重访乌托邦:写作传统的迁变与绵延

Revisiting Utopia:On the Change and Continuity of a Writing Tradition

乌托邦写作源自托马斯·莫尔,通过文体溯源可以总结出乌托邦写作的特征:它基于对现存社会秩序弊病的领会,展开针对性的想象,用陌生化的手法建构迥异于现实的理想社会,并模拟航海小说的框架将其置于不可企及的孤岛,从而形成对作者想象本身的自嘲。这一文体形式在后学的继承推演中渐趋僵化,原初的反讽因素遭到搁置,写作蜕变为现代化过程中的社会规划蓝图,衍生出众多代价惨重的乌托邦实践。出于对理性主义产物可能带来偏误的敏锐感知,反乌托邦文学应运而生,重续反讽传统,指出任何理想秩序由于盲目自信而自我闭合,就将走向乌托邦的反面。乌托邦与反乌托邦文本相互对话、相互启发、相互驳斥,保证了这一写作传统的反思精神不会轻易衰竭。

Utopian writing originates from Thomas More.Through stylistic tracing,several characteristics of utopian writing can be summarized:based on the understanding of the defects of the existing social order,utopian writing develops targeted imagination,constructs an ideal society completely different from reality by means of estrangement,and places it on an unreachable island by simulating the framework of nautical novels,thus forming a mockery of the author's imagination itself.This style gradually became rigid in the inheritance and deduction of later studies,and the original irony of utopian writing was shelved and transformed into the blueprint of social planning in the process of modernization,resulting in numerous costly failures of utopian practices.Recognizing the errors possibly caused by the products of rationalism,anti-utopian literature came into being,continuing the ironic tradition,pointing out that any“ideal”order that closed itself up due to blind confidence would lead to the opposite of utopia.Utopian and anti-utopian texts inspire and refute each other in the process of dialogue,thus ensuring that the self-reflective spirit of this writing tradition will not be easily exhausted.