用殖民话语表述自己——论启蒙意识形态对早期北美印地安人英语作品的影响

Representing the Colonized Self in the Colonial Discourse:The Effect of Enlightenment Ideology on the Early Prose by Natives of North America

当代印第安作家和学者大多都强调印第安文化传统的独特价值,主张继承和保护。与此形成鲜明对照的是,早期北美印第安作者们几乎都对印第安文化的"原始落后"和欧洲文化的"文明先进"深信不疑。他们一方面号召印第安同胞放弃自己的传统生活方式,向来自欧洲的统治民族学习。另一方面请求统治者积极帮助印第安人学习主流社会的生活方式,步入现代文明。究其原因,本文认为,这些印第安作者接受了欧式教育,学会了英语,因而在不知不觉之中接受了处于支配地位的启蒙话语,尤其是以"文明-野蛮"为核心的二元对立论。这正好印证了福柯的观点,谁生产了知识,谁就掌握了话语权,他的话就是当然的"真理"。

Most contemporary Native American writers and scholars tend to promote the unique value of their traditional culture and advocate its preservation and protection.By contrast,early North American Indian writers almost unquestionably believed in the 'savagery' of their own race and the 'civilization' of the Europeans. In their English writings,they called on fellow Indians to discard their own traditions and learn from the dominant race,begging the government to help the native people adopt the white man’s ways and become 'civilized.' This paper argues that such an attitude could be accounted for by the fact that the early Indian writers,having received a European-style education and acquired English,accepted as true the ideology of the Enlightenment,particularly the binary oppositions that form the core of the idea of modernity. The case supports Michel Foucault’s theory of discourse,especially its insight that whoever produces knowledge possesses the 'truth'.