石江山 美国俄克拉何马大学
Stalling, Jonathan, University of Oklahoma
原文Original
Toward Heterocultural Studies: How Sinology Can Enrich American Literature and Criticism?
When literature exceeds its national and cultural borders, criticism must follow.
Chinese literary critics and scholars today must study Western literature, philosophy, theory, and aesthetics if they are to critically engage modern/contemporary Chinese literature because Chinese authors (for over a century now) have drawn heavily upon such heterocultural precedents. Interestingly, this same situation has also forced Western Sinology to become more cross disciplinary since Sinologists must grapple with the complexities of modern and postmodern literary theory and criticism to do their jobs as well. In this sense, Chinese literature (and criticism) can be credited with a strong transformative effect on modern Sinology, which inherited recalcitrant positivist methodologies and humanist impulses that slowed the discipline’s own maturation/modernization. But this story does not end here, or at least it should not—for Sinology has much to teach literary theory/criticism as well, for the “study of China” or Sinology, has had a much broader impact on modernizing Western Literature than has been adequately addressed. While imagism may be one example of Chinese aesthetic influences on Western literature, this is only the tip of the iceberg. The real story goes far beyond innovations in poetic form, but reveals the deep, expansive impact of Chinese philosophy and poetics on the American letters more generally. The iceberg exists because authors have long engaged Sinology (in various guises both popular and scholarly) as a literary and philosophical storehouse for Western Modernization, yet the iceberg remains submerged beneath western literary criticism’s own provincialism and cultural illiteracy. If Western criticism is to come to understand its own literature, it must follow the example of Chinese literary criticism to become just as heterocultural as the literature it wishes to study.
To prove my point, I will revisit the most controversial text at the heart of East-West literary exchange, Ernest Fenollosa’s essay “The Chinese Written Character as a Medium for Poetry” in order to reveal how a half century of traditional Sinological and Literary Criticism have failed to adequately interpret this text due to certain disciplinary limitations. But I will endeavor to show how these fields can be brought together (again on the model of contemporary Chinese literary criticism) to form a far superior methodology for reading transpacific literature than either can produce in isolation. The time of comparative literature, with its implicit belief in culturally pure literary spheres to be “compared,” must give way to the self-reflexive rigorous of heterocultural criticism. I would argue that the contemporary Chinese literary Criticism is exemplary of the way forward, now it is the West that must follow.
Jonathan Stalling, Assistant Professor of English, University of Oklahoma, Managing Editor and co-founder of Chinese Literature Today Magazine, and Editor of Chinese Literature Today Book Series at the University of Oklahoma Press.
译文Translation
走向异文化研究：汉学如何丰富美国文学与批评？
当文学越过它自己的国家和文化界限时，批评也必须跟上脚步。
当今的中国文学批评家和学者若想介入现当代中国文学批评，就必须学习西方文学、哲学、理论与美学，因为中国作家（在过去一百多年来）已相当多地吸收了这类异质文化。有趣的是，同样的情况促使西方汉学变得更为跨学科化，因为汉学家在从事研究时一样要应对复杂的现代、后现代文学理论及文学批评。从这个意义上来说，中国的文学（和批评）可能会对现代汉学的转型产生影响。由于其所继承的实证主义方法和人文主义冲动，现代汉学在学科自身的成熟与现代化方面进展缓慢。问题并没有到此结束，也不应该到此结束。汉学在许多方面都可以对文学理论或批评有所帮助，因此，“中国研究”或者汉学研究对西方文学的现代化进程所产生的深远影响还未能被给予充分的探讨。虽然意象主义可以算是中国美学对西方文学产生影响的一个例证，但这只是冰山的一角。意象主义的影响远远超出了诗歌形式本身的革新，而是中国哲学与诗学在更为普遍的意义上对美国文学所产生的深刻而广泛影响。冰山存在的原因是：长期以来，美国批评家介入汉学的方式是将其作为西方现代化进程的文学与哲学储藏（他们通过流行或者学术等不同姿态介入汉学）。如此，冰山依然宥于西方文学批评自我偏狭与文化无知之中。如果西方批评要理解自己的文学，它必须像中国文学批评一样，变成和它所欲研究的文学一样的异质文化。
为证明这一观点，本文将重新审视东西方文学交流中最受争议的文本——欧内斯特·费诺罗萨的论文《作为诗歌手段的中国文字》，旨在揭示由于一些学科限制，半个世纪来的传统汉学与文学批评都没有能够对这个文本做出恰当阐释。笔者将尽力证明这些学科领域可以整合在一起（再次参照当代中国文学批评模式），为阅读跨太平洋文学提供一种比独自产生于某一学科领域的方法更好的方法。比较文学的时代，连同其只有同一文化中的文学才能比较的信念，必须让位于严格的自我反思式的异文化批评。笔者将说明，当代中国文学批评就是这种方法的榜样。现在应当是西方来效仿中国了。