掠夺与归还:西方争议性遗产的伦理困境

Plunder and Return:Colonial-era Artifacts as Contested Cultural Heritage and Their Ethical Predicament

殖民地文物归还事件引发的争议揭示了去殖民化进程的困境。"归还"被期待生成新的关系伦理,但其认知与行动都基于以所有权为核心的物权伦理,未能关照殖民主义文物占有的神话学经验,遮蔽了物伦理的政治性与异质性;而将物权伦理作为"普世伦理"正是资本主义全球扩张的结果。维护物权伦理的物的知识巩固了对文物的祛魅与分裂,使文物即便归还,也仍需"神圣"博物馆赋能,有悖于"恢复原状"的假设。以物为主体/物质化的伦理考察有助于突破物权伦理的普世意识,建立起对普遍困境的反身性思考。作为争议性文化遗产的殖民地文物及其归还事件应作为生产性的实践,激发去殖民化的知识反思。

The return of colonial-era artifacts has greatly exaggerated the ethical predicament of decolonization and post-colonial conditions.The restitution of African cultural heritage is expected to establish a new relational ethic(of the colonizer and the colonized).Yet the idea behind the restitution is grounded in the rights to private ownership in close relation to capitalism,and thus has political-economic and theoretical implications we seek to explore in this article.Though there has been much debate over the restitution of cultural objects,objects or things are still understood in light of something possessable or alienable without socio-cultural and sacred values.However,instead of instituting a new ethical relation,this idea of objecthood faces the difficulty that the original materiality of colonial-era artifacts hardly restores when returning their home countries.In this article,we suggest that the debate over the restitution of cultural objects should be engaged in the material turn in anthropology or what is called"new materialism",which is helpful for us to reflect on the materiality of cultural objects.