历史语义学与跨文化图像:域外“黄祸”漫画的缘起(1895-1905)

Historical Semantics and Transcultural Images:The Origin of Overseas“Yellow Peril”Caricatures(1895-1905)

历史语义学在国际学界已备受推崇和借鉴,但现有研究还较少把图像文献纳入历史语义学视野,有必要进行这方面的尝试。“黄祸”是一个处于东亚“鞍型期”的“历史基本概念”。在欧美,围绕这一概念产生了诸多漫画,它们在生产、传播及接受上都颇为广泛。缘起于1895—1905年的“黄祸”漫画基本具备了后世“黄祸”视觉呈现的基本语义和模式,具体体现在宗教与国族的历史语义、价值与关系的图像症候、经济与反帝的真假讽刺等方面。总览“黄祸”漫画,可以发现潜藏的二元对立与语义关联的图像模式,以及其中善与恶、正面与负面的语义对立。总之,图像与历史语义学的结合确实是一条行之有效的路径,但还有很多问题需要继续探索。

Historical semantics has been highly respected and used in the international academic circles,but few existing studies have brought image documents into the field of historical semantics,so it is necessary to make an attempt in this area.The“Yellow Peril”is a“basic historical concept”in the“Saddle Period”of East Asia.In Europe and the United States,many caricatures have been produced around this concept,and they were quite extensive in production,dissemination and acceptance.The“Yellow Peril”caricatures,which originated in 1895—1905,basically possessed the basic semantics and patterns of the subsequent visual presentation of the“Yellow Peril”,especially in historical semantics of nation and religion,image symptom of value and relationship,real or false satire of economics and anti-imperialism,and so forth.Considering the“Yellow Peril”caricatures,we can find the image patterns of underlying binary opposition and semantical relation,as well as the semantic opposition between good and evil,positive and negative.In short,the combination of image and historical semantics is indeed an effective path,but there are still many problems to be explored.