西方文论关键词:地方

Place:A Keyword in Critical Theory

作为重要的跨学科关键词,"地方"的历史悠久。开端于古希腊哲学,"地方"批评在20世纪以来呈现出多元化的发展态势。现象学派、人文地理学家以及部分生态学家主张将"地方"看作带给人地方感、具有明显边界和稳定特征的固定场所;然而,马克思主义社会建构论者与后现代批评家们认为"流动的地方"早已取代"固定的地方"成为现代社会的发展趋势。他们认为"固定的地方"概念过于保守,具有浓烈的排斥他者的动机,主张在"时空压缩"的现代社会中,具有混杂身份的人们应该不受约束地以"迁移式的"形式去适应"流动的地方"。"固定的地方"面临现代社会变革的冲击,而"流动的地方"也极易沦为资本主义追逐价值的工具。更严重的是,"流动的地方"会成为霸权地方政策威胁他者"阶级""民族"甚至是"国家"边界的借口。由此可知,"地方"在现代社会背景下并不只是地理学的范畴,也不限于生态批评的领域,而是涉及政治纲领、民族处境以及经济行为的混合体。

As a key interdisciplinary word, ＂place＂ has been evolving along with history, which started from ancient Greek philosophy and has displayed diversifying trends among theorists and literary critics since the arrival of the 20th century. Phenomenologists, humanistic geographers and some ecocritics claim that place is a fixed dwelling place which is characterized by a sense of boundary, rootedness as well as a stable identity. However, Marxist-humanist geographers, together with post-modernist critics argue that ＂fluid place＂ has already replaced ＂fixed place＂ as the representative trend of modern society. They regard the latter as an overly conservative concept with a strong intention of exclusion, so they hold that people with hybrid identities should be free of boundaries in the new experience of space-time compression. Fixed place faces constant impacts of social changes, while fluid place is easily turned into a tool to make profits for the capitalist system and taken as an excuse by the hegemonic place-policy to threaten the boundaries of class, race and nation. Thus, in modern society, ＂place＂ should not only be thought as a concept of geography, nor an idea privileged to eco-criticism, but also a mixed body of political conducts, national affairs and economic behaviors.