既存状态与瘟疫讲述

Preexisting Conditions and the Recounting of Plagues

本文首先将流行性淋巴腺鼠疫(即黑死病)等传统鼠疫与当前的流行疾病区分开来,指出两者之间存在某些相似之处,但也不尽相同。作者随即提出了一个问题,即人们对疫情的体验是如何又是为何在很大程度上依赖于故事性的讲述的。本文认为,瓦尔特·本雅明发表于1936年的文章《讲故事的人》为探讨该问题提供了一套有效的理论框架:此文得出一个结论,即讲故事是对极端困境(亦即德语中的"Ratlosigkeit")的一种回应。而这种回应并不是要解决困境,而是为了提供"建议"或者忠告(Rat),吁请人们创造更多的故事。简言之,即便是史诗中最宏伟的篇章《奥德赛》也倾向于佐证本雅明的观点:"任何一个故事都应当以这样一个问题收尾,亦即‘接下来又会发生什么呢?’"假如讲故事的人只能从死亡手中借用权威,那是因为死亡根本无法给予任何人永恒的权威。讲故事的人所拥有的时间,就像人的生命一样有限。话虽如此,前面总会有另一个故事在等着我们。

This essay is conceived as the introduction to a book that will be published under the same title.It begins by demarcating the traditional plague-bubonic and other-from the current pandemic,with which it shares certain similarities but from which it is also quite different.It then goes on to raise the question of how and why the experience of plagues depends in great measure on narrative accounts.To this end,Walter Benjamin's 1936 essay on"The Storyteller"is found to provide a useful framework within which to approach this question,since it determines storytelling as a response to a situation of extreme distress("Ratlosigkeit"in German).That response does not purport to resolve the distress but to provide"advice"or counsel(Rat),calling for the invention of further stories.Simply put,even the most epic of epics,the Odyssey,tends to confirm Benjamin’s insight that"there is no story for which the question,‘What comes next?’could not be asked."If the storyteller has only"borrowed"his authority from death,it is because"death"has no authority that it could give to anyone for all eternity.The time of the storyteller,like the time of human lives,is limited.That being said,there may always be another story waiting.