世界性知识体系与日本民俗学——摆脱知识殖民的全球史

World Knowledge System and Japanese Folkloristics:The Global History of Epistemic Decolonization

一直以来,诸多日本民俗学者强调日本民俗学的本土性和独特性,他们排斥外国民俗学,尤其是欧美民俗学。这种“一国民俗学”式的民族主义论调,源于柳田国男创立日本民俗学时为避免被西方知识殖民而采取的策略。柳田在创建民俗学的过程中,意识到近代世界性知识体系的中心与边缘(西方与东方)之间不平等的权力关系,即西方之于东方的“知识殖民”,故而试图与之对抗。他刻意与这一世界性知识体系保持距离,甚至以“一国民俗学”的形式脱离该体系。然而,这也导致日本民俗学至今仍无法摆脱排外的民族主义魔咒。

Many Japanese folklorists have always been emphasizing the locality and uniqueness of Japanese folkloristics,and rejecting foreign folkloristics,especially European and American folkloristics.This nationalist discourse in the form of“folkloristics for one country”originated from the nativist strategy adopted by Yanagita Kunio to avoid the epistemic colonization by the West when he was founding the Japanese Folkloristics.In the process of creating folkloristics,Yanagita realized the inequality of power between the center and the periphery(the West and the East)in the modern global knowledge system,namely the“epistemic colonization”of the East by the West,and therefore attempted to resist it.He intentionally kept a distance from this global knowledge system and even broke away from it in the form of“folkloristics for one country”.However,this has also caused Japanese folkloristics to be cursed with nativist nationalism to this day.