重写“母系家族的神话”——《天香》中的性别、技术与历史

Rewriting the Myth of the Matrilineal Family:Gender,Technology and History in Tian Xiang

作为一种特定的“社会—技术体系”,刺绣处在对象、活动、知识和意义构成的网络中,提供了将女性整合进中国历史进程的渠道。在王安忆的小说《天香》中,特定性别分工中的天香园绣构成了女性表达自我、建立认同、维持生计的方式,及其进入公共领域、历史书写乃至文明变迁的中介。对比明清纺织领域中上演的性别角色变动,考察文学想象和历史材料的张力,更能清晰地认识到小说家化上流家庭奢侈品为底层女性日常生计,打通其中的文野、雅俗维度,从而“创造世界”“重写”历史的努力。而将这种创作放回“寻根运动”的延长线上,则有助于扩展当代女性文学的讨论空间,思考劳动的能动性、性别秩序的变革、女性的同一性与差异性、文明的复杂性等问题。

As a specific sociotechnical system,embroidery is embedded in a network of objects,activities,knowledge,and meanings,providing a channel for integrating women into the process of Chinese history.In Wang Anyi’s Tianxiang,the embroidery of Tianxiang Garden in a specific gender division of labor constituted a way for women to express themselves,established their identity,maintained their livelihood,served an intermediary for access to the public sphere,historical writing,and even civilizational change.Comparing Tianxiang with the changing gender roles in the textile field of the Ming and Qing dynasties,examining the tension between literary imagination and historical materials,we can more clearly recognize the novelist’s efforts to turn the luxuries of the upper-class families into the daily livelihood of the women from the lower classes,and to open up the dimensions of literature,culture and vulgarity,so as to“create the world”and“rewrite”history.Putting Tianxiang back to the extension line of the“root-seeking(xungen)movement”will help to expand the discussion space of contemporary women’s literature,and to think about the mobility of labor,the change of gender order,the homogeneity and difference of women,and the complexity of civilization,and so on.