在记忆与遗忘之间:作为一种集体记忆的瘟疫——以1918年大流感为例

Between Remembrance and Forgetting:Pandemics in Collective Memory——A Case Study of 1918 Influenza Pandemic

1918年大流感堪称西方在现代社会所经历的最严重的一场瘟疫,而社会和文化层面表征的缺位使其成了“被遗忘的记忆”。对这场疫难的集体性缄默绝非偶然,而是一系列因素合力封印的结果,既有大流感自身的特殊性,又有现代社会对瘟疫的习惯性遗忘。事实上,1918年大流感作为西方现代性的文化创伤,始终徘徊在记忆与遗忘之间。瘟疫是“天灾”,更是“人祸”,后者才是其创伤内核,决定了我们记忆瘟疫的伦理向度,而任何对瘟疫记忆的遮蔽、消抹和遗忘都是瘟疫本身的灾难性延续。

1918 Influenza Pandemic is one of the severest pandemics in the modern history of western countries while it becomes″the forgotten pandemic″due to the absence of social and cultural representation.The cultural amnesia is no accident but is due to the particularity of the 1918 pandemic as influenza as well as the habitual forgetting of pandemics.In fact,1918 Influenza Pandemic,as modern cultural trauma in western societies,is lodged between remembrance and forgetting.The pandemic is actually more a man-made disaster than natural,which predetermines its nature as a trauma as well as the ethics of memorizing it.Accordingly,when it comes to the collective memory of pandemics,any kind of covering,forgetting or effacement is disastrous continuation.