从“构成论”到“生成论”:文学转向“社会性”的范式价值

From“Constitutive”to“Generative”:The Paradigmatic Value of Literature’s Turn to“Sociality”

希利斯·米勒的“文学终结论”引发了国内学界旷日持久的学术讨论,对“文学性”的普遍信任以及据此确立文学的合法存在是隐藏在这场争论背后的主要原因。但“文学性”是一个含混的经验性概念,“文学性”与文学之间的互证并不能证明文学的必然存在。我们应当破除二者之间的必然联系,转向关注文学的“社会性”。但传统意义上倚重“社会内容”的文学社会学也无法解释文学在当今时代的新变化。在转向的意义上理解“社会”,“社会”应当是拉图尔所说的流动、异质、多元及非本质的行动者网络,既是文学的内容来源,也是展现文学何以如此表达的结构;既呈现为文学生产的结果,也揭示了文学生产的过程。文学全面转向社会,意味着文学批评和理论研究也从构造论转变为生成论。述行性而非实指性的文学、发生论而非本体论的文学、关系论而非永恒论的文学才是今后文学研究的真正中心。

Hillis Miller’s“the death of literature”has triggered an academic discussion in the domestic academic circles,and the general trust in“literariness”and the legitimacy of literature are the main reasons hidden behind this controversy.However,“literariness”is an ambiguous empirical concept,which cannot prove literature exists legitimately.We should break the inevitable connection between literature and“literariness”,and focus on the“sociality”of literature.However,the traditional sociology of literature,which emphasizes on“social content”,is unable to explain the new changes of literature in the present age.Understanding“society”in the sense of the turn,“society”should be what Latour calls a fluid,heterogeneous,pluralistic,and non-essential network of actors,which is not only the source of literary content,but also the structure that reveals how literature expresses itself in such a way;it is both the result and the revelation of literary production.Literature’s comprehensive turn to society means that literary criticism and theoretical research have also changed from constructive to generative.In the future,literature would be performative rather than referential,occurrent rather than ontological,and relational rather than eternal.