“莱维悖论”及其解决:阿甘本的见证诗学

“Levi’s Paradox”and Its Solution:Giorgio Agamben’s Poetics of Witnessing

见证奥斯维辛面临着"莱维悖论":无言者作为彻底的见证者,因触碰死亡而无法作证,幸存者作为奥斯维辛的例外,在某种意义上只是伪见证者。阿甘本认为,无言者与幸存者皆无法独自承担见证,见证者应该被视为由二者相互"排除性纳入"而建筑的界阈,亦即一种"统一-差异"的断裂构造。由此,见证的不可能性与可能性彼此构成,为无言者见证的不可能作证的幸存者就是见证者,见证者是通过为见证的不可能作证而得以承担见证之责的人。与之无异,证词同样呈现为一种断裂构造,证词来自语言为非语言作证,来自语言对非语言的回应,证词是被语言作证的非语言。在阿甘本看来,这意味着证词的语言不再意指,因为被语言作证的非语言是声响已逝而意义未至的声音/死语言,证词的实质是声音/死语言。也正是作为声音/死语言的证词奠定了文学的可能性。文学在奥斯维辛之后若要表明其继续存在的正当性,它的语言必须是声音/死语言。

Witnessing Auschwitz is confronted with“Levi’s paradox”:The speechless as a thorough witness cannot testify because of their death;and the survivor as an exception of Auschwitz,to some extent,is only a pseudo-witness.Agamben argues that neither the speechless nor the survivor can bear witness alone,and the witness should be seen as a threshold constructed by the mutual“exclusive inclusion”of the speechless and the survivor,that is,a fractured construction of“unity-difference.”As a result,the impossibility and possibility of witnessing constitute each other.The survivor who bears witness to the speechless’s impossibility of witnessing is the witness;the witness is the one who can bear the responsibility of witnessing through bearing witness to the impossibility of witnessing.In the same way,testimony also presents itself as a fractured construct,which comes from language that bears witness and responds to the non-language.Testimony is the non-language testified by language.For Agamben,this means that the language of testimony no longer signifies,because the non-language testified by language is the Voice/dead language,which is“no-longer”a voice and“not-yet”any meaning.The essence of testimony is Voice/dead language.It is also the testimony as Voice/dead language that establishes the foundation for the possibility of literature.If literature wants to justify its existence after Auschwitz,its language must be Voice/dead language.