沉浸他者文化而生的民族自我批评:狄金森、徐志摩与赛珍珠

Self-Critique Prompted by Immersion in (An) Other Culture:Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson, Xu Zhimo, and Pearl S. Buck

狄金森、徐志摩、赛珍珠不仅是万众瞩目的公共知识分子,还是重要的文学和政治团体的创始成员,是跨国文学共同体网络的一部分。他们与自己国家格格不入,却在异国他乡建构身份认同,都在自己的祖国和海外留下丰富的文化遗产,促进了中英之间和中美之间极具活力的文化交流。他们对本国的批评之所以令人信服,部分原因在于他们曾长时间生活在他者文化中,由此获得审视故土道德标准和国家政策所必要的批评距离。以对位视角来看,他们是早期移民作家和学者的杰出代表,他们相信多元交融的必要性,相信促进多元世界文化遗产,尤其是鼓励批评性文化以及民族自省的必要性。

Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson,Xu Zhimo,and Pearl S.Buck were not only intriguing public intellectuals,but were also foundational members of literary and political circles,part of a web of relationships between transnational literary communities.All possessed both the Eastern and Western cultures and worlds;all were nonconformists in their own countries who identified acutely with overseas people and places;all left bountiful legacies in their native soil and overseas.They facilitated what was perhaps the most vibrant cultural encounter between China and Great Britain or between China and the United States.They produced cogent critiques of their native countries in part as a result of their immersion in other cultures,which provided them with critical distance from which to observe domestic mores and policies.Through their contrapuntal visions,they were early and prominent examples of migrant writers and scholars who believe in mingling with people of all stripes,in promoting a multicultural world heritage and,above all,in encouraging critical cultural and national introspection.