賽珍珠《大地》作為漢學全球化的雛形探討

Abstract

賽珍珠的《大地》是一部矛盾的文學經典：充滿了人道主義關懷，頌揚了中國人亂世中的堅忍毅力，也是中美二次世界大戰合作的政治宣傳作品。可是，某些後殖民評論述卻貶其為一部包含許多刻板民族印象的東方主義作品，是成就西方人優越感的想像東方的政治文宣，也就是薩依德所謂的「對位二元主義」。\\r 《大地》卻是第一部把中國狀況挪到世界舞台的全球化漢學作品，講述中國農夫王龍為故土奮鬥的故事。臺灣學者孫隆基述：從西方的角度看來，中國男性的生成是一個退化的過程，中國人從未離開家園，畢生依附自己的母親與妻子。這跟西方認為「男性應該離開原生家園自創門戶」的想法是背道而馳的。\\r 法國學者羅蘭．巴爾特在《符號禪意東洋風》內〈寫出來的臉孔〉一篇當中提及：在東洋表演藝術裡，中年男子扮裝成青春妙齡女子， 把青春作為一種 「符碼的美化表現」，這種表現為符號而不是再現實體的表演中，女人是一種觀念，不是一種「自然體」，還原到類別化的功能中，以及純差異性的真實。賽珍珠筆下的中國女性變成觀念的展現，這也符合蘇珊宋塔的「坎普」：對非自然事物的熱愛，對於矯作與誇飾的喜愛。此案裡，「坎普」的美感即是一種缺乏意旨的符號呈現。今日的《大地》是一部過時的作品，代表著舊時代特有的意識型態。 最後，安德森在《想像的共同體》內說及，語言本是就是建立民族認同的關鍵要素，相同語言的使用讓共時感便油然而生。賽珍珠以英文撰寫《大地》把中國情況帶入了世界舞台，為漢學成就了一個全球的想像共同體。在全球化時代中，漢學的研究或許可以突破薩依德的東方主義思維，從巴特與宋塔的視角，演變成基於文化差異成就的美學賞析。

Pearl S Buck’s The Good Earth occupies an ambivalent status among the classic literary canons. On the one hand, it is a humanitarian masterpiece glorifying the value of Chinese people’s stamina surviving through fin-die-siècle; on the other hand, it is an ideological propaganda that facilitated the collaboration between China and United States during the World War II. However, it has been devalued by postcolonial critics as a piece of work that contains many Oriental stereotypes in two-dimensions – a propaganda of an imaginary East that patronizes the Western superiority according to Edward Said’s “contractual dualism.”\\r Somehow The Good Earth is the first literary piece that introduced the Chinese condition to the world, and it was the first work of global sinology. The story of Chinese farmer Lung Wang shapes the image of Chinese male as “the effeminate chauvinist” whose existence entirely depends on the exploitation of his wife, who is the good earth that feeds and nurtures all without asking anything in return. Taiwanese scholar Lung-chi Song terms the making of Chinese manhood, from the Western perspective, is a process of regression because Chinese man never leaves his mother and spends his whole life under the control of his mother then his wife. It contradicts the notion of Western manhood, where man departs home to validate the caliber of manhood with the conquest of a new territory of his own. Roland Barthes mentions the example of the oriental actor of age fifty playing a woman of flowery youth in “The Written Face” of his book Empire of Signs that the Oriental theatrical face is a signifier which “dismisses the signified” as the transvestite actor “does not play the woman, or copy her, but only signifies her.” Woman becomes an idea of artifice basing on her “pure differences.” Buck’s Chinese woman character has become de-naturalized as Barthes’ “the refinement of the codes,” which might comforms to Susan Sontag’s definition of Camp－“love of the un-natural: of artifice and exaggeration.” Here oriental theatrical face is an embodiment of Camp－a signifier devoid of the signified. The Good Earth can no longer represent the Chinese after the passing of time. Now it was an obsolete icon that renders the ideology of yesterday. At last, Benedict Anderson notes that language is the key medium to create a sense of national identification between people in Imaginary Communities, and the use of the same language induces a feeling of synchronicity. Pearl S Buck wrote The Good Earth in English, which manages to gather the worldwide attention to the Chinese issue through the evocation of an English-speaking imaginary community. Perhaps the studies of Sinology in the age of globalization transcend the ideological shackles of Said’s Orientalism and (according to Barthes and Sontag) become an aesthetic gesture of cultural differences instead.