本文透過探究文學和影像文本中對於角色之間矛盾性親密關係的描繪，分析親密性的概念在當代(新)自由主義社會中是如何被形塑和運作其中，以維繫針對特定族群的排他性暴力機制以及化約人們生存和受苦形式的異質性。作為本文研究對象的三個文本的類型和故事背景設定皆各不相同，但是這三個文本對於浪漫愛和婚姻都有類似的再現：對浪漫愛和/或婚姻的選擇和追求，不但是成功人生的證明，更是受難角色們通往解放、自由和邁向文明進步的必要元素。但弔詭的是，即使付出了會危及生命的龐大代價，這些角色們在追求浪漫愛的過程中仍然沒有獲得解放和擠身進「成功人生」的範疇。透過追問書中角色在自主追求他們所欲望的情愛關係和生活方式的過程中，持續不斷的苦難以及與親密愛人/家人之間潛在的疏離矛盾，本文探查角色對浪漫親密性、自由和個人進步性的認同與自由主義對於自由和解放的敘事之間的系譜系關聯。在檢視書中角色所慾望的親密關係和生活方式與自由主義政治對於自由和人性/人類的論述之間的連續性，本文追溯什麼樣的結構、意識形態交互因素和歷史殘餘塑造了角色對於特定形式的親密關係看似去脈絡化、個人化的選擇和慾望，用以實現個人自由和進步性。透過上述分析，本文希望呈現出當今普世價值對於浪漫愛和婚姻的文明進步性的信仰，是如何作為一種統治機制將人們各種各樣的生存和受苦形式進行暴力化約，更進一步讓社會大眾無法思考、無法想像、甚至不能理解特定族群所經受的苦難。

Taking the literary and visual texts’ depiction of the contradictory intimacy between the characters as the research object, this thesis analyzes how the idea of intimacy is formed and works in the modern (neo)liberal society to maintain mechanisms of exclusionary violence toward certain groups of people, and further support liberal unification of the heterogeneity of people’s living and suffering. Although the genre and the story’s setting are different among the three texts, these texts have a similar representation of romantic love and marriage, or a certain kind of intimate relationship, as the ultimate demonstration of love and a successful life. In this way of representation, these texts also commonly indicate that the individual choice and pursuit of romantic love and/or marriage is how the suffering characters can achieve emancipative humanization and freedom. However, the characters still do not advance into the category of “successful people” and improve their suffering even though they have paid life-threatening costs for their pursuit of romantic love. Through looking into the characters’ continuing suffering and a sense of alienating contradiction with their important intimates under the surface of their intimacy during their autonomous pursuit of their desired love relation and lifestyle, this thesis explores the hidden genealogical relation between the characters’ identification toward romantic intimacy, humanized freedom and individual advancement and liberal narratives of freedom and forgetting. By investigating into the continuity between the formation of the characters’ desired intimacy and lifestyle and liberal political discourses about humanity and freedom, this thesis traces what intersectional factors and historical residues constitute the characters’ seemingly de-contextualized, individualized choice and desire for a certain form of intimate relationship to achieve freedom and progress. Through this way of analysis, this thesis hopes to present how the prevalently universalized value about the civil progress of romantic love and marriage actually serves as the dominating mechanism of violently reducing the diverse forms of people’s lifestyle and suffering, further making certain groups of people’s suffering unthinkable, unimaginable and incomprehensible to the society.

English Abstract..........................................I
中文摘要.................................................III
致謝辭...................................................IV
Table of Contents........................................VI
Introduction..............................................1
Chapter 1:
The Paradox of Romantic Love: The Achievement and Confinement of Romantic Love in The Book of Salt.........21
Chapter 2:
The Limit of Freedom: The Unsettling Residues of Romantic Love in The Little Mermaid...............................64
Chapter 3:
The Sacrificial Reproductive Man: The Politics of Family in Octavia E. Butler’s “Bloodchild”.........................93
Appendix................................................124
Works Cited.............................................140

Primary Texts
Butler, Octavia E. “Bloodchild”. Bloodchild and Other
Stories. New York: Seven Stories Press, 2005. 3-32.
Print.
The Little Mermaid. Dir. Ron Clements and John Musker.
Pref. Jodi Benson and Christopher
Daniel Barnes. DVD. Walt Disney Feature
Animation. 1989.
Truong, Monique T. D. The Book of Salt. Boston: Houghton
Mifflin, 2003. Print.

Secondary Sources
Cho, Yu-Fang. “Domesticating the Aliens Within: Sentimental
Benevolence in Late-Nineteenth Century California
Magazines.” American Quarterly 61.1(2009): 113-36.
Web.
Delany, Samuel R. “Science Fiction and ‘Literature’--or,
The Conscience of the King.” Speculations on
Speculation: Theories of Science Fiction. Ed. James
Gunn and Matthew Candelaria. The United States of
America: The Scarecrow Press, INC., 2005. 95-117.
Print.
Giddens, Anthony. The Transformation of Intimacy:
Sexuality, Love and Eroticism in Modern Societies.
Cambridge: Polity Press, 2008. Print.
Giddens, Anthony and Pierson, Christopher. Conversations
with Anthony Giddens: Making Sense of Modernity.
Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998. 29
April 2018 hl=zh- TW&lr=&id=YXDsvo90iZsC&oi=fnd&pg=PR7&dq=Giddens+modernity+interview&ots=2BkyI0LpFI&sig=ewCnXxVE7erJBDRz_KtU6Xu9M-o&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=Giddens%20modernity%20interview&f=false>.
George, Rosemary Marangoly. “The Authoritative
Englishwoman: setting up home and self in the
colonies”. The Politics of Home: Postcolonial
Relocations and Twentieth-century Fiction.
Cambridge: Cambridge U Press, 1996. Print.
Lowe, Lisa. “The Intimacies of Four Continents”. The
Intimacies of Four Continents. The United States of
America: Duke University Press, 2015. 1-41. Print.
Le Guin, Ursula. The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas. N.d.
23 March 2016. .
Nguyen, Mimi Thi. The Gift of Freedom: War, Debt and Other
Refugee Passages. Durham and London: Duke
University Press, 2012, Print.
Povinelli, Elizabeth A. “The Child in the Broom Closet:
States of Killing and Letting Die”. South
Atlantic Quarterly 2008 Volume 107, Number 3:
509-530.
Reddy, Chandan. “Race and the Critique of Marriage”. South
Atlantic Quarterly 115.2 (2016): 424-32. Web.
Spade, Dean. “Demanding the Unthinkable.” Feminists@Law: an
open access journal of feminist legal scholarship.
N.d., 2011. .
Shah, Nayan. “Policing Privacy, Migrants, and the Limits of
Freedom.” Social Text 23.3-4 84-85(2005): 275-84.
Web.
Wolf, Mark J. P. “Worlds Within the World.” Building
Imaginary Worlds: The Theory and History of
Subcreation. United Kingdom: Routledge, 2012. 16-64.
Print.