晚清西方漫游者对中国城市社会空间的凝视维度

The Western Travelers' Gazing Dimensions of the Social Space of Chinese Cities in the Late Qing Dynasty

晚清西方来华漫游者著述了大量的访华游记,这些作品普遍对彼时中国城市社会空间作了带有意识形态化的批评和乌托邦化的赞扬。这种双重凝视现象虽然反映着西方先进工业文明与中国传统农业文明之间的冲突与互补,但从空间认知的角度来考虑漫游者凝视维度的形象学意义,可以给出新的理解——漫游者对中国城市社会空间的凝视生成了一种在相互对立基础上相互包涵进而综合再现的辩证形象。这种在特定时期形成的既矛盾又融合的凝视观感,既是社会空间生产发展的动态展现,也是社会空间形象的综合显现,同时更是社会空间生活的真实再现。

In the late Qing Dynasty, the Western travelers wrote a large number of travel notes about China, which showed both criticism and praise of Chinese social space in cities. This kind of dual gaze revealed a contradiction image that refected the conficts and complements between Western industrial civilization and Chinese agricultural civilization. What’s more, there is a way to better understand the contradiction image by using space theories. The gaze on Chinese social space has generated dialectical images which oppose to, and at the same time, combine with each other. The gaze perception of confict and fusion is an expression of the development of social space and is the comprehensive refection of the image of social space. It is also the real representation of social life.