描写的政治:卢卡奇与朗西埃论《包法利夫人》

The Politics of Description: Gyorgy Lukacs and Jacques Rancière on Madame Bovary

福楼拜的名著《包法利夫人》是现实主义和现代主义文学的重要过渡,其写作上的重要特色之一在于频繁的描写,这甚至影响到了叙述的进程。卢卡奇对于福楼拜及自然主义作家对描写的倚重进行了批判,认为他们违背了亚里士多德的“行动诗学”,且有损作品的有机性;在政治上,描写的泛滥则体现了资产阶级对于现实斗争的旁观和冷漠,对于前途的悲观。朗西埃从当代激进政治的视野出发,却对《包法利夫人》中的描写颇为赞赏,认为它体现了一种等量齐观的美学民主,是对亚里士多德暗含等级制的摹仿/再现美学的反叛,是对现有感性分配秩序的扰乱,从而导向一种新的差异政治。同样属于西方马克思主义学者,朗西埃与卢卡奇的观点却针锋相对。通过对比,有助于更深刻地把握二者的思想和福楼拜的创作。二者思想隐含的不同“摹仿观”,也有助于我们更深入地理解西方美学和文学。

Flaubert’s renowned work Madame Bovary serves as a significant bridge between realism and modernism literature, characterized by its frequent use of description that even influences the narrative process. Lukacs criticized Flaubert and naturalism for over-reliance on description, arguing that it violated Aristotle’s “action poetics” and disrupted the organic nature of the work. Politically, the abundance of description reflected the bourgeoisie’s indifference to real struggles and a pessimistic outlook towards the future. From a contemporary radical political perspective, Rancière admired Madame Bovary ’s descriptive style as embodying an equal aesthetic democracy that rebelled against Aristotle’s imitation/representation aesthetics with implied hierarchy, disturbed existing partition of the sensible, and led to a new politics of difference. As part of Western Marxism thought tradition, Rancière and Lukacs’s views were in contention with each other;comparing them can help us better understand their thoughts as well as Flaubert’s creation. The different imitative perspectives implied by them can also deepen our understanding of Western aesthetics and literature.