叙述自我——关于民俗学的“自反性”

Self-Narrative: A Study on the Reflexivity of Folklore

日本的民俗学者过去比较注重搜集村落的地方知识。对他们而言,理想的村落传承者需要"沉默慎重",不可强调个人观点。笔者认为该认识缺乏对他者生命的想象,因此有必要将民俗学的研究方向转向普通人的日常生活。在这个学科转向过程中,我们必须认识到访谈对象的自我叙述是最重要的研究素材。生活经验的叙述不仅是事实的罗列,而是通过叙述排列事件,并通过赋予事件意义建构"事实"。以往的民俗学不重视个体的主观经验,只关注对"民俗"形成的叙述。这种研究取向忽略了个体经验的多样性。人们在日常生活中通过对自我的叙述产生出"自我"本身。而自我叙述也是现代社会人们普遍拥有的一种自发行为。我们有必要了解访谈对象的生活经历全貌,包括他们的主观解释。民俗学的"口述"研究不再限于民间文学领域,也开始进入到日常生活中的经验性叙述领域。

The Japanese folklorists used to pay more attention to collecting local knowledge of villages.Them believed that the ideal village inheritors need to be'silent and discreet',instead of emphasizing individual opinions.The author of this paper considers that this understanding lacks the imagination of the other's lives.Therefore,it is necessary to turn the research direction of folklore to the daily life of ordinary people.Furthermore,we must realize that the self-narrative of interviewees is the most important research material in this process.The narrative of life experience is not only a list of facts,but also a construction of facts by narrating as well as giving meanings to events.The past folklore studies did not attach importance to the subjective experience of individual,but focus on the formation of'folk custom',which may ignore the diversity of individual experience.In daily life,'self'is produced by self-narrative of people,while self-narrative is also a spontaneous behavior which is generally endorsed by people in modern society.We need to find out the whole life experiences of the interviewees,including their subjective explanation.The study of the oral custom of folklore should no longer confine to the field of folk literature,but start to enter the empirical field of narrative in daily life.