身体修辞文化批评——以现代主义文学为例

Rhetorical Cultural Criticism of the Body:Taking Modernist Literature as an Example

各类身体研究把身体看成是社会文化的某种建构,但对作家笔下的身体应首先是一种文本建构的事实重视不够。为此,在修辞文化学的基础上提出了身体修辞文化批评,认为身体文本叙述、修辞和社会文化之间是密不可分的。通过对现代主义文学进行范例分析,我们发现存在雌雄同体、欲望化或色情化的女性身体、死亡身体以及残损和疾患的非自然化身体等四种重要的身体叙述类型。对这四种类型进行修辞文化意义的考察,从中可看出身体的文学与文化话语传统对当前文本的影响,身体叙述传递出的文化多元性和作家秉持的文化政治立场。

Various current studies consider the body as a socio-cuhural construct. But the body in literature as the textual construct is largely neglected in the study of the bodily presentation. For this reason, rhetorical cultural criticism of the body is proposed on the basis of the rhetorical-cultural theory, arguing that body narratives, rhetoric, and social culture are involved in a shifting entanglement. A model study of the body in modernist literature suggests that there are four main types of textual bodies： the androgynous body, the desirous or erotic body, the dead body and, finally, denaturalized bodies such as the hurt or sick body. The rhetorical-cultural study of these bodies can help us find out the effect of traditional body discourses in literature and culture on the present presentation of bodies, the diversity of shifting cultures with different presentations of the body, as well as writers＇ cultural and political stances expressed by that bodily presentation.