认识被化外的自我:后五四时期对乡村的关注和农村的问题化

Knowing the Marginalized Self:Post-May 4th Attention to the Country and the Emergence of the Problematic Rural Society

乡村曾被视为中国社会与文化的基础,在近代改称“农村”后,逐渐被认为出了问题。农村怎样成为“问题”及其所成的“问题”本身,既伴随着中国现代性展开的进程,也因其间的“现代”眼光所生成。这背后的一个要因,是城市的兴起和城乡的对立。由于城市被视为国家的主体,原来作为广土众民代表的乡村逐渐沦为化外,不复能表述自己。在五四后出现一种读书人想要了解自己国家的倾向,先是开始关注已近于未知的农村,观感褒贬参半;接着是被关注者逐渐问题化,见解贬多于褒;最后是问题化的农村升级为“破产”或“崩溃”,表述以贬为主。其间一个重要特点,是一些人因缺乏了解而把常态看成变态,甚至把国家整体的危难移植到农村身上。

The“country”used to be regarded as the root of Chinese society and culture,that is why a problem arose when in modern China the new term“rural society”was used in place of the“country”.How the rural society has become a problem and what the problem was have coupled with the process of modernity in China and resulted from the modern perspective in this process.A major cause was the rise of the city and the opposition between the urban and rural societies.As the city began to embody the state,the expansive and used-be-populous country was gradually marginalized,losing the ability to voice its presence.After the May 4th Movement,a group of state-conscious scholars began to pay attention to the rural society.Initially the rural society received both positive and negative judgements.Gradually it became a problem,as it was more rebuked than appreciated.Eventually,the discourse on the problematic rural society,drown by voices of condemnation,bankrupted and collapsed.This has resulted from the ignorance of critics who mistook what is normal as abnormal and even went too far as to attribute the misfortunes of the state to the rural society.