跨国主义亚裔美国文学批评之我见

A Critique of Transnational Asian American Literary Criticism

近年来,批评界普遍认为,亚裔美国文学反映了亚裔美国经验的跨国主义本质,因而批评者也理应用跨国主义的视角解读亚裔美国文学。本文对这一观点提出质疑,认为就当代华裔美国文学而论,华裔美国经验的历史形态和文学想象之间是断裂的。尽管华裔美国历史具有明显的跨国网络和联系特征,但华裔美国文学想象总体上展现的却是移民意识。因此,至少就当代华裔美国文学而言,跨国主义亚裔美国文学批评本质上似乎是缺乏批评对象而且是不合法的批评话语。

The present paper sets out to contest the recent critical view that Asian American literature represents the transnational nature of Asian American experience and therefore should be interpreted as such.The author contends that,insofar as we limit our discussion to contemporary Chinese American literature,there is a striking rupture between historical patterns of Chinese American experience and its imagined counterpart in contemporary Chinese American literature.In contrast to Chinese American history characterized by transnational networks and connections,contemporary Chinese American literary imagination presents an imagined experience dominated in large measures by immigrant sensibility.Therefore,as far as Chinese American literature is concerned,transnational Asian American literary criticism appears to be a discourse essentially illegitimate for want of a critical object.