区域研究与文明论式的转移

Area Studies and Civilizational Transference

“区域研究”作为一个独立学科,是在1940年代末在美国高等教育界被制度化的,其实施正是为了辅助“美利坚治世”的国际秩序。区域研究为美国多方面的全球霸权贡献了极大力量,这一知识的学科形成再度确认了近代世界的殖民-帝国秩序,其中“西方”代表着知识的主体,而“其他地方”则被专门指定为知识的客体。直至今日,区域研究的各个学科仍被相信是建立在这种人类学差异之上的,因而也就维护了近代世界的殖民分化。埃德蒙德·胡塞尔与和辻哲郎均参与了“西方与其他地方”的话语并且着迷于人类学差异这一修辞。前者坚决维护欧洲人文的历史使命,而后者则坚持日本文化主义的视角,将日本人与欧洲人以及其他亚洲人区分开来。在“美利坚治世”下被美国诸大学制度化了的区域研究中,罗伯特·贝拉的和辻哲郎论旨在满足他自己对“特殊主义”的偏好以及对西方现代性的价值和态度的敌意。贝拉和和辻分别居于“西方”和“其他地方”这一对立的两极,通过对其进行比较考察,本文将揭示区域研究的认识论和日本文化民族主义中内在的种族主义。眼下区域研究的各学科正面临着巨大的挑战,而本文则从人类学差异和文明论转移的力学等角度来探讨区域研究所面临的这一危机。

"Area Studies"designates a disciplinary formation that was institutionalized at the higher education level in the United States of America in the late 1940s,after the end of the Second World War.The very idea of area studies was put forth in order to supplement the forthcoming international order to be summarily called"Pax Americana."Area studies has contributed much to this multi-faceted global hegemony of the United States of America,and in this respect,this disciplinary formation of knowledge reconfirmed the colonial-imperial order of the modern world.As far as area studies is concerned,the old conventional bifurcation of the modern world into two contrasting positionalities,the West and the Rest,where the West represents the subject of knowing while the Rest is designated exclusively as the object of knowing,has not been thematically called into question.Even today the disciplines of area studies are still believed to be constructed on the basis of these purported anthropological differences between the West and the Rest,between Western humanity and the rest of humanity,thereby preserving the colonial bifurcation of the modern world.In PART I,I first focus on two intellectual figures of the early twentieth century before the Second World War,Edmund Husserl and Watsuji Tetsur?,both of whom participated in the discourse of the-West-and-the-Rest and were captive to the rhetoric of anthropological differences.Husserl insisted on the historical mission of European humanity,whereas Watsuji insisted on the perspective of Japanese culturalism which was supposed to distinguish the Japanese from Europeans and from other Asians.In PART II,our discussion will focus on the discipline of area studies that was institutionalized at American universities under Pax Americana.I will read an article written by Robert Bellah,sociologist and Japan expert,on Watsuji Tetsur?who was very popular among area experts on Japan.Bellah regarded Watsuji as a representative intellectual of Japan for his explicit orientation toward’particularism’and his hostility to the values and attitudes of Western modernity.Both Bellah and Watsuji participated in what Stuart Hall called’the discourse of the-West-and-the-Rest,’but occupied the polar opposites of the West and the Rest respectively.Through a comparative approach to these two cultural historians,I will disclose racism inherent in the epistemology of area studies and the Japanese cultural nationalism(nihonjin-ron).Today the disciplines of area studies face tremendous challenges,and this crisis of area studies is investigated from the perspective of anthropological difference and the dynamics of civilizational transference in this article,which addresses the question of the modern international world and the post-WWII arrangement of Pax Americana.