战斗的天使:赛珍珠与传教工作遗产的双重性

Fighting angels:Pearl S.Buck and the ambivalent legacy of missionary work

赛珍珠的父亲赛兆祥近70岁时撰写了自传,但自传缺乏生平事迹,这使得赛珍珠有机会补充说明她父亲的“没有肉体的睿智”。事实上,这也正是“天使”在词典里的定义,赛珍珠将此用作《战斗的天使》的题引。笔者认为,“体现”(embodiment)是理解作为中美文化之桥的赛珍珠所持观点的关键。在赛珍珠1936年出版的她父母的传记中,她父亲“没有肉体”的态度和她母亲对身体的、人的需要的重要性的强调之间始终构成对照。由此,性别成为赛珍珠对美国教会政治解读的一个关键范畴:她意识到厌女症在传教活动中所扮演的角色,而这一角色使她得以与传教遗产保持距离,并激发她对父亲世界观中的种族主义根基进行抗争。

Absalom Sydenstricker,Pearl S.Buck's father,wrote his lifestory when he was nearly 70 years old.However,he failed to tell his own story,which seems to be the premise of Pearl S.Buck's effort to find an embo-died answer to complement his father s“bodiless intelligence”.This is in fact the dictionary definition of“angel”,which serves as an epigraph to Fighting Angel.In the thesis,it is argued that the notion of“embodiment”was crucial to Buck's view of her cultural work as a bridge between Chinese culture and American culture.In the biographies of her parents that she published in the 1930s,her father s bodiless attitude is constantly contrasted to her mother s emphasis on the importance of the body and of human needs.Gender will thus emerge as a crucial category in Buck's reading of American church politics:her awareness of the role of misogyny in the missionary enterprise enabled Pearl S.Buck to distance herself from its legacy,and inspired her to fight against the racist underpinnings of her father s worldview.