从文化性到文学性——符号学对华裔美国文学研究的启示

From Culturality to Literariness——A Semiotic Approach to Chinese American Literary Studies

亚/华裔美国文学批评范式存在重视文学外部而忽视文学本体研究,侧重社会和文化批评而缺少文学审美和形式分析的倾向。批评范式的单一化和集中化不仅不利于亚/华裔美国文学研究的发展,而且无法充分体现亚/华裔美国文学作为文学的价值。华裔美国文学作为少数族裔文学,有其历史和文化上的特殊性,同时也具有一切文学共有的普遍性,即文学审美特性。将文学符号学的方法运用于华裔美国文学批评,可以从形式入手,追寻文本符号的表意过程,深入文本符号背后的社会、文化、族裔政治等问题,从而消解华裔美国文学形式与内容、文学性与文化性之间的二元对立,实现文学审美和文化批评之间的有效互融。

An obvious tendency of Asian/Chinese American literary criticism is emphasizing the outside of literature rather than the study of literary ontology,and focusing on social and cultural criticism instead of the literary aesthetics and formal analysis.The simplification and centralization of the critical paradigm is not only detrimental to the development of Asian/Chinese American literature studies,but also fails to fully reflect the value of Asian/Chinese American literature.As a minority literature,Chinese-American literature has its historical and cultural particularity,as well as the universality common to all literature,i.e.the literary aesthetic characteristics.The application of the literary semiotic approach to the Chinese American literary criticism can,by starting from the form,pursue the ideographic process of text symbols,and go deep into the social,cultural,ethnic politics and other issues behind the text symbols,so as to eliminate its confrontation between form and content and the opposition between sexuality and culturality,and realize the effective integration between literary aesthetics and cultural criticism.