再论恢复与本真性

Restoration and authenticity revisited

生态恢复的核心问题之一是本真性问题。例如,罗伯特·艾略特认为,所谓恢复生态实际是"仿造自然"。据此观点,生态恢复类似艺术品仿造:它展示其作品是按某种方式造出来的,但事实并非如此,所以恢复具有蒙骗性。被恢复的景观表现为"自然过程"的产物,而实际上明显是被人类干预过。艾略特认为,生态恢复的非本真性有两个根源:其一是因为它的自然系谱已被人类干预打断,恢复的景观丧失了本真的自然属性;其二是因为它冒充其本不是的东西,掩盖了自身历史。本文认为,本真性的第一种认识确有问题,而第二种认识,即模糊自身历史,则很重要。本文所列个案研究都与从前军事基地的自然化改造有关,这些研究能有助于更全面地梳理在哪些情形下,景观可能会因为使参观者对景观系谱产生错误认识而变得"非本真"。在这类景观中,非本真性不是因为其背离了"原貌"本身,而是因为被恢复的景观蒙骗性地掩盖了其旧时的一些要素,所以无以成就本真。

One of the central worries raised in relation to ecological restoration concerns the problem of authenticity. Robert Elliot, for example, has argued that restoration“fakes nature.”On this view, restoration is like art forgery: it deceptively suggests that its product was produced in a certain way, when in fact, it was not. Restored landscapes present themselves as the product of “natural processes,”when in actuality, they have been significantly shaped by human intervention. For Elliott, there seem to be two sources of inauthenticity in ecological restoration: first, the restored landscape is inauthentic because its natural genealogy has been disrupted by the intervention of humans: it has lost its authentic natural identity; second, the restored landscape is inauthentic because it pretends to be something it is not: it obscures its own history. We argue that the first sense of authenticity is problematic; however, the second concern - about obscuring history - is important. Case studies involving the naturalization of former military lands can be used to tease out more fully the ways in which landscapes can be“inauthentic”by misleading observers about their genealogy. In such landscapes, it is not departure from “the original” per se that is the source of inauthenticity; rather, restored landscapes fail to be authentic when they deceptively obscure critical elements of their past.