翻译与改造:理论在中国和理论中的中国

Translation and transformation:Theory in China and China in theory

本文探讨的是中国遭遇后现代理论所带来的影响。作者将这一遭遇置于中国的一个具有划时代意义的时刻。他研究了后现代理论在移植到中国之后经历的蜕变,以及它在中国学术和思想探究、批判性思维、沟通和表现等领域引起的变化。如果说跨文化翻译总是对所翻译的内容进行置换、改造和杂合,同时使自身和他者产生变种,那么探讨西方理论进入中国,就是探讨西方概念和话语形态在保留自己的方法论创新性和结构连续性的同时如何被修改和适应新的社会一历史特性。本文包含两个部分:理论在中国和理论中的中国。第一部分侧重于后现代理论在中国的翻译和介绍;第二部分考察了后现代理论为了满足中国人的需要和愿望而被作了哪些改变,产生了什么样的新用途,从而使被翻译后的理论超越了其自身。

This article addresses the effects of the encounter between China and postmodern theory.Situating the encounter in the epochal moment of China propelled by the anguished anxieties of the Chinese to break with its Maoist past and reinvent its modernity,the article investigates the metamorphosis postmodern theory undergoes when migrating to China and the changes it triggers there in the domains of academic and intellectual inquiry,critical thinking,and communication and representation.If cross-cultural translation always displaces,transforms,and hybridises the translated and causes an alteration of self and other at the same time,then to address Western theory travelling to China is to explore how Western concepts and discursive formations,while preserving their methodological innovativeness and structural continuity,are revised and adapted to new socio-historical specificity,enabling insurgent political agency in post-socialist China.The article is composed of two parts:theory in China and China in theory.While the first half focuses on the translation and introduction of postmodern theory in China,the second half examines how changes and new uses are made of postmodern theory to answer the Chinese needs and desires,hence carrying the translated theory beyond itself.