贸易、探险与国家主义:华盛顿·欧文《阿斯托里亚》对远西部的“收编”

Trade,Adventure and Nationalism:Incorporation of the Far West into Washington Irving’s Astoria

探险是美国立国以来西部叙事的重要题材,此类作品的畅销与美国国家主义观念的高涨密切相关,欧文《阿斯托里亚》是其中的经典。通过对一位商人发起的皮毛贸易及相关探险活动的“美国化”处理,欧文搭建起一道浪漫的屏障来粉饰美国人在太平洋沿岸的殖民与扩张,并在英美“俄勒冈之争”白热化的时局下,赋予远西部的皮毛事业以国家战略意义,流露出经济民族主义倾向。经考察18世纪末至19世纪30年代北美西部的土地争端、贸易争霸及美国的扩张诉求,不难发现欧文的国家主义叙事与帝国扩张政治学之间的微妙共振;而在19世纪早期皮毛贸易全球化的视阈下,这一叙事呈现出诸多矛盾,印证了西部作为欧美殖民帝国激烈相争的政治经济场域,其归属权的获得建立在对原住民的掠夺之上。欧文从美国精神层面“收编”远西部的话语实践,暴露了土地的非美国性与文艺中的民族性建构之间的不和谐,其文化动机与焦虑心理也昭然若揭。

Adventure is an important subject in American West Narrative after the Independence.Such works caught on with the blooming of American nationalist idea.Irving’s Astoria is the classic one.By " Americanizing" the fur trade and adventures launched by a merchant,Irving builds a romantic barrier to whitewash American colonization and expansion on the Pacific coast.And in the heat of "the Oregon boundary dispute" between Britain and America,Irving brings strategic significance for the fur enterprise in the Far West,revealing a sense of economic nationalism.By investigating territorial disputes,trade competition and American ambition for colonization in West North American from the late 18th century to the 1830s,it’s easy to figure out how Irving’s nationalist narrative resonates with the politics of imperial expansion in a subtle way.However,this narrative exposes several contradictions through the perspective of fur trade globalization in the early 1800s,which confirms that,as an arena of political and economic struggle for European and American empires,the ownership of the West is based on plundering from indigenous people.Irving’s discursive practice of incorporating the Far West into American mind exposes a mismatch between non-American land and it’s nationalization in art and literature,and his cultural motives and anxieties are clearly revealed as well.