文化批评的来龙去脉

The Ins and Outs of Cultural Criticism

迄今为止,学界关于文化批评的界定都留有以下困惑:它最主要的对象是什么?是否有那么一条主线,贯穿了它所做的所有工作?欲知晓文化批评的来龙去脉,须从"文化"与"文明"的分野入手。文化批评,即针对"文明"弊端的批评活动。它反对"分离",抗拒异化,关注人类社会的整体性与和谐性。对整体性与和谐性的诉求离不开想象力,而文学是最具想象力的学科。因此,文化批评的手段尽管是跨学科、多学科和超学科的,却需要以文学为中心,否则有可能流于肤浅。桑塔格曾于1965年提出,当代文化批评已经不以文学作品作为典范,但是30年之后,她对此有过反思。从她的反思中,我们可以瞥见文化批评的走向:它仍将沿着阿诺德等人划定的路线前行。

The existing definitions of cultural criticism have all left us in bewilderment:What is its primary object?Is there a main thread that runs through all its work?In order to trace the ins and outs of cultural criticism,we must proceed from the dividing line between"culture"and"civilization".Cultural criticism is an activity of critique aiming at the deffects of"civilization".While opposing"dissociation"and resisting alienation,it represents a solicitude for the integrity and harmony of human society.The pursuit of integrity/harmony presupposes imagination,and literature is by far the most imaginative discipline.Cultural criticism,therefore,banks on literature as its centre,although its means are interdisciplinary,multidisciplinary and transdisciplinary.Without literature it would be too shallow.Susan Sontag in 1965 claimed that the model product of contemporay cultural criticism is no longer the literary work,but thirty years later she came up with some self-reflections,from which we can catch a glimpse of the future trend of cultural criticism:It will continue to move along the routes as designated by Matthew Arnold and his acolytes.