艺术与政治:从爪哇的宫廷舞蹈到印尼的艺术(上)

Art and Politics: From Javanese Court Dance to Indonesian Art(One)

本文利用纳尔逊·古德曼的建构主义方法,指出艺术人类学中关于美学的论争转移了对文化多样性和分类的社会功能等重要问题的关注。有关美学深深融入在更广泛的社会实践中的论断,过分强调了文化的纯粹性与真实性,而说审美体验是一种可分离的、超越性的和普遍性的对立观点,却否定了现实的社会文化建构。这些争论通常是针对实物而言的,但是这里引用的爪哇传统表演的例子,涵盖了诸多或多或少的"审美"经验,用以表明土著艺术话语并不一定是独立自足和与外相隔的。确切地说,这些话语需要放在历史背景中看待,以解释美学与艺术范畴中隐藏的政治意义。"美学"(aesthemics)这一个新词语可以帮助人们对人类学做更深入的探讨。

Drawing on Nelson Goodman＇s constructivist approach, this article argues that debates in the anthropology of art about aesthetics detract from important questions concerning the constitution of cultural diversity and the social role of categories. The claim that aesthetics is embedded in broader situations of social practice over-emphasizes cultural purity and authenticity, while the counter-claim that aesthetic experience constitutes a separable, transcendental and universal realm denies the socio-cultural construction of reality. These arguments are usually applied to material objects, but here, the example of Javanese performance traditions, which include varieties of experience both more or less than ＇aesthetic＇, is used to suggest that indigenous discourses of art are not necessarily self-sufficient and discrete. Rather, these discourses need to be set in a historical context so as to show the political significance of aesthetics and of the category of art. The neologism ＇aesthemics＇ could assist anthropological explorations in this field.