伦理自我与公民意义:一个阅读社群的文化实践

Ethical Self and Civic Significance through Cultural Practices:A Case Study of A Reading-Led Cultural Community in China

在当下中国的社会文化环境中,流行于一部分中产阶层公民中的集体阅读等文化活动是如何得以表达和实践的?这些实践是否对于公民身份具有意义?基于田野数据以及福柯的伦理自我概念,通过详细考察中国南部某沿海城市一个阅读社群的成员培养伦理自我的四个方面——伦理实体、主体化模式、形成自我的实践以及目的,我们发现:即使这些文化实践者不一定认为或清晰地意识到他们的实践属于某种形式的公民参与,但这些以自我培养为主旨的、指向内在的文化实践仍具有公民意义。

Drawing upon ethnographic data collected from fieldwork among a reading based community in a coastal city over the past nine years, and Foucault ＇s notion of the cultivation of an ethical self as a practice of freedom, the primary aim of this study is to examine three issues： 1） How do middleclass citizens articulate and practise the cultural activities that they advocate, such as collective reading？ 2） Do these internally oriented cultural practices have civic significance for citizenship, even when they are not regarded by their practitioners as forms of civic engage- ment？ 3） Does Foucault in his late works emphasize ethics at the cost of politics, thus diminishing his work＇s political significance as some critics suggest？