阅读的伦理和小说家的角色:库切《荒年日记》的挑战(英文)

The Ethics of Reading and the Role of the Novelist:The Challenge of J.M.Coetzee's Diary of a BadYear

"阅读的伦理"一词由J.希利斯.米勒在20世纪80年代中期首次使用,它一出现就介入了关于解构的优势的热议,并起到了决定性的作用,开创了英美文学研究中所谓"伦理"转向的新时代。同时,它也引起了很多重要的难以回避的问题:如何定位当今文学研究中的"政治"批评?如何建构"文本细读"和宽泛的社会—政治批评体制的关系?在全球化和多媒介的当下,批评家们应该确立什么作为权威来捍卫文学性?这些问题同样是库切小说《荒年日记》所关注的核心问题。这不仅仅是因为它作为一个富有挑战意味的异常的文学行为促使我们重新思考有关小说文类的一些指导性的假说,而且因为它的流传是作为高度制度化的人造物品,其呈现和理解方式都极具不确定性。的确,无论是作为文本或作为一本书,或者两者兼有,《荒年日记》都迫使我们直面当今文学批评的挑战。

When J.Hilllis Miller first coined the phrase ＂the ethics of reading＂in the mid-1980s,it constituted a decisive intervention in the over-heated debates about the merits of decon-struction,inaugurating the so-called＂ethical＂turn within Anglo-American literary studies.Yet italso raised a number of large and now unavoidable questions.What is the place of the＂political＂in literary studies today？ How are we to construe the relationship between＂close reading＂and abroader socio-political analysis of literature as an institution？ What authority do critics commandas guardians of the literary in our globalized,multimedia present？ These questions also happen tolie at the heart of J.M.Coetzee＇s Diary of a Bad Year.This is not just because it is a challeng-ingly singular literary act,which demands that we re-think some of our guiding assumptions aboutthe novel as a genre,but because it circulates as a highly institutionalized material artefact,whichhas thus far been presented and understood in questionable ways.Indeed,seen as a text or as abook,or both,Diary obliges us to confront the central challenges facing literary criticism today.