非人类叙事:概念、类型与功能

Non-Human Narratives:Concepts,Types and Functions

非人类叙事指的是由非人类实体参与的事件被组织进一个文本中,主要包括自然之物的叙事、超自然之物的叙事、人造物的叙事、人造人的叙事四种类型。在叙事作品中,处于故事与话语两个层面的非人类实体通常扮演叙述者、人物、聚焦者三种角色,由此发挥三种叙述功能,即讲述功能、行动功能和观察功能。将非人类叙事纳入考察范畴,既可以丰富现有的叙事理论,摒弃叙事研究的“人类中心主义”,同时也可以对文学史上大量存在的非人类叙事文本做出应有的批评和阐释。在“非人类转向”语境下提出非人类叙事,其目的不是否定人是“讲故事的动物”这一基本观点,更不是否定“文学是人学”这一立场,而是试图借此加深我们对人类与非人类之间关系的理解,使人类更好地介入生物圈。

Non-human narratives refer to the organization of events involving non-human entities into a text,and include four main types:narratives of natural objects,narratives of supernatural objects,narratives of artificial objects,and narratives of artificial humans.In narrative works,the non-human entity at the level of both story and discourse usually plays the roles of narrator,character and focuser,thus performing three narrative functions,namely the narrative function,the action function and the observation function.The inclusion of non-human narratives in the scope of investigation can not only enrich the existing narrative theories and abandon the“anthropocentrism”of narrative studies,but also provide due criticism and interpretation of the large number of non-human narrative texts that exist in literary history.