文明的新表述和老问题——2022欧游随想

New Representations and Old Problems of Civilizations:Reflections on a European Tour

文明需要表述(representation,又译“再现”),即人类通过各种媒介或中介来再现真实的生活,以此交流、传播人类的思想、情感和观点。所以文明就是表述,表述就是文明。主导文明表述的意识形态是二元对立、一元决定论的黑格尔主义与弱肉强食的“丛林法则”——社会达尔文主义。近年来,有许多文明新表述,或可称为“历史修正主义”、反中心论、反决定论、反智主义,卷起了一股民族-民粹主义的“两民”浪潮。文明需要通过福柯式、碎片式的感性观望,来思考知识与权力互构/解构的文明和文化,透过各种“新讲述”,思考“老问题”——“地中海疑惑”。地中海把人类文明带入现代社会,它使人类文明产生了“量子飞跃”。

Civilization requires representation,the use of various media or intermediaries by humans to depict real life in order to communicate and disseminate human thoughts,emotions,and viewpoints.Therefore,civilizations can be seen as representations.The dominant ideology of civilization's representation is the binary opposition and monistic determinism of Hegelianism and the"law of the jungle"of social Darwinism.In recent years,there have been many new representations of civilization,including"historical revisionism",anti-centralism,anti-determinism,and anti-intellectualism,starting a trend of nationalism-populism.We need to use a Foucauldian,fragmented perspective of sensibility to analyze how knowledge and power are constructed and deconstructed in civilizations and cultures,to solve"old problems"such as"the Mediterranean puzzle",the fact that the Mediterranean brought human civilization into modernity in a"quantum leap",by"new representations".