一场论争的再思考:安置(移置)美国非裔文学理论的基础(英文)

The Debate Revisited:(Dis)Placing the Ground of African American Literary Theory

"黑人的真实"这一概念一直被用于表达差异性和特质性,本文通过考察这一概念长期以来在美国非裔文学理论与实践中的作用,试图重新审视1987年乔伊斯·安·乔伊斯、小亨利·路易斯·盖茨、小休斯顿·贝克等美国非裔学者在《新文学理论》上进行的论争。重新审视这一论争的一个核心问题就是如何对待因由安置(移置)美国非裔文学理论基础这一双重任务而形成的两个阵营内部和双方之间存在的各种相互交织的路线。本文认为:我们应该将各方立场对照起来研读,视之为互为补充,而不应该择其一二孤立对待;这种理论立场的转变使我们能够理解到底什么才足以成为美国非裔文学理论这一问题并非要追求一个定论,更是要人们不断思考:我们为什么总是关注这类理论·对一个需要不断重新协商的领域,这场论争到底对我们提出了什么要求?

This article revisits the debate that took place in the pages of New Literary History in 1987 among Joyce A. Joyce, Henry Louis Gates Jr., and Houston Baker Jr. by examining the continuing role of the notion of black authenticity deployed for articulation of differences and specificities. What becomes decisive in revisiting the debate is how to take into account all the various intersecting lines within and between the two positions by the double task of （dis）placing the ground of African American literary theory. Within mind the idea that theory is precisely what different theories themselves contest, I put forth the argument that one should read the one position against the grain of the other and consider them to be mutually constitutive rather than opt out of any of the terms and conditions of the debate. From such a shift of theoretical locus, one is enabled to understand that the question of what African American literary theory ought to be not so much asking for a definition as arguing for an ongoing discussion on why we always concern ourselves with such theory at all and what this engagement with the debate entails for us in a field of perpetual renegotiation.