地理批评

Geocriticism:A Keyword in Critical Theory

由法国比较文学专家韦斯特法尔提出的“地理批评”是最近十年异峰突起的前沿文学批评理论,在“空间转向”浪潮中占据着举足轻重的地位。韦斯特法尔从德勒兹和加塔利等人的后现代地理哲学中汲取理论养分,提倡采用“地理中心主义”视角探讨文本与世界的互文与互动关系,建议采用“多重聚焦”“多重感官性”和“地层学视角”三种具体方法探究不同文本对同一地方的表征,引导读者走向对空间的多元感知。在其晚近著述中,韦斯特法尔进一步将地理批评方法从文学文本拓展至后现代艺术地图,呼吁用多元化和去中心化的视角重新审视全球化时代的空间格局,不仅为地理批评赋予了认识论价值,也使它彰显出强大的跨学科生命力。

“Geocriticism,”proposed by Bertrand Westphal,a French expert in comparative literature,is a cutting-edge literary critical theory that has emerged in the last decade and has occupied a prominent place in the wave of the"spatial turn."Drawing from the postmodern geophilosophy of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari,Westphal advocates a"geocentric"perspective on the intertextual and interactive relationship between the text and the world.He further points out that three specific approaches-"multifocalization,""polysensoriality"and"stratigraphic vision"-should be used to explore the representation of the same place in different texts,in order to guide readers towards multiple perceptions of space.In his recent writings,Westphal extends the geocritical approach from literary texts to postmodern art maps,calling for a pluralistic and decentered perspective to reexamine spatial landscape in the age of globalization,which not only gives geocriticism an epistemological value,but also allows it to show a powerful interdisciplinary vitality.