The Barbarians Are Coming-- Marilyn Chin
写在前面：陈美玲-野蛮人来了
如果不是因为要做徐老师的美国华裔文学的PPT，要不是我随心所欲的选了陈美玲这位中西合璧诗体的女人，要不是最近身边还是缺一个我心仪的丁香一样的结着愁怨的姑娘，我是不会费这么大的气力去琢磨女性主义的。四个周里面我得不断地从伍尔夫的精神世界抽风了似的跑到凯瑟琳布蕾娅的电影里面寻找女性们所要的那个自我，途中还得不得不邂逅非把婚姻等同于卖淫的张爱玲，王小波的夫人这位叱咤于当世的性学家李银河，还有怎么搞也搞不定的“第三性”的波伏娃，以及众多女名流们的傲立于世的宣言。而且无意间进了女性主义的贴吧，发现男女两派骂得不可开交一点都不和谐让我很失望。
值得庆幸的是，我还是从牛逼的谷歌中找到了陈爱玲版本的野蛮人来了（雷祖伟有篇长篇小说也叫The Barbarians Are Coming）的相关资源。在这先贴出链接防止侵权并感谢周晓静女士的The ethics & poetics of alterity in Asian American poetry（华裔美国诗歌中他者的伦理学及诗学） http://books.google.com.hk/books?id=nWxoitaC5VMC&printsec=frontcover&dq=The+ethics+%26+poetics+of+alterity+in+Asian+American+poetry&source=bl&ots=2POEvB8_n-&sig=7y0-dbTXMwsWELNDuqfRZ56Jtx0&hl=zh-CN&ei=ObgMTK_9AtqJcPzKyZIO&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBwQ6AEwAA#
不过，受限于文本格式，每一个英文字母都是我亲自打的，因此，转的时候务必打个招呼。
“ 陈爱玲诗歌的主题主要涉及美国华裔的身份及归化、中国文化的继承、美国华裔文化的重建、女性主义等多个方面，其诗歌语言继承了西方传统的抒情诗形式，在她的诗歌中可以看到贝丽曼普拉斯庞德弗罗斯特艾略特的影子。她的诗歌不同于白人主流诗歌，她吸收继承了东方的诗歌传统，受到了来自日本徘圣，中国庄子、李白、艾青等人的影响。
她的诗歌打破了西方诗歌的表达顺序，采用了中国诗歌传统的意象并置方法，诗歌形式松散，结构跳跃，表现了一种独特的诗歌语言。她以东西方文化和诗歌语言的混杂创造出抒情诗歌的新形式。语言或幽默、自嘲，或讽刺、戏谑，讲述了美国华裔移民独特的生活体验。陈爱玲诗歌打破了美国诗坛欧洲中心主义的诗风，丰富了美国诗歌的形式和内容。”——《美国华裔文学选读》徐颖果 编著
转入正题，当然我的观点是建立在周晓静女士观点之上的，这一点无法否认。《野蛮人来了》讲的是女性反对男权制的经历，其中涉及了自我与他者的探析，对传统反叛、逃离至颠覆，以及对卡瓦菲斯及庄子的大胆借用。诗歌的形式无需探讨，作者以阐释的很清楚。对于这篇诗歌的解构主要还是从其思想深度进行挖掘。开篇首句并置了三个意象，“战车，烈马，野蛮人来了”，给人一紧迫感，似乎战争一触即发。接着，我们在等什么呢，“适婚女子们手指着墙，野蛮人来了。”到这儿思路便撒野了，让我浮想联翩，适婚女子可以理解为所有女性，尤其是美国华裔女性的婚姻很大程度上是跨种族跨文化的，如何保持自己的民族纯洁性，大一点说，如何保持自我的这份纯洁性，这是一个女人们尤其是华裔女性们无法回避的问题，最好的结果是不结婚，但是保持独身就能保持还原一个真实的自我吗？由此可见，对自我的追寻是一个终极，太难回答了。周晓静在“墙”的意象中联想到了中国“伟大的墙”-长城。长城是为抵御所谓的野蛮人入侵而设的，但是终究挡不住，这就暗示着在婚姻的这个问题上，以及后面要提到的性，女性们是无法抵挡，无法回避的。接着，“他们（野蛮人）听说墙上有最脆弱的一环，因此，隔墙有耳，他们时刻能够听见我们。”周晓静并没有对这一句进行解读，但我觉得这一句太重要了，我觉得这脆弱的一环便是我们要提到的“性”（当然此看法不一定正确），性跟婚姻是紧密联系的，而且对于女性来说，性，背负的太多的压力，她象征着忠诚，荣辱。因此，很多女权主义者都会把女性主义的基点放在性上，就是要颠覆长期以来强加在女性身上以性作为忠诚的标准。在这儿不得不提凯瑟琳布蕾娅的罗曼史（romance），当女主角被一名陌生男子强奸后，她哭着对他喊，我并不感到羞耻。凯瑟琳布蕾娅就是要打破颠覆这种数千年的精神控制，也就是说，强奸这个词儿瞬间土崩瓦解了，而且对于左派女权们来说，完全可以表达“I fucked him”这种论调。但对于作家而言，打破还得重新构建，因此，在莱思莉波的作品中，我们可以听到这种呼声，女性的不忠，是对传统专制权威的一种反叛甚至是颠覆。（出墙不宜，请勿模仿，颠覆只是理论在先，颠覆在现实中步履维艰。）
“ 所以，沉浸在你的幻想中吧，你只是一个女人，手中仅握墙中残转。
所以，沉浸在你的幻想中吧，就像你是主宰，在此砖，此墙前。”
这两句给我精神上的折磨是空前的，把墙理解自我与他者之间，中西两种文化之间，种族之间，男女之间的障碍也好，通道也好，都能说得通，但是手中握着一块板砖儿是怎么回事，周晓静这么理解，说：这是华裔女性们对被同化的恐惧及其抵制。那么，这块板砖儿是如何体现出来的，作为女性的防身武器？你感过来，我拍死你。作为传统女性贞节的象征？我要誓死捍卫这块儿板砖儿。我是无解了。怎么理解都很牵强。痛苦，有时难以言传。我很不喜欢这块儿板砖儿。
“野蛮人来了，有的蓄着红胡子，也有挽着高高的发髻
野蛮人来了，你的父辈，兄辈，师者，情人都在其中
显而易见，他们与你不同（他者）”
“红胡子”与“高发髻”两种意象，我读了很多遍也没有想到，周晓静的答案是：红胡子是老外，在这特指欧美的白种人，高发髻是中国传统男人的形象。陈爱玲扩大了野蛮人的外延，父辈，兄辈，师者，情人等，看来不仅仅是外国人，不仅仅是异质文化，你们男人啊，一个不拉，都是野蛮人啊。到这儿，终于给出了他者的概念，其实，广义的他者，应该是，除我之外，全部都是他者的范畴，包括，整个宇宙，时间，蓝天，大地，等等等等。在这儿，由于女权的需要，他者面向的仅仅是广大的男性。(男性威武。罗比尼奥威武。) 关于他者，我不再过多的阐释，我比较自私，还是喜欢谈自我。
上半部分结束。下半部分开始。
学习一下，华丽丽的分割线。
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“野蛮人来了，你叫我马，我就是马；你喊我牛，同样我也得愧疚。”
庄子必须得粉墨登场了。《庄子·天道》：“昔者，自呼我牛也，而谓之牛；呼我马也，而谓之马。”后来就有成语“呼牛呼马”或“呼牛作马”说的是毁誉由人，悉听自然。你想说就说吧，你想批评，想表扬，得，跟我没关系。庄子在缓解自我与他者的矛盾时，提出了“无为”。而且对于指称命名方面是这种态度，一种物质具体形态，你对他有偏见的话，那么你无论怎么给他命名你都还是对他有偏见，喊他爸爸也白搭。我们经常要借助声音这个符号来表达自己，来影响他人。我觉得聋哑人基本处于庄子所说的这种状态。话归正传，陈美玲视角的转换与音律节奏的改变，引出了道家的对待命名的矛盾观点揭露这个观点：他者的他者性往往会逃离任何命名，引人走入误区。也就是你长期喊我女人，我得遵守女人的各种道德理念，那些附加在我身上的不公与屈辱，无论怎么样都是卸载不掉的。你这不是胡扯吗？我们谈女权运动，我们谈一种理念会不知不觉的引领着我们的行动，像女权主义，不正在影响着我们的生活。你怎么解释啊，庄子？“事物的本原被正确的描述后，你不予承认反而加以斥责，庄子，你就是一个野蛮之王。”通过这种反击，陈爱玲转换了命名者与被命名者之间的主客体关系，解构了社会长期以来构筑的他者范畴，打破了自我与他者之间种族与文化的界限。
“马在疾驰，牛在狂奔。野蛮人来了。
他们是多么的欣喜若狂。
嗅到伟大的边界，他们趾高气扬。”
最后关于frontier（边界，边缘，边界地带）的解读，我很是无能为力。周晓静如是说，作为自我的他者-野蛮人这一意义分崩离析，那些一开始被认为是威胁的野蛮人变成了解构了后的边缘。野蛮人的身份如何界定提出了新的议题。“嗅到伟大的边界，他们趾高气扬。”暗示了野蛮人本身就是边界，边缘。也就是说，他者，就是边缘或者边界。与他者相遇就是冒险进入了一个不可知的领域。这份自我打破了种族与文化的界限。陈爱玲通过“野蛮人来了，你的父辈，兄辈，师者，情人都在其中”刻意模糊了这种界限，而且文中的卡瓦菲斯与庄子作为两种文化的代表互不从属。陈爱玲淡化文化身份的界定，是想表达什么观点？并且最后也没有回归女权的这个核心上。我的理解只能到这个份儿上。
全篇到此结束，我能嗅到女性主义的气息，只是最后的时刻，我的鼻子被无情的阉割。
抛开诗歌本身，就女性主义的话题讨论会变得非常有趣。在中国，女权主义只不过是个名词，李银河也说过，女权主义在中国被妖魔化了，变成两性之间的对立与厮打，真正的女权应该是促进两性的和谐，进而促进整个社会的和谐。其实，在我眼中的女权，就是“两个独立+一个家+一个精神”，物质独立，思想独立，一个家包括一个老公，N个孩子（N大于等于1），还有一种牺牲的精神。当然一家之言，广大女性完全可以对此挑衅。女权的实质就是在自我的追逐上，其实，男人何尝不是？谁不是在探求自我寻找自我，像乔治·克鲁尼在up in the air中，他的背包理论，是一种自我的表达吧，是一种自我的探求吧。再像into the wild中，克里斯是在拿着生命践行自我吧，最后终于踏上了不归路。自我与他者永远是一对矛盾，矛盾双方相互依赖相互依存，谁也离不开谁，绝对的自我便是走向不归路。婚姻中，你当然可以保持那份自我，但是也要做出一部分牺牲，prestige中他给了我们魔术的最高境界：Sacrifice is the most beautiful part of the magic.牺牲可以让一个华人街的华人老翁在人前人后用不同的方式走路，这是完全为魔术献身的行为，很少人能够做到。我觉得在自我追逐的途中，把握好度°是极其重要的，我比较喜欢那些银幕前星光熠熠但要隐退后就全心做好家庭主妇的女人们以及那些婚前风风火火婚后低调行事的女人们。我很不喜欢豆瓣中刻薄尖刻刀子嘴刀子心的女文艺青年们，你们，什么时候才能长大？
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In a 1995 interview with Bill Moyers, Marilyn Chin speaks of her poetic aspirations in terms of her sense of responsibility. “As a poet, a woman and a Chinese immigrant, I see myself as a frontier......And I feel that I'm a conduit for many voices, women's voices mostly." The frontier Chin explores is a racial, cultural and poetic one. It entails departures from established cultural and literary traditions, One of those departures includes reinventing a lyric I whose identity is at once individual and collective, Chinese and American. The self as a frontier in Chin's poetry is a border zone where crossings over racial, cultural and poetic boundaries inevitably result in encounters of otherness whose transformative impact is manifest in the hybridity of Chin's poetics-a mixing of elements from various poetic traditions across cultural and national boundaries, including an African American aesthetic, without erasing each's difference.
Chin articulates a compelling version of the self as a frontier where encounters with racial, cultural and poetic otherness take place. The form and content of this poem demonstrates the possibilities of creating a new lyric by combining and transforming elements from different cultural traditions. Chin incorporates and revises the modern Greek poet C.P.Cavafy's poem Waiting For The Barbarians and a passage from an ancient Chinese text of Daoism, Chuang Tzu, to express complex feelings about and different attitudes toward the other, Cavafy's poem is written in the form of a dramatized dialogue and linear narrative which lead to an epiphany at the end- the Barbarians are used by politicians as a diversion from the state's problems. In this poem, the Barbarians are a symbol for the outsider, a deceptive digression. Chin borrows Cavafy's dramatization of the coming of the barbarians to reveal a state of mind, but she changes both the meaning of the Barbarians and its function in her poem. Opening her poem with a description of the barbarian's approaching cavalry, Chin creates a sense of urgency, anxiety and crisis:
War chariots thunder, horses neigh, the barbarians are coming.
What are we waiting for, young nubile women pointing at the wall,
The barbarians are coming.
They have heard about a weakened link in the wall.
So, the barbarians have ears among us.
So deceive yourself with illusions: you are only one woman,
holding one broken brick in the wall.
So deceive yourself with illusions: as if you matter,
that brick and that wall.
The barbarians are coming: they have red beards or beardless
with a top knot.
The barbarians are coming: they are your fathers, brothers,
teachers, lovers; and they are clearly an other.
Instead of an eagerly expected presence as Cavafy's poem, the barbarians in Chin's poems are a Threat to racial and cultural purity. The image of the wall marking territorial boundaries evokes the Great Wall of China built to stop the invasion of Barbarians. As the poem unfolds, it becomes clear that it is an illusion that the barbarians can be kept out by the wall: “they are your fathers, brothers, teachers, lovers; and they are clearly an other. “The image of "one woman, holding one broken brick in the wall." dramatizes some Chinese immigrants' anxiety about and resistance to assimilation and their illusion that individuals can preserve ethnic purity. The fact that women's bodies and sexuality are regulated and policed to secure racial purity and to maintain boundaries of nation, race, class and culture renders the image of "young nubile women" at the wall facing the approaching barbarian cavalry particularly complex and forceful in confronting acculturation and interracial sexual relationship.
Chin's use of Asian women's body and sexuality as "contested sites of ideologies and identities is a salient example of the strategy of using sexuality to articulate the terms of citizenship and national belonging." In Asian immigrant writing, which Leslie Bow explores in depth. In her book Betrayal and Other Acts of Subversion: Feminism, Sexual Politics, Asian American Women's Literature. Bow examines the ways in which "feminine sexuality" operates as a marker of "ethnic or national betrayal, particularly as sexuality mediates between progress and tradition, modernity and the old world, the U.S. and Asia." Bow argues: “Asian American women writers not only mediate sexuality’s construction as a determiner of loyalty but manipulate that construction as a tool of political persuasion, reconceptualizing 'disloyalty' as resistance to repressive authority." Chin's assertion of interracial affiliations through sexual relationships across national and cultural boundaries, however, does not simply signify ethnic and racial "betrayal", nor resist racist and patriarchal repression only. Interracial sexual relationships in this and her other poems, also negotiate the implications and consequences of Asian immigrants' acculturation in an interview that she fears losing her Chinese language, "which would be like losing part of myself, losing part of my soul. But Assimilation must happen. There is no way I can force my children to speak Chinese. There is no way that the pure yellow seed, as my grandmother called it, will continue." Moreover, Chin notes, “Just as I think it's impossible to keep Chineseness pure, I think it's also impossible to keep whiteness pure. I think everything must merge and I'm willing to have it merge within me in my poetry.” Assimilation for Chin as shown in her poem does not mean erasure or oppression of otherness by the dominant culture; rather it suggests a mutually transformative encounter between self and other.
This encounter and its implications for white America are also part of the dramatization of anxiety and illusion in the poem, as implied in the difference among the Barbarians, who are both White(they have red beards) and Asian(beardless with a top knot),Chin enhances the double meaning of the illusion about keeping the barbarians OUT by appropriating and revising one passage from CHUANG TZU by the Daoist philosopher in the last half of the poem. In this passage Lao Tzu, the legendary founder of Daoism, is called ILL-BRED by a visitor who sees him being frugal with food, but Lao Tzu is indifferent to the name-calling, when asked why he remained indifferent, Lao Tzu said: “the titles of clever, wise, divine, holy are things that I have long ago cast aside, as a snake shed its skin. Yesterday if you had called me an ox, I should have accepted the name of ox; if you had called me a horse, I should have accepted the name of horse. Wherever there is a substance and people give it a name, it would do well to accept that name for it will in any case be subject to the prejudice that attaches to the name.” Chin incorporates the Daoist attitude towards naming and names in her poem, while shifting the subject position from those who fear the barbarians to that of the barbarians and their attitudes toward being named the abject other:
If you call me a horse, I must be a horse.
If you call me a bison, I am equally as guilty.
When a thing is true and is correctly described, one doubles
the blame by not admitting it: so, Chuangtzu, himself,
was a barbarian king!
Horse, horse, bison, bison, the barbarians are coming—
And how they love to come.
The smells of the great frontier exalt in them!
after cavafy.
With this shift of perspective accompanied by a change in rhythm and intonation, Chin introduces the Daoist paradoxical attitude toward naming to expose the fact that the otherness of the other will always escape any names as reductive and misleading, as Lao Tzu's remarks indicate, Hence to deny any naming or category as untrue to the thing described is to accept the belief that naming can define the essence of things, which is contrary to Daoism. Therefore Chin's barbarians I says defiantly:” If you call me a horse, I must be a horse. If you call me a bison, I am equally as guilty.” Chin enacts the Daosit attitude toward naming to suggest that the otherness of the other is beyond any namable categories. At the same time, she destabilizes socially constructed categories of the other, collapsing the racial and cultural boundaries between self and other by switching the subject positions between the namer and the named.
The meaning of the barbarians as the other of the self thus disrupted, those who must be walled out as a threat at the beginning of the poem become destabilized frontier in the end. It is worth nothing that by the end of the poem the identity of the barbarians has been called into question and with it, the meaning and location of the frontier. the last line, “The smells of the great frontier exalt in them! "seems to suggest that the barbarians themselves are a frontier, In other words, the other is a frontier; encounter with the other is a venture into the unknown. While the self as a frontier in Chin's poetry indicates the otherness of the lyric I, this self suggests transgression of racial and cultural boundaries- a transgression that is embodied textually by Chin's blurring of boundaries for defining barbarians （they are your fathers, brothers, teachers, lovers; and they are clearly an other.） and by her incorporation of both Cavafy and Chuang Tzu without subordinating one to the other.
如果不是因为要做徐老师的美国华裔文学的PPT，要不是我随心所欲的选了陈美玲这位中西合璧诗体的女人，要不是最近身边还是缺一个我心仪的丁香一样的结着愁怨的姑娘，我是不会费这么大的气力去琢磨女性主义的。四个周里面我得不断地从伍尔夫的精神世界抽风了似的跑到凯瑟琳布蕾娅的电影里面寻找女性们所要的那个自我，途中还得不得不邂逅非把婚姻等同于卖淫的张爱玲，王小波的夫人这位叱咤于当世的性学家李银河，还有怎么搞也搞不定的“第三性”的波伏娃，以及众多女名流们的傲立于世的宣言。而且无意间进了女性主义的贴吧，发现男女两派骂得不可开交一点都不和谐让我很失望。
值得庆幸的是，我还是从牛逼的谷歌中找到了陈爱玲版本的野蛮人来了（雷祖伟有篇长篇小说也叫The Barbarians Are Coming）的相关资源。在这先贴出链接防止侵权并感谢周晓静女士的The ethics & poetics of alterity in Asian American poetry（华裔美国诗歌中他者的伦理学及诗学） http://books.google.com.hk/books?id=nWxoitaC5VMC&printsec=frontcover&dq=The+ethics+%26+poetics+of+alterity+in+Asian+American+poetry&source=bl&ots=2POEvB8_n-&sig=7y0-dbTXMwsWELNDuqfRZ56Jtx0&hl=zh-CN&ei=ObgMTK_9AtqJcPzKyZIO&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBwQ6AEwAA#
不过，受限于文本格式，每一个英文字母都是我亲自打的，因此，转的时候务必打个招呼。
“ 陈爱玲诗歌的主题主要涉及美国华裔的身份及归化、中国文化的继承、美国华裔文化的重建、女性主义等多个方面，其诗歌语言继承了西方传统的抒情诗形式，在她的诗歌中可以看到贝丽曼普拉斯庞德弗罗斯特艾略特的影子。她的诗歌不同于白人主流诗歌，她吸收继承了东方的诗歌传统，受到了来自日本徘圣，中国庄子、李白、艾青等人的影响。
她的诗歌打破了西方诗歌的表达顺序，采用了中国诗歌传统的意象并置方法，诗歌形式松散，结构跳跃，表现了一种独特的诗歌语言。她以东西方文化和诗歌语言的混杂创造出抒情诗歌的新形式。语言或幽默、自嘲，或讽刺、戏谑，讲述了美国华裔移民独特的生活体验。陈爱玲诗歌打破了美国诗坛欧洲中心主义的诗风，丰富了美国诗歌的形式和内容。”——《美国华裔文学选读》徐颖果 编著
转入正题，当然我的观点是建立在周晓静女士观点之上的，这一点无法否认。《野蛮人来了》讲的是女性反对男权制的经历，其中涉及了自我与他者的探析，对传统反叛、逃离至颠覆，以及对卡瓦菲斯及庄子的大胆借用。诗歌的形式无需探讨，作者以阐释的很清楚。对于这篇诗歌的解构主要还是从其思想深度进行挖掘。开篇首句并置了三个意象，“战车，烈马，野蛮人来了”，给人一紧迫感，似乎战争一触即发。接着，我们在等什么呢，“适婚女子们手指着墙，野蛮人来了。”到这儿思路便撒野了，让我浮想联翩，适婚女子可以理解为所有女性，尤其是美国华裔女性的婚姻很大程度上是跨种族跨文化的，如何保持自己的民族纯洁性，大一点说，如何保持自我的这份纯洁性，这是一个女人们尤其是华裔女性们无法回避的问题，最好的结果是不结婚，但是保持独身就能保持还原一个真实的自我吗？由此可见，对自我的追寻是一个终极，太难回答了。周晓静在“墙”的意象中联想到了中国“伟大的墙”-长城。长城是为抵御所谓的野蛮人入侵而设的，但是终究挡不住，这就暗示着在婚姻的这个问题上，以及后面要提到的性，女性们是无法抵挡，无法回避的。接着，“他们（野蛮人）听说墙上有最脆弱的一环，因此，隔墙有耳，他们时刻能够听见我们。”周晓静并没有对这一句进行解读，但我觉得这一句太重要了，我觉得这脆弱的一环便是我们要提到的“性”（当然此看法不一定正确），性跟婚姻是紧密联系的，而且对于女性来说，性，背负的太多的压力，她象征着忠诚，荣辱。因此，很多女权主义者都会把女性主义的基点放在性上，就是要颠覆长期以来强加在女性身上以性作为忠诚的标准。在这儿不得不提凯瑟琳布蕾娅的罗曼史（romance），当女主角被一名陌生男子强奸后，她哭着对他喊，我并不感到羞耻。凯瑟琳布蕾娅就是要打破颠覆这种数千年的精神控制，也就是说，强奸这个词儿瞬间土崩瓦解了，而且对于左派女权们来说，完全可以表达“I fucked him”这种论调。但对于作家而言，打破还得重新构建，因此，在莱思莉波的作品中，我们可以听到这种呼声，女性的不忠，是对传统专制权威的一种反叛甚至是颠覆。（出墙不宜，请勿模仿，颠覆只是理论在先，颠覆在现实中步履维艰。）
“ 所以，沉浸在你的幻想中吧，你只是一个女人，手中仅握墙中残转。
所以，沉浸在你的幻想中吧，就像你是主宰，在此砖，此墙前。”
这两句给我精神上的折磨是空前的，把墙理解自我与他者之间，中西两种文化之间，种族之间，男女之间的障碍也好，通道也好，都能说得通，但是手中握着一块板砖儿是怎么回事，周晓静这么理解，说：这是华裔女性们对被同化的恐惧及其抵制。那么，这块板砖儿是如何体现出来的，作为女性的防身武器？你感过来，我拍死你。作为传统女性贞节的象征？我要誓死捍卫这块儿板砖儿。我是无解了。怎么理解都很牵强。痛苦，有时难以言传。我很不喜欢这块儿板砖儿。
“野蛮人来了，有的蓄着红胡子，也有挽着高高的发髻
野蛮人来了，你的父辈，兄辈，师者，情人都在其中
显而易见，他们与你不同（他者）”
“红胡子”与“高发髻”两种意象，我读了很多遍也没有想到，周晓静的答案是：红胡子是老外，在这特指欧美的白种人，高发髻是中国传统男人的形象。陈爱玲扩大了野蛮人的外延，父辈，兄辈，师者，情人等，看来不仅仅是外国人，不仅仅是异质文化，你们男人啊，一个不拉，都是野蛮人啊。到这儿，终于给出了他者的概念，其实，广义的他者，应该是，除我之外，全部都是他者的范畴，包括，整个宇宙，时间，蓝天，大地，等等等等。在这儿，由于女权的需要，他者面向的仅仅是广大的男性。(男性威武。罗比尼奥威武。) 关于他者，我不再过多的阐释，我比较自私，还是喜欢谈自我。
上半部分结束。下半部分开始。
学习一下，华丽丽的分割线。
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“野蛮人来了，你叫我马，我就是马；你喊我牛，同样我也得愧疚。”
庄子必须得粉墨登场了。《庄子·天道》：“昔者，自呼我牛也，而谓之牛；呼我马也，而谓之马。”后来就有成语“呼牛呼马”或“呼牛作马”说的是毁誉由人，悉听自然。你想说就说吧，你想批评，想表扬，得，跟我没关系。庄子在缓解自我与他者的矛盾时，提出了“无为”。而且对于指称命名方面是这种态度，一种物质具体形态，你对他有偏见的话，那么你无论怎么给他命名你都还是对他有偏见，喊他爸爸也白搭。我们经常要借助声音这个符号来表达自己，来影响他人。我觉得聋哑人基本处于庄子所说的这种状态。话归正传，陈美玲视角的转换与音律节奏的改变，引出了道家的对待命名的矛盾观点揭露这个观点：他者的他者性往往会逃离任何命名，引人走入误区。也就是你长期喊我女人，我得遵守女人的各种道德理念，那些附加在我身上的不公与屈辱，无论怎么样都是卸载不掉的。你这不是胡扯吗？我们谈女权运动，我们谈一种理念会不知不觉的引领着我们的行动，像女权主义，不正在影响着我们的生活。你怎么解释啊，庄子？“事物的本原被正确的描述后，你不予承认反而加以斥责，庄子，你就是一个野蛮之王。”通过这种反击，陈爱玲转换了命名者与被命名者之间的主客体关系，解构了社会长期以来构筑的他者范畴，打破了自我与他者之间种族与文化的界限。
“马在疾驰，牛在狂奔。野蛮人来了。
他们是多么的欣喜若狂。
嗅到伟大的边界，他们趾高气扬。”
最后关于frontier（边界，边缘，边界地带）的解读，我很是无能为力。周晓静如是说，作为自我的他者-野蛮人这一意义分崩离析，那些一开始被认为是威胁的野蛮人变成了解构了后的边缘。野蛮人的身份如何界定提出了新的议题。“嗅到伟大的边界，他们趾高气扬。”暗示了野蛮人本身就是边界，边缘。也就是说，他者，就是边缘或者边界。与他者相遇就是冒险进入了一个不可知的领域。这份自我打破了种族与文化的界限。陈爱玲通过“野蛮人来了，你的父辈，兄辈，师者，情人都在其中”刻意模糊了这种界限，而且文中的卡瓦菲斯与庄子作为两种文化的代表互不从属。陈爱玲淡化文化身份的界定，是想表达什么观点？并且最后也没有回归女权的这个核心上。我的理解只能到这个份儿上。
全篇到此结束，我能嗅到女性主义的气息，只是最后的时刻，我的鼻子被无情的阉割。
抛开诗歌本身，就女性主义的话题讨论会变得非常有趣。在中国，女权主义只不过是个名词，李银河也说过，女权主义在中国被妖魔化了，变成两性之间的对立与厮打，真正的女权应该是促进两性的和谐，进而促进整个社会的和谐。其实，在我眼中的女权，就是“两个独立+一个家+一个精神”，物质独立，思想独立，一个家包括一个老公，N个孩子（N大于等于1），还有一种牺牲的精神。当然一家之言，广大女性完全可以对此挑衅。女权的实质就是在自我的追逐上，其实，男人何尝不是？谁不是在探求自我寻找自我，像乔治·克鲁尼在up in the air中，他的背包理论，是一种自我的表达吧，是一种自我的探求吧。再像into the wild中，克里斯是在拿着生命践行自我吧，最后终于踏上了不归路。自我与他者永远是一对矛盾，矛盾双方相互依赖相互依存，谁也离不开谁，绝对的自我便是走向不归路。婚姻中，你当然可以保持那份自我，但是也要做出一部分牺牲，prestige中他给了我们魔术的最高境界：Sacrifice is the most beautiful part of the magic.牺牲可以让一个华人街的华人老翁在人前人后用不同的方式走路，这是完全为魔术献身的行为，很少人能够做到。我觉得在自我追逐的途中，把握好度°是极其重要的，我比较喜欢那些银幕前星光熠熠但要隐退后就全心做好家庭主妇的女人们以及那些婚前风风火火婚后低调行事的女人们。我很不喜欢豆瓣中刻薄尖刻刀子嘴刀子心的女文艺青年们，你们，什么时候才能长大？
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In a 1995 interview with Bill Moyers, Marilyn Chin speaks of her poetic aspirations in terms of her sense of responsibility. “As a poet, a woman and a Chinese immigrant, I see myself as a frontier......And I feel that I'm a conduit for many voices, women's voices mostly." The frontier Chin explores is a racial, cultural and poetic one. It entails departures from established cultural and literary traditions, One of those departures includes reinventing a lyric I whose identity is at once individual and collective, Chinese and American. The self as a frontier in Chin's poetry is a border zone where crossings over racial, cultural and poetic boundaries inevitably result in encounters of otherness whose transformative impact is manifest in the hybridity of Chin's poetics-a mixing of elements from various poetic traditions across cultural and national boundaries, including an African American aesthetic, without erasing each's difference.
Chin articulates a compelling version of the self as a frontier where encounters with racial, cultural and poetic otherness take place. The form and content of this poem demonstrates the possibilities of creating a new lyric by combining and transforming elements from different cultural traditions. Chin incorporates and revises the modern Greek poet C.P.Cavafy's poem Waiting For The Barbarians and a passage from an ancient Chinese text of Daoism, Chuang Tzu, to express complex feelings about and different attitudes toward the other, Cavafy's poem is written in the form of a dramatized dialogue and linear narrative which lead to an epiphany at the end- the Barbarians are used by politicians as a diversion from the state's problems. In this poem, the Barbarians are a symbol for the outsider, a deceptive digression. Chin borrows Cavafy's dramatization of the coming of the barbarians to reveal a state of mind, but she changes both the meaning of the Barbarians and its function in her poem. Opening her poem with a description of the barbarian's approaching cavalry, Chin creates a sense of urgency, anxiety and crisis:
War chariots thunder, horses neigh, the barbarians are coming.
What are we waiting for, young nubile women pointing at the wall,
The barbarians are coming.
They have heard about a weakened link in the wall.
So, the barbarians have ears among us.
So deceive yourself with illusions: you are only one woman,
holding one broken brick in the wall.
So deceive yourself with illusions: as if you matter,
that brick and that wall.
The barbarians are coming: they have red beards or beardless
with a top knot.
The barbarians are coming: they are your fathers, brothers,
teachers, lovers; and they are clearly an other.
Instead of an eagerly expected presence as Cavafy's poem, the barbarians in Chin's poems are a Threat to racial and cultural purity. The image of the wall marking territorial boundaries evokes the Great Wall of China built to stop the invasion of Barbarians. As the poem unfolds, it becomes clear that it is an illusion that the barbarians can be kept out by the wall: “they are your fathers, brothers, teachers, lovers; and they are clearly an other. “The image of "one woman, holding one broken brick in the wall." dramatizes some Chinese immigrants' anxiety about and resistance to assimilation and their illusion that individuals can preserve ethnic purity. The fact that women's bodies and sexuality are regulated and policed to secure racial purity and to maintain boundaries of nation, race, class and culture renders the image of "young nubile women" at the wall facing the approaching barbarian cavalry particularly complex and forceful in confronting acculturation and interracial sexual relationship.
Chin's use of Asian women's body and sexuality as "contested sites of ideologies and identities is a salient example of the strategy of using sexuality to articulate the terms of citizenship and national belonging." In Asian immigrant writing, which Leslie Bow explores in depth. In her book Betrayal and Other Acts of Subversion: Feminism, Sexual Politics, Asian American Women's Literature. Bow examines the ways in which "feminine sexuality" operates as a marker of "ethnic or national betrayal, particularly as sexuality mediates between progress and tradition, modernity and the old world, the U.S. and Asia." Bow argues: “Asian American women writers not only mediate sexuality’s construction as a determiner of loyalty but manipulate that construction as a tool of political persuasion, reconceptualizing 'disloyalty' as resistance to repressive authority." Chin's assertion of interracial affiliations through sexual relationships across national and cultural boundaries, however, does not simply signify ethnic and racial "betrayal", nor resist racist and patriarchal repression only. Interracial sexual relationships in this and her other poems, also negotiate the implications and consequences of Asian immigrants' acculturation in an interview that she fears losing her Chinese language, "which would be like losing part of myself, losing part of my soul. But Assimilation must happen. There is no way I can force my children to speak Chinese. There is no way that the pure yellow seed, as my grandmother called it, will continue." Moreover, Chin notes, “Just as I think it's impossible to keep Chineseness pure, I think it's also impossible to keep whiteness pure. I think everything must merge and I'm willing to have it merge within me in my poetry.” Assimilation for Chin as shown in her poem does not mean erasure or oppression of otherness by the dominant culture; rather it suggests a mutually transformative encounter between self and other.
This encounter and its implications for white America are also part of the dramatization of anxiety and illusion in the poem, as implied in the difference among the Barbarians, who are both White(they have red beards) and Asian(beardless with a top knot),Chin enhances the double meaning of the illusion about keeping the barbarians OUT by appropriating and revising one passage from CHUANG TZU by the Daoist philosopher in the last half of the poem. In this passage Lao Tzu, the legendary founder of Daoism, is called ILL-BRED by a visitor who sees him being frugal with food, but Lao Tzu is indifferent to the name-calling, when asked why he remained indifferent, Lao Tzu said: “the titles of clever, wise, divine, holy are things that I have long ago cast aside, as a snake shed its skin. Yesterday if you had called me an ox, I should have accepted the name of ox; if you had called me a horse, I should have accepted the name of horse. Wherever there is a substance and people give it a name, it would do well to accept that name for it will in any case be subject to the prejudice that attaches to the name.” Chin incorporates the Daoist attitude towards naming and names in her poem, while shifting the subject position from those who fear the barbarians to that of the barbarians and their attitudes toward being named the abject other:
If you call me a horse, I must be a horse.
If you call me a bison, I am equally as guilty.
When a thing is true and is correctly described, one doubles
the blame by not admitting it: so, Chuangtzu, himself,
was a barbarian king!
Horse, horse, bison, bison, the barbarians are coming—
And how they love to come.
The smells of the great frontier exalt in them!
after cavafy.
With this shift of perspective accompanied by a change in rhythm and intonation, Chin introduces the Daoist paradoxical attitude toward naming to expose the fact that the otherness of the other will always escape any names as reductive and misleading, as Lao Tzu's remarks indicate, Hence to deny any naming or category as untrue to the thing described is to accept the belief that naming can define the essence of things, which is contrary to Daoism. Therefore Chin's barbarians I says defiantly:” If you call me a horse, I must be a horse. If you call me a bison, I am equally as guilty.” Chin enacts the Daosit attitude toward naming to suggest that the otherness of the other is beyond any namable categories. At the same time, she destabilizes socially constructed categories of the other, collapsing the racial and cultural boundaries between self and other by switching the subject positions between the namer and the named.
The meaning of the barbarians as the other of the self thus disrupted, those who must be walled out as a threat at the beginning of the poem become destabilized frontier in the end. It is worth nothing that by the end of the poem the identity of the barbarians has been called into question and with it, the meaning and location of the frontier. the last line, “The smells of the great frontier exalt in them! "seems to suggest that the barbarians themselves are a frontier, In other words, the other is a frontier; encounter with the other is a venture into the unknown. While the self as a frontier in Chin's poetry indicates the otherness of the lyric I, this self suggests transgression of racial and cultural boundaries- a transgression that is embodied textually by Chin's blurring of boundaries for defining barbarians （they are your fathers, brothers, teachers, lovers; and they are clearly an other.） and by her incorporation of both Cavafy and Chuang Tzu without subordinating one to the other.
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叙灵 转发了这篇日记 2022-10-18 18:22:02
