阿利埃斯儿童史研究的遗产:现代童年观内在悖论深思

The Heritage of Aries’Study of Children's History:Rethinking the Paradoxes of Modern Concepts of Childhood

法国历史学家菲力浦·阿利埃斯的著作《儿童的世纪:旧制度下的儿童和家庭生活》开辟了童年史研究的新领域,并带动了当代童年观念从生物本质论向社会建构论的重要转向。自1960年出版以来,该书既是童年研究领域的一部奠基性著作,其"发现童年"的观念和方法也在不断遭受批判和质疑,致使其关于现代童年观与儿童文化观的重要思想遗产尚未得到充分的肯定与继承。阿利埃斯提出的"儿童观念"以其充满矛盾和悖论的表达形式,揭示了现代儿童观念的重要价值维度,同时也提供了深思现代童年观和儿童文化问题的重要出发点。如何在隔离与开放、保护与自由的矛盾冲突与交融互补中,不断寻求现代童年观念及其文化精神的更高实现,是阿利埃斯的儿童史研究留给我们的重要思想遗产,应成为现代童年文化事业的自觉追寻。

The French historian Philippe Ariès’ Centuries of Childhood:A Social History of Family Life opened a new region for the historical research on childhood and promoted the conceptual transition from the natural childhood to the constructed childhood. Being a milestone in the field of childhood study though,Ariès’ concept and methodology of "discovering childhood" has been put under consistent criticism.However,a significant part of its heritage has been missed in this criticizing trend. The implication of the particularity, universality and cultural constructing power in Ariès’ concept of childhood, in all their contradictive and paradoxical expression,reveals a significant dimension of the modern childhood concept’s value and offers us a vital standpoint for rethinking this concept and the relevant causes of children’s culture. Thus Centuries of Childhood leaves us to reconsider how to search for the higher realization of the modernity of childhood and its cultural spirit through the collision and complementation between openness and separation,free dom and protection,as well as through reflections on history and reality,tradition and future. It is a vital part of the heritage of Centuries of Childhood and should also be included into the self-consciousness of all the modern children’s culture causes.