欧洲中心主义社会文化进步观的反话语——评阿切比《崩溃》中的文化相对主义

Counter Discourse to Eurocentric Social-Cultural Evolutionism:Cultural Relativism in Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart

在《崩溃》这部小说中,阿切比通过对主人公奥孔克沃充满人性化的刻画以及对伊博文化的详尽描写,挑战了欧洲中心主义社会文明进化话语,解构了殖民话语所倡导的欧洲文明和非洲文明之间先进/落后,开化/野蛮,道德/堕落,人性/动物性的等级差异。小说体现了阿切比重构非洲文化传统的努力。然而,在这种建构过程中,阿切比尽量回避了对非洲传统文化的美化,对非洲文明和基督教文明均采取了文化相对主义的立场,使这部作品超越了二元对立的狭隘民族主义意识形态。

In Things Fall Apart, Achebe creates a protagonist who is full of humanity and dignity and offers a detailed representation of the Igbo culture with the purposes of challengeing the Eurocentric social-cultural evolutionism and deconstructing the colonial discourse in which the European civilization and African civilization are set as the dichotomy of the advanced vs. the primitive, the civilized vs. the barbarian, the moral vs. the debased and the humanistic vs. the beastlike. The novel illustrates Achebe＇ s efforts to reconstruct the African cultural tradition, but Achebe also carefully avoids beautifying the African culture. The cultural relativistic attitude he holds towards both the African tradition and the Christian tradition helps the novel transcend the binary discourse of narrow nationalism.