负有现代性使命的后现代性实践——中国后现代性文化实践策略的一个问题

Post-modernity Practice with the Mission of Modernity——A problem on the strategy of China's post-modernity cultural practice

中国当下文化与后现代性的关系是近年来学界十分关注的问题。尽管中国的现代性实践尚未获得充分发展,普遍而言尚不存在实践性的后现代社会文化现实,但随着全球化的推进,我们已经面临技术—经济层面的后现代现状以及改变了的文化语境,不可能重蹈“现代—后现代”的线性发展路数。中国当下文化实践策略应当且必然是:负有现代性使命的后现代性实践。

Post-modern cultural phenomena resulted from post-modernity or the practice of post-modern theories. In China, however, it is not that the cultural practice came after the process of post-modern practice, but that we didn't notice the existence of this topic until we had learned post-modern theories from outside literature and theories. On the other hand, the post-modern practice of other countries is exerting a great influence on China's present situation through economic and social cultural globalization. We are forced inevitably to face with the cultural realities of a post-modern society. This is where the specialty of China's post-modernity lies.Since the 1980's, and the 1990's in particular, some phenomena that many discourses obviously different from the former have occupied the market have arisen from Chinese society as well as arts and culture. These phenomena, such as popularization and the so-called ″collage″ aesthetics have become the main trend, or doubt of truth and totality, possess features which are emphasized by post-modern theories, so that people who hold the opinion that China has entered the post-modern society often take them as examples. But I have a strong doubt about the opinion. They are a post-modern phantom, and they are only superficially similar to the situation of post-modern culture described by post-modern theorists. These phenomena are mainly results of self-development accompanying China's modernization. In terms of post-modernity, there is a lack of something crucial in contemporary cultural practice of China, which exactly comes from practice of modernity: critical spirit, speculative rationality and specialization. Does the present situation mean that China has to turn back to complete the modernist stage before it can come into post-modernist practice? This is exactly what some experts hold. These experts worry that according to how a society develops historically it is unsuitable to initiate post-modernism in present-day China where modernization has not yet fully developed. Therefore, they propose that post-modernism should be talked about after we have gone through modernism. I do understand both their worry and proposal, but see nothing about its reality. With the development of globalization, we have been faced with the changed cultural context and the post-modern situation on a technological-economic level, so that it is impossible to follow the same linear development from ″modernism to post-modernism″. The strategy of China's contemporary cultural practice should and must be post-modernity practice with the mission of modernity.