国民与奴隶:“黄祸”在近代中国的意义脉络与形象生产

The Citizen and the Slave:The Signifying Chain and Image Reproduction of the Yellow Peril in Modern China

“黄祸”是西方人对亚洲人的一种污名化表述。基于主方语言的知识立场细读梁启超、麦孟华等人对“黄祸”的引述,可见其在晚清知识语境中衍生出了的两种意指关系,即“奴隶”的化身和理想的“国民”。“黄祸”与“祸”“奴隶”的意义联结在《黄绣球》中具象化为人物黄祸,他和女主人公黄秀秋同为国民教育的改造对象。在改造、重置女性/国人身心的述行实践中,内外叙事层两位寓言家巩固了父权文化结构,亦发明和征用了“本土的他者”,同时他们想象着其知识权威皆从“西方”而来,其教育实践也将得到“西方”的注视。《黄绣球》中的人物黄福、《自由结婚》中的主角黄祸,以及《新纪元》《电世界》《黄祸之预言》中的“黄祸”书写,皆是“国民”的具象化。在这些未来想象中,知识人诉求着不同的政治蓝图,但却共享着一种文化无意识,即要求成为西方、希望以模仿西方获得的力量击败西方的心理情结。

The Yellow Peril(translated as Huanghuo,literally meaning yellow disaster) is a Western stigmatized representation of the Asian.Based on the host language knowledge standpoint to closely read how Liang Qichao,Mai Menghua,etc.paraphrased and explained the Yellow Peril in late Qing and early Republican China,we can see this signifier derives two main signifying relationships:The incarnation of “the Slave”(nuli),and “the Citizen”(guomin) in ideal.In The Yellow Embroidered Earth,the character Huang Huo,who is the object that needs to be transformed,indicates “disaster” and “the Slave”,as same as the heroine Huang Xiuqiu.In the performative practice of transforming and resetting the physical and mental state of females/people,the two allegorists in the inner and outer narrative layers consolidate the patriarchal power in cultural structure,as well as invent and expropriate the local other,while they imagine that their intellectual authority comes from the West and their educational practice also would be gazed by the West.The character Huang Fu of The Yellow Embroidered Earth,the hero Huang Huo of Freedom to Marry,and the writings of the Yellow Peril in the New Era,Electric World and The Prophecy of the Yellow Peril are the embodiments of “the Citizen”.In these future imaginations,intellectuals appeal to different political blueprints,but share the same cultural unconscious:The psychological complex of desiring to become the West and hoping to defeat it with the power gained by imitating it.