摘要
《美国野牛》中围绕"美国野牛"币所发生的交易和友情分别从利己的市场和利他的礼物的角度,展现了剧作家对社会联系纽带的思索。野牛币的交易过程隐喻性地展开了对市场经济的伦理辩难,即自足市场所昭示的个人自由与平等也有可能形成对个人尊严的制度性羞辱。野牛币体现的友情则提出以礼物关系矫正冰冷的市场逻辑,但马梅特亦警示以理想化的友谊圈定社会可能在幻灭中生成犬儒人格的危险。剧作家细察个体交往的幽微目光最终探进美国自信精神之下的怀疑深处。"美国野牛"币以美国历史为隐喻,混融市场与礼物精神,并置历史聚焦下市场开拓进取的光明与其所掩隐的灰暗,以一种作为礼物的内省愧疚去面对历史的尴尬之处,这种近似宗教的情怀能够触发当时危机中美国精神的自我更新,强化社会内聚机制,《美国野牛》因而成为美国民族神话的复魅之作。
American Buffalo dramatizes trade and friendship involving a coin named ＂American Buffalo.＂The trading of the coin illustrates how people may suffer from institutional humiliation in a society featuring market economy which once promised individual freedom and equity. Against the market-driven forms of interrelationality, the play presents a gift-oriented one as an alternative but reveals its possible trap as well. ＂American Buffalo,＂used as a metaphor for American history and as the central image in this play referring to both the market and gift paradigms, diverts our attention from social interaction to American ethos rooted in a mixture of confidence and self-doubt. Guilt as a gift is reflected on to relieve the burden of American history, initiating a renewal of national ethos and reinforcing a social metaphor as American self-justification.
出处
《当代外国文学》
CSSCI
北大核心
2016年第3期14-21,共8页
Contemporary Foreign Literature
