on the matter.
这些叙事将读者转化为演说的戏剧场景中的隐含观众，也要求读者积极参与故事中的关键问题。在《柬埔寨大使馆》中，法图和 "我们的声音 "讨论的核心问题是不同人的苦难之间存在不公平的等级制度，以及构建这种等级制度的多种边界（政治、社会文化和身份认同），这种积极的参与等同于读者对这种边界和等级制度承担责任。面对邻里之声对 "狭隘的地方范围"（Smith 2013b，第 23 页）而非全球的历史考量的辩护，读者无法避免界定自己在这一问题上的立场。

The issues at stake here are those crucial to Western societies as arrival countries of the migratory routes: how much do we really care for the pain of others? And how do we articulate our ethics discursively? The Embassy building, with its impenetrable walls and mysterious atmosphere, often compels the neighbourhood to think of the genocide perpetrated by the Khmer Rouge. However, with her limited access to historical information combined with her acute awareness of the current structural violence affecting her and many of her fellow Africans, Fatou looks at the Embassy with an interest all focused on the present-and particularly on the
这里涉及的问题对于作为移民路线抵达国的西方社会至关重要：我们对他人的痛苦真正关心多少？我们又该如何用话语来表达我们的道德观？使馆大楼有着密不透风的墙壁和神秘的气氛，常常让附近的居民联想到红色高棉犯下的种族灭绝罪行。然而，由于法图获取历史信息的渠道有限，再加上她对当前影响她和许多非洲同胞的结构性暴力的敏锐认识，她对大使馆的兴趣完全集中在当下，尤其是对 "非洲 "的兴趣。
possibility to see a real Cambodian for the first time in her life. This strongly contrasts with the patronising attitude of the we-voice witnessing her story, which ultimately intends to justify its own relinquishing of responsibility towards the pain of others:
这是她有生以来第一次有可能见到一个真正的柬埔寨人。这与目睹她的故事的 "我们 "的傲慢态度形成了强烈对比，"我们 "最终是要为自己放弃对他人痛苦的责任进行辩解：

No doubt there are those who will be critical of the narrow, essentially local scope of Fatou's interest in the Cambodian woman from the Embassy of Cambodia, but we, the people of Willesden, have some sympathy with her attitude. The fact is if we followed the history of every little country in this world-in its dramatic as well as its quiet times-we would have no space left in which to live our own lives or to apply ourselves to our necessary tasks, never mind indulge in occasional pleasures, like swimming. (p. 23)
毫无疑问，有人会批评法图对来自柬埔寨大使馆的柬埔寨妇女的兴趣范围狭窄，基本上是地方性的，但我们威尔斯登人对她的态度有一些同情。事实是，如果我们追随世界上每一个小国的历史--无论是戏剧性的还是平静的时期--我们就没有任何空间来过自己的生活，或从事自己的必要工作，更不用说沉迷于游泳等偶尔的乐趣了。(p. 23)

Through the allusion to swimming, the ambiguous attitude of the wevoice seems to lump Fatou's slave-like life together with the neighbours' everyday routine and, in doing so, it questions the authenticity and effectiveness of its own proclaimed 'sympathy'. Rather than the 'inclusionary "we"' and the 'model of peaceful singular plurality' that Jansen sees in it (2018, pp. 238-239), the collective voice implies a resigned acceptance of the differential treatment of historical violence based on gender and race power unbalances-a resignation made more evident by the voice's theatrical performing of its own opinion, social positioning, and identification ('we, the people of Willesden').
通过游泳的典故，"我们的声音 "的暧昧态度似乎将法图奴隶般的生活与邻居们的日常生活混为一谈，并以此质疑自己所宣称的 "同情 "的真实性和有效性。与扬森眼中的 "包容的'我们'"和 "和平的单一多元模式"（2018 年，第 238-239 页）不同，这个集体的声音暗示了对基于性别和种族权力不平衡的历史暴力的区别对待的无奈接受--这种无奈通过这个声音对自身观点、社会定位和身份认同（"我们，威勒斯登的人民"）的戏剧化表演而更加明显。

Fatou, on the contrary, is eager to prove what she has learned through personal experience: the pain of Africans seems to her to be deemed less worthy than the pain of other peoples, especially Westerners, so that a veritable hierarchy of suffering emerges from the geopolitical and sociocultural arrangement of the world. For example, she tells her friend Andrew about one day in Ghana when she had seen 'nine children washed up dead on the beach. Ten or eleven years old, boys and girls'-a tragedy accepted with resignation by the witnesses who, after the removal of the bodies from the seaside, 'carried on like before' (Smith 2013b, p. 47). Her surprise had been great, therefore, when, a year later in Rome, the death of a 15-year-old boy knocked down on his bike had been followed by people's 'screaming and crying in the street' (p. 48) and covered by a newspaper article the following day. The different reactions to the two episodes had convinced Fatou that the pain of Africans, especially in the West, is accepted as more inevitable and less scandalous than everyone else's pain.
相反，法图急于证明她通过亲身经历所了解到的东西：在她看来，非洲人的痛苦似乎不如其他民族，尤其是西方人的痛苦值得一提，因此，在世界的地缘政治和社会文化安排中出现了名副其实的痛苦等级制度。例如，她向朋友安德鲁讲述了在加纳的一天，她看到 "九个孩子被冲到海滩上死去。十岁或十一岁，有男孩也有女孩"--目击者无奈地接受了这一悲剧，将尸体从海边移走后，他们 "像以前一样继续生活"（Smith 2013b，第47页）。因此，当一年后在罗马，一名 15 岁男孩骑车被撞倒后死亡，人们'在街上尖叫哭泣'（第 48 页），第二天报纸上又有报道时，她感到非常惊讶。人们对这两起事件的不同反应让法图相信，非洲人的痛苦，尤其是在西方，被认为比其他人的痛苦更不可避免，更不可耻。

It is for this reason that, while reclaiming her right to a full subjectivity and wondering 'what is wrong to hope to be happy' (p. 5l), she remains suspicious of the condescending attitude of some Willesden inhabitants, who exhibit sympathy but are often patronising towards her. This is the case of the girl at the health centre reception who only after a long and hard-won negotiation allows Fatou to use, for once, two daily passes rather than one and take Andrew into the pool with her. When the same girl expects to be treated with particular appreciation on her next visit to the centre, Fatou is just 'unwilling to be grateful for past favours. Gratitude was just another kind of servitude. Better to make your own arrangements' (p. 68).
正因如此，法图在重新获得完整的主体性权利并思考 "希望快乐有什么错"（第 5l 页）的同时，对一些威尔斯登居民居高临下的态度仍心存疑虑。保健中心接待处的女孩就是这样，经过长时间艰难的协商，她才允许法图使用两张而不是一张日票，并带着安德鲁一起进入游泳池。当同一个女孩希望在下一次来中心时得到特别的礼遇时，法图只是 "不愿对过去的恩惠心存感激"。感激只是另一种奴役。最好是自己安排"（第 68 页）。

The question of ethics, solidarity, and effective assumption of responsibility is raised again at the end of the story, when the protagonist, having saved the youngest Derawal child from choking, becomes such an uncomfortable figure for her employers that they fire her and ask her to leave the house immediately. At this point in the story, while she waits for Andrew to pick her up, she sits for hours on the bus stop pavement, surrounded by the plastic bags containing all her belongings. The we-voice narrator here assumes a witnessing tone that calls to mind the classic chorus function of the Greek tragedy. In that tradition, speaking for the entire community, the coryphaeus, or chorus leader, classically intervenes on the scene to express the collective sharing of the unfortunate protagonists' feelings. Although this show of empathy cannot traditionally change the course of the tragedy, the chorus does not usually refrain from actively criticising and even publicly sanctioning violent acts or injustices suffered by the victims, even when they have been perpetrated by the city's authorities. In this way, the audiences of classic tragedies are at least allowed to define their ethical positioning even in the face of the cruellest destiny. In the case of The Embassy of Cambodia, in which no authoritarian regime would forbid personal initiative, the we-voice's concluding remarks apparently express sympathetic worry for Fatou. In reality, however, they differ from a Greek chorus because they do not only leave her to her destiny without establishing contact or offering help, but also refuse to comment on the structural violence inflicted upon her or on their possible complicity in it:
故事的结尾再次提出了道德、团结和有效承担责任的问题，主人公救下了窒息而死的最小的德拉瓦尔家的孩子，但她的形象却让雇主很不舒服，他们解雇了她，并要求她立即离开家。在故事的这个阶段，当她等待安德鲁来接她时，她在公共汽车站的人行道上一坐就是几个小时，周围是装着她所有物品的塑料袋。在这里，"我们 "的叙述者以一种见证者的口吻，让人想起希腊悲剧中经典的合唱功能。在这一传统中，coryphaeus（即合唱队队长）代表整个群体发言，他通常会介入现场，表达集体对不幸主人公的同感。虽然这种共情的表现在传统上无法改变悲剧的进程，但合唱团通常不会不积极批评甚至公开认可受害者遭受的暴力行为或不公正待遇，即使这些行为或待遇是由城市当局实施的。这样，即使面对最残酷的命运，经典悲剧的观众至少可以明确自己的伦理定位。 在《柬埔寨大使馆》中，任何专制政权都不会禁止个人的主动性，我们的声音的结束语表面上表达了对法图的同情和担忧。但实际上，他们与希腊合唱团不同，因为他们不仅没有与法图建立联系或提供帮助，而是任由她自生自灭，而且拒绝对施加在她身上的结构性暴力或他们可能的同谋行为发表评论：

Many of us walked past her that afternoon, or spotted her as we rode the bus, or through the windscreens of our cars, or from our balconies. Naturally, we wondered what this girl was doing, sitting on the damp pavement in the middle of the day. We worried for her. We tend to assume the worst, here in Willesden. We watched her watching the shuttlecock. Pock, smash. Pock, smash. As if one player could imagine only a violent conclusion and the other only a hopeful return. (p. 69)
那天下午，我们中的许多人都从她身边走过，或在乘坐公共汽车时，或透过汽车挡风玻璃，或从阳台上发现了她。很自然，我们想知道这个女孩在做什么，大白天坐在潮湿的人行道上。我们为她担心。在威尔斯登，我们往往会做最坏的打算。我们看着她踢毽子。啪，砸。啪，砸。仿佛一个人只能想象暴力的结局，而另一个人只能想象充满希望的回归。(p. 69)

If the unreliable Willesden community can only worry about a 'violent conclusion' because of its default pessimistic stance and its refusal to intervene, Fatou continues to admire the way in which the second player hits the shuttlecock back as if they would always be able to transform its movement, as she feels at the beginning of the narrative, into a 'gentle, floating (p. 5) that puts hope back into the picture.
如果说不可靠的威尔斯登社区因为默认的悲观立场和拒绝干预而只能担心 "暴力的结局"，那么法图则继续欣赏第二位选手回击毽子的方式，仿佛他们总能将毽子的运动（正如她在叙事开始时所感受到的那样）转化为 "轻柔、飘逸的 （第 5 页），让希望重回画面。

Interestingly, the way in which the focalisation in this concluding paragraph subtly shifts from the community watching Fatou to Fatou herself watching the badminton game signals a further significant type of bordercrossing operated by the text, with additional socio-political implications. Given the performative attitude of the we-voice, The Embassy of Cambodia can be said to exist at the borders of, and across, different literary genres: the explicit form of the novella, and the implicit forms of the theatrical monologue, the Greek tragedy (especially its chorus parts), and the embedded journalistic reportage on a local story, in the pages where the we-voice intervenes. Calling attention to how a contemporary story of migration can be told not only from different perspectives but also using disparate narrative conventions, Smith highlights the ambiguities and fallibility of monolithic national discourses on these topics.
有趣的是，结尾段落中的聚焦点从观看法图的社区微妙地转移到法图本人观看羽毛球比赛的方式，预示着文本运作的另一种重要的跨界类型，具有额外的社会政治含义。鉴于 "我们的声音 "的表演态度，《柬埔寨大使馆》可以说存在于不同文学体裁的边界，并跨越了这些体裁：在 "我们的声音 "介入的篇幅中，既有长篇小说的显性形式，也有戏剧独白、希腊悲剧（尤其是其合唱部分）和嵌入式地方故事新闻报道的隐性形式。史密斯提请人们注意，当代移民故事不仅可以从不同的视角讲述，而且还可以使用不同的叙事惯例，他强调了关于这些主题的单一国家话语的模糊性和不确定性。

As with other types of short fiction, genre experimentation is a typical feature of novellas, since their quintessential brevity and episodic structure grant writers a greater freedom in thematising narration in a self-reflexive way. As Jochen Achilles and Ina Bergmann argue, short fiction is in fact 'the liminal genre par excellence', not only because it typically portrays transitional situations and fleeting moments of crisis or decision, but also because it 'develops out of, and mediates between, essay and sketch [...], poem and novel , narration and discourse , and elitist and popular culture' (2014, p. 4). Short fiction's poetics of liminality is, on this
与其他类型的短篇小说一样，体裁实验是长篇小说的典型特征，因为其典型的简短性和插叙式结构为作家以自我反思的方式将叙述主题化提供了更大的自由度。正如约亨-阿基里斯（Jochen Achilles）和伊娜-伯格曼（Ina Bergmann）所言，短篇小说实际上是 "卓越的边缘体裁"，这不仅是因为它通常描写过渡情境和稍纵即逝的危机或抉择时刻，还因为它 "发展于散文和小品[......]、诗歌和小说 、叙述和话语 、精英文化和大众文化之间，并在它们之间起中介作用"（2014，第4页）。就此而言，短篇小说的边缘诗学是
account, particularly relevant for women writers, who have historically had to work from the margins of society and identification, and even more so for racialised women writers, whose human subjectivity has been doubly threatened by gender and race hierarchies. Smith's choice of the novella when dealing with this story of migration is thus significant as an exercise of (racialised) gender, as well as genre, freedom, even beyond the representational level of the story.
对于历来不得不从社会和身份认同的边缘进行创作的女作家而言，这一点尤为重要；对于种族化女作家而言，这一点更为重要，因为她们的主体性受到性别和种族等级制度的双重威胁。因此，史密斯在处理这个移民故事时选择了长篇小说，这对于（种族化）性别和体裁自由的行使具有重要意义，甚至超越了故事的表现层面。

The end of The Embassy of Cambodia sees Fatou's perspective framed once again by the we-voice, which puts the affective and power relations at stake in the narrative back into the light. The collective voice's exhibited preoccupations with self-definition and justification ('we tend to assume the worst, here in Willesden') compel the readers to consider their own positions with regard to Fatou and the differential humanity politics that she has denounced in the story. When the first-person-plural narrator resumes its self-indulgent oral speech-like tone, readers are again called to perform an active role. Fatou's story is left suspended at the point in which she is waiting for Andrew to pick her up and still does not know how the badminton game, on one hand, and her life, on the other, will turn out. Readers, on their part, cannot avoid noticing how the multicultural and supposedly welcoming people of Willesden behave as if she existed on a distant, parallel level, even when she exits the invisibility that characterised her life as a domestic worker.
在《柬埔寨大使馆》的结尾，法图的视角再次被 "我们 "的声音所框定，这让叙事中的情感和权力关系重新回到了人们的视野中。集体的声音所表现出的对自我定义和辩解的关注（"在威勒斯登，我们倾向于假设最坏的情况"）迫使读者思考自己对法图和她在故事中谴责的差别人性政治的立场。当第一人称复数叙述者恢复了自我陶醉的口语语调时，读者再次被要求扮演一个积极的角色。法图的故事被悬置在她等待安德鲁来接她的那一刻，她仍然不知道羽毛球比赛和她的生活将如何发展。就读者而言，他们不能不注意到威尔斯登的多元文化和本应热情好客的人们是如何表现的，就好像她存在于一个遥远的平行层面上，即使她摆脱了作为家庭佣工的隐形生活。

As in most of Smith's fiction, the community that animates The Embassy of Cambodia is hyper-local in scale. In this case, the reference to the author's beloved North-Western London is further restricted to the sole neighbourhood of Willesden Green, which is to say to such a minimal part of the Council of Brent that one might wonder whether it is even possible to associate Smith's critical discourse to the British and European societies at large. The answer is provided by the spatio-temporal span of the novella. While Fatou is unable to see much else than the Derawals's house, the swimming pool, and a short section of Brondesbury Park, her memories of life in Italy and Ghana give a much wider frame to her (and the readers') experiences of the world. The story unfolds in a few weeks of the late summer and early autumn of 2012, at the apparent microlevel of domestic and individual life. It also refers to widely celebrated global events, such as the Olympic Games, and offers sustained reflections on major episodes of
与史密斯的大多数小说一样，《柬埔寨大使馆》所描绘的社区也是超地方性的。在这部作品中，作者所钟爱的伦敦西北部被进一步限制在威尔斯登格林（Willesden Green）这一唯一的街区，也就是说，只涉及布伦特议会的极小一部分，以至于人们可能会怀疑，史密斯的批评话语是否有可能与整个英国和欧洲社会联系在一起。这部长篇小说的时空跨度给出了答案。虽然法图除了德拉瓦尔家的房子、游泳池和布隆兹伯里公园的一小段之外，看不到其他什么东西，但她对意大利和加纳生活的回忆为她（以及读者）的世界体验提供了更广阔的框架。故事在 2012 年夏末秋初的几周内展开，表面上是家庭和个人生活的微观层面。书中还提到了广为传颂的全球事件，如奥运会，并持续反思了《世界人权宣言》中的重大事件。
historical violence from the whole world, among which ancient and modern slavery, the Cambodian genocide, modern-day migration, the Holocaust, and the Hiroshima bombing. As Pirker observes, Smith's insistence on the microcosm of North-West London ultimately proves to be associated 'with the idea of the global northwest, a region which has dominated the world's economy, politics and culture throughout the phase of European colonialism and the 20th century', and which is now a 'spac[e] in which racialized conceptions linger' (2016, pp. 70, 72). The fact that Smith apparently worked at The Embassy of Cambodia at the same time as writing the aptly titled (2012b) further seems to confirm that the author's interest in this particular quarter of the British capital exceeds the spheres of personal affection and character, and points instead to an embodied, rooted reflection on wider-scale phenomena.
在史密斯的作品中，我们可以看到来自世界各地的历史暴力，其中包括古代和现代的奴隶制、柬埔寨种族灭绝、现代移民、大屠杀和广岛原子弹爆炸。正如皮尔克所观察到的，史密斯对伦敦西北部微观世界的坚持最终被证明与 "全球西北部的概念相关联，这一地区在整个欧洲殖民主义阶段和20世纪主导了世界的经济、政治和文化"，而现在它是 "种族化概念徘徊的空间"（2016，第70、72页）。史密斯在撰写题为《 》（2012b）的文章的同时显然还在柬埔寨大使馆工作，这一事实似乎进一步证实了作者对英国首都这一特定区域的兴趣超出了个人感情和性格的范畴，而是指向对更广泛现象的具体化、扎根性反思。

Viewed in this light, the we-voice narrator of Smith's novella seems to give a concrete and recognisable face to a much more widespread attitude of global North-West communities, which often insist on identifying themselves as relentless supporters of human rights but rarely turn their humanitarian theory into action. The Embassy of Cambodia dramatises these contradictions, offering poignant depictions of contemporary experiences of diaspora and of the global North's discursive, as well as factual, ambiguities towards them. In particular, the British society of integration politics, multicultural Olympic Games, and abolitionist traditions seems ultimately unable to assume responsibility for the exclusionary practices and the new forms of postcolonial slavery that characterise its socioeconomic system.
从这个角度看，史密斯长篇小说中 "我们 "的叙述者似乎为全球西北部社区更普遍的态度赋予了具体而可识别的面孔，这些社区往往坚持将自己定位为人权的不懈支持者，但却很少将其人道主义理论付诸行动。柬埔寨大使馆》将这些矛盾演绎得淋漓尽致，生动地描绘了当代散居国外者的经历以及全球西北地区在言论和事实上对这些经历的模糊态度。特别是，融合政治、多元文化奥运会和废奴传统的英国社会似乎最终无法为其社会经济制度中的排斥性做法和新形式的后殖民奴隶制承担责任。

As shown above, Smith's novella blends classical focalisation with an engaging sort of theatrical speech-act, whereby the narrative discourse moves from one gendered and racialised individual's tribulations to the collective responsibilities of those who witness that story without intervening. The alternation of narrative voices and viewpoints in The Embassy of Cambodia therefore has an actual performative effect on the readers, who are led to self-analyse their own voices and responsibilities in witnessing contemporary migratory crises. In this sense, Smith's own foregrounding of the text's ability to do something in the aforementioned 2020 interview ('It does exactly what I wanted it to do') is revealing. The suspended temporality and conceptual in-betweenness produced by the border-crossing of narrative perspectives opens up a space for re-discussing Europeans' alleged innocence in respect to the pain of others and their own complicity in establishing and maintaining borders that cause such pain. In particular, the permeability of focalising consciousness and literary genres alike, contrasted with the apparent impenetrability of the racial and gender boundaries that constrain Fatou, invites a reflection on the co-constituting nature of gendered, racial, territorial, and political borders in the contemporary world. By operating a continuous crossing of textual and contextual borders in order to involve readers in the story, Smith indicates that the nominally elastic boundaries of empathy, a quality usually attributed to women as traditional caregivers, are actually kept rigid by the Europeans' entrenched patriarchal culture on the scene of migration.
如上所述，史密斯的长篇小说融合了经典的聚焦和一种引人入胜的戏剧言语表演，叙事话语从一个性别和种族化个体的苦难转向那些目睹这一故事的人的集体责任，而没有进行干预。因此，《柬埔寨大使馆》中叙事声音和观点的交替对读者产生了实际的表演效果，引导读者自我分析他们在见证当代移民危机中的声音和责任。从这个意义上说，史密斯在上述 2020 年的访谈中对文本能力的强调（"它做的正是我想要它做的"）是有启发性的。叙事视角的边界交叉所产生的悬浮时间性和概念中间性，为重新讨论欧洲人在他人痛苦方面的所谓无辜，以及他们自己在建立和维护造成这种痛苦的边界方面的共谋，开辟了一个空间。特别是，聚焦意识和文学流派的渗透性，与制约法图的种族和性别边界的明显不可渗透性形成鲜明对比，引发了对当代世界性别、种族、领土和政治边界的共同构成性质的反思。史密斯通过不断跨越文本和语境的边界，让读者参与到故事中来，从而揭示了移情这一通常被归因于女性作为传统照顾者的特质的名义上富有弹性的边界，实际上被欧洲人在移民现场根深蒂固的父权文化所僵化。

Achilles, Jochen, and Ina Bergmann. 2014. 'Betwixt and between': Boundary crossings in American, Canadian, and British short fiction. In Liminality and the short story: Boundary crossings in American, Canadian, and British writing, ed. Jochen Achilles and Ina Bergmann, 2-30. New York: Routledge.
Achilles, Jochen, and Ina Bergmann.2014.Betwixt and between'：美国、加拿大和英国短篇小说中的边界跨越。见《界限与短篇小说》：美国、加拿大和英国写作中的跨界》，编辑：约亨-阿基里斯（Jochen Achilles）和伊娜-伯格曼（Ina Bergmann）。Jochen Achilles and Ina Bergmann, 2-30.纽约：New York: Routledge.

Bazzoni, Alberica. 2017. The performative power of narrative in Goliarda Sapienza's Lettera aperta, L'arte della gioia and Io, Jean Gabin. Italian Studies 72 (1): 72-88.
Bazzoni, Alberica.2017.戈利亚尔达-萨皮恩扎的《Lettera aperta》、《L'arte della gioia》和《Io, Jean Gabin》中叙事的表演力量。意大利研究》72 (1): 72-88.

Chouliaraki, Lilie, and Tijana Stolic. 2017. Rethinking media responsibility in the refugee 'crisis': A visual topology of European news. Media, Culture and Society 39 (8): 1162-1177.
Chouliaraki, Lilie, and Tijana Stolic.2017.重新思考难民 "危机 "中的媒体责任：欧洲新闻的视觉拓扑。Media, Culture and Society 39 (8)：1162-1177.

Ford, Ashley C., and Zadie Smith. 2020. Zadie Smith: Intimations. A conversation with Ashley C. Ford. 92Y Poetry center online interview, October 20. Accessed 7 June 2023. https://www.92y.org/archives/zadie-smith.aspx?orde perf=169111&utm_source=SFMC&utm_medium=email_order_ confirmation&utm_campaign=order_confirmation&mcSID=739062.
Ford, Ashley C., and Zadie Smith.2020.Zadie Smith: Intimations.与 Ashley C. Ford 的对话。92Y诗歌中心在线访谈，10月20日。Accessed 7 June 2023. https://www.92y.org/archives/zadie-smith.aspx?orde perf=169111&utm_source=SFMC&utm_medium=email_order_ confirmation&utm_campaign=order_confirmation&mcSID=739062.

Genette, Gérard. 1980 (1972). Narrative discourse: An essay in method. Trans. Jane E. Lewin. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Genette, Gérard.1980 (1972).Narrative discourse：An essay in method.Trans. Jane E. Lewin.Jane E. Lewin.Ithaca, NY：康奈尔大学出版社。

Hall, Stuart. 2002. 'In but not of Europe': Europe and its myths. Soundings. A Journal of Politics and Culture 22: 57-69.
Hall, Stuart.2002.在欧洲但不属于欧洲"：欧洲及其神话。Soundings.A Journal of Politics and Culture 22: 57-69.

Hensher, Philip. 2013. Why small is sweet. The Guardian, November 1. Accessed 7 June 2023. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/ nov/01/philip-hensher-why-short-is-sweet.
Hensher, Philip.2013.为什么小就是甜？卫报》，11 月 1 日。https://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/ nov/01/philip-hensher-why-short-is-sweet.

Holzberg, Billy, Anouk Madörin, and Michelle Pfeifer. 2021. The sexual politics of border control: An introduction. Ethnic and Racial Studies 44 (9): .
Holzberg, Billy, Anouk Madörin, and Michelle Pfeifer.2021.The sexual politics of border control：An introduction.Ethnic and Racial Studies 44 (9): .

Jansen, Bettina. 2018. Accidental Englishness: Zadie Smith. In Narratives of community in the Black British short story, 207-249. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan.
Jansen, Bettina.2018.意外的英国气质Zadie Smith.In Narratives of Community in the Black British short story, 207-249.Cham：Palgrave Macmillan.

Lanser, Susan S. 1992. Fictions of authority. Women writers and narrative voice. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Lanser, Susan S. 1992.Fictions of authority.Women writers and narrative voice.Ithaca, NY：Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

-. 2018. Queering narrative voice. Textual Practice 36 (2): 1-15.
-.2018.Queering narrative voice.Textual Practice 36 (2)：1-15.

Mezzadra, Sandro, and Brett Neilson. 2012. Between inclusion and exclusion: On the topology of global space and borders. Theory, Culture & Society 29 .
Mezzadra、Sandro 和 Brett Neilson。2012.Between inclusion and exclusion：论全球空间和边界拓扑学》。理论、文化与社会》 29 .

Monforte, Pierre. 2019. From 'Fortress Europe' to 'Refugees Welcome': Social movements and the political imaginary on European borders. In The Routledge bandbook of contemporary European social movements: Protest in turbulent times, ed. Cristina Flesher Fominaya and Ramón Feenstra, 46-58. London: Routledge.
Monforte, Pierre.2019.从 "欧洲要塞 "到 "欢迎难民"：欧洲边界上的社会运动和政治想象。In The Routledge bandbook of contemporary European social movements：Protest in turbulent times, ed. Cristina Flesher Fomin.Cristina Flesher Fominaya and Ramón Feenstra, 46-58.伦敦：London: Routledge.

Nazer, Mende, and Damien Lewis. 2004. Slave: My true story. London: Hachette Digital (Little, Brown Book Group).
Nazer, Mende, and Damien Lewis.2004.奴隶：我的真实故事》。伦敦：Hachette Digital（小布朗图书集团）。

Opondo, Sam Okoth, and Michael J. Shapiro. 2019. Subalterns 'speak': Migrant bodies, and the performativity of the arts. Globalizations 16 (4): 575-591.
Opondo, Sam Okoth, and Michael J. Shapiro.2019.Subalterns 'speak'：Migrant bodies, and the performativity of the arts.Globalizations 16 (4)：575-591.

Pérez Zapata, Beatriz. 2015. Decolonizing trauma: A study of multidirectional memory in Zadie Smith's The embassy of Cambodia. Humanities 4: 523-534.
Pérez Zapata, Beatriz.2015.非殖民化创伤：扎迪-史密斯《柬埔寨大使馆》中的多向记忆研究。Humanities 4: 523-534.

Pirker, Eva Ulrike. 2016. Approaching space: Zadie Smith's North London fiction. Journal of Postcolonial Writing 52 (1): 64-76.
Pirker, Eva Ulrike.2016.接近空间：Zadie Smith's North London fiction.Journal of Postcolonial Writing 52 (1)：64-76.

Pratt, Mary Louise. 1977. Toward a speech act theory of literary discourse. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Pratt, Mary Louise.1977.Toward a speech act theory of literary discourse.Bloomington：印第安纳大学出版社。

Rutherford, Adam. 2020. How to argue with a racist: History, science, race, and reality. London: Orion Publishing.
Rutherford, Adam.2020.How to argue with a racist：How to argue with a racist: History, science, race, and reality.伦敦：Orion Publishing.

Schmid, Wolf. 2005. Elemente der Narratologie. Berlin: de Gruyter.
Schmid, Wolf.2005.Elemente der Narratologie.Berlin: de Gruyter.

Shamsie, Kamila. 2017. Home fire. London: Bloomsbury.
Shamsie, Kamila.2017.Home fire.伦敦：Bloomsbury.

Smith, Zadie. 2012a. The North West London blues. The New York Review of Books, June 2. Accessed 7 June 2023. https://www.nybooks.com/ daily north-west-london-blues/.
Smith, Zadie.2012a.伦敦西北部的蓝调》。纽约书评》，6 月 2 日。Accessed 7 June 2023. https://www.nybooks.com/ daily north-west-london-blues/.

-. 2013a. The embassy of Cambodia. The New Yorker, February 4. Accessed 7 June 2023. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/ the-embassy-of-cambodia.
-.2013a.柬埔寨大使馆。纽约客》，2 月 4 日。https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/ the-embassy-of-cambodia.

-. 2013b. The embassy of Cambodia. London: Hamish Hamilton.
-.2013b.柬埔寨大使馆》。伦敦：哈米什-汉密尔顿。

Tew, Philip. 2010. Zadie Smith. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Tew, Philip.2010.Zadie Smith.Basingstoke：Palgrave Macmillan.

Walters, Tracey. 2009. Zadie Smith. In Twenty-first-century Black British writers, ed. R. Victoria Arana, 278-290. Detroit: Gale.
Walters, Tracey.2009.Zadie Smith.In Twenty-first-century Black British writers, ed.. R. Victoria Arana, 278-290.R. Victoria Arana, 278-290.Detroit：Gale.

Ward, Abigail. 2016. Servitude and slave narratives. Wasafiri 31 (3): 42-48.
Ward, Abigail.2016.奴役与奴隶叙事。Wasafiri 31 (3)：42-48.