女性主义理论和中华帝国晚期的女性作家:影响和批评

Feminist Theories and Women Writers of Late Imperial China:Impact and Critique

当中国文学研究领域的学者开始对中华帝国晚期(约1600—1911)的女性作者展开长期研究时,女性主义、女性主义理论、女性主义文学理论已因其在20世纪80年代对欧美批评家和理论家的影响而引起高度争议。中国文学研究领域的学者吸收西方女性主义理论中的发展,同时质疑某些对这些理论的应用。本文回顾20世纪80年代和90年代西方女性主义文学理论中的主要争论,而这些争论可依据英美和法国女性主义批评家和性别研究的不同途径进行区分。文中检视为何关于女性和语言、被研究的文体以及理论基础的具体争论在被应用于20世纪前的中国女性写作时,未能保有其在对类似问题的研究中的重要相关性。然而,在批评性分析中,部分特定的概念取得了极为丰硕的成果。女性主义理论从不是完全统一的,即使是以欧洲为中心时也是如此;各种理论吸收自多种不同学科和学派。开始流行的概念——社会性别、凝视、声音、能动性、主体性、著者身份等——来自后结构主义、后殖民主义、文化和电影研究,并被证明在女性文学研究中是有效的工具。有些概念在关于古代中国女性文学的研究中被有效地运用。在这一语境中,笔者反思对中华帝国晚期女性写作的重要研究中的理论途径,并思考20世纪和21世纪全球化之前,中国文学研究这一“亚领域”对西方女性主义理论造成的影响或批评,以及范围更为广泛的、有关现代/后现代女性主义理论对于早期文学和其他文化的适用性的问题。

Feminism,feminist theory,feminist literary theory were already highly contentious in what they represented to Euro-American critics and theorists in the 1980s,when scholars in Chinese literary studies began sustained research on women writers in late imperial China(ca.1600-1911).Their research drew on developments in Western feminist theories while problematizing certain applications.In this article,I review major debates in 1980s and 1990s Western feminist literary theory,divided by the different approaches of Anglo-American and French feminist critics and gender studies,examining why specific arguments on women and language,genres studied,and theoretical underpinnings did not hold significant relevance to the study of similar issues when applied to women's writing in pre-twentieth century China.Yet certain concepts were highly fruitful in critical analysis.Feminist theory was never monolithic,even when it was Eurocentric;theories were drawn from a plurality of different disciplines and schools.Concepts that came into currency-gender,gaze,voice,agency,subjectivity,authorship,and so on-from poststructuralist,postcolonial,cultural,and film studies proved to be useful tools in feminist literary studies.Some came to be deployed in scholarship on women's literature in historical China.In this context,I reflect on theoretical approaches in significant studies of women's writing of late imperial China and consider the impact or critique this subfield of Chinese literary studies posed to Western feminist theories and broader questions of the applicability of modern/postmodern feminist theories to literature of earlier periods and other cultures before the globalization of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.