The Aporia of Reading　閱讀的困境

The Aporia of Reading

閱讀的困境

Joseph Hillis Miller

約瑟夫·希利斯·米勒

作者簡介

約瑟夫·希利斯·米勒（Joseph Hillis Miller，1928—），美國著名文學評論家，也是歐美文學及比較文學研究的杰出學者。他畢業(yè)于哈佛大學，曾任教于霍普金斯大學、耶魯大學，現(xiàn)為加州大學歐文分校的英語和比較文學教授。他的著作包括《理論今昔》（Theory Now and Then）、《閱讀的倫理》（The Ethics of Reading）等。米勒曾在中國發(fā)表演講，講稿匯編為《土著與數(shù)碼沖浪者——米勒中國演講集》（The Indigene and the Cybersurfer）。

本文節(jié)選自2002年出版的《文學死了嗎？》（On Literature）。在本文中，作者提出了兩種大相徑庭的閱讀方式，表示“去神秘化”可能使文學走向消亡。與此同時，米勒也承認文學具有神奇的魔力，讓人們前赴后繼、身陷其中。

The two ways of reading I am advocating, the innocent way and the demystified way, go counter to one another. Each prevents the other from working—hence the aporia of reading. Combining these two modes of reading in one act of reading is difficult, perhaps impossible, since each inhibits and forbids the other. How can you give yourself wholeheartedly to a literary work, let the work do its work, and at the same time distance yourself from it, regard it with suspicion, and take it apart to see what makes it tick? How can one read allegro and at the same time lento, combining the two tempos in an impossible dance of reading that is fast and slow at once?

Why, in any case, would anyone want to deprive literature of its amazing power to open alternative worlds, innumerable virtual realities? It seems like a nasty and destructive thing to do. This chapter you are now reading, alas, is an exemplification of this destructiveness. Even in its celebration of literature's magic, it suspends that magic by bringing it into the open.

Two motives may be identified for this effort of demystification. One is the way literary study, for the most part institutionalized in schools and universities, to a lesser degree in journalism, is part of the general penchant of our culture toward getting knowledge for its own sake. Western universities are dedicated to finding out the truth about everything, as in the motto of Harvard University: “Veritas.”This includes the truth about literature. In my own case, a vocation for literary study was a displacement of a vocation for science. I shifted from physics to literature in the middle of my undergraduate study. My motive was a quasi-scientific curiosity about what seemed to me at that point (and still does) the radical strangeness of literary works, their difference from one another and from ordinary everyday uses of language. What in the world, I asked myself, could have led Tennyson, presumably a sane man, to use language in such an exceedingly peculiar way? Why did he do that? What conceivable use did such language use have when it was written, or could it have today? I wanted, and still want, to account for literature in the same way as physicists want to account for anomalous “signals”coming from around a black hole or from a quasar. I am still trying, and still puzzled.

The other motive is apotropaic. This is a noble or ignoble motive, depending on how you look at it. People have a healthy fear of the power literary works have to instill what may be dangerous or unjust assumptions about race, gender, or class. Both cultural studies and rhetorical reading, the latter especially in its “deconstructive”mode, have this hygienic or defensive purpose. By the time a rhetorical reading, or a “slow reading,”has shown the mechanism by which literary magic works, that magic no longer works. It is seen as a kind of hocus-pocus. By the time a feminist reading of Paradise Lost has been performed, Milton's sexist assumptions (“Hee for God only, shee for God in him”) have been shown for what they are. The poem, however, has also lost its marvelous ability to present to the reader an imaginary Eden inhabited by two beautiful and eroticized people: “So hand in hand they passed, the loveliest pair / That ever since in loves embraces met.”The demystified reader may also have been reminded by the implacable critic that this Edenic vision is presented through the eyes of a resentful and envious witness, Satan. “O Hell!”says Satan, “what do mine eyes with grief behold!”

Milton's Satan might be called the prototypical demystifier, or suspicious reader, the critic as sceptic or disbeliever. Or the prototype of the modern critical reader might be Friedrich Nietzsche. Nietzsche was trained as a professor of ancient rhetoric. His The Genealogy of Morals, along with much other writing by him, is a work of cultural criticism before the fact. In a famous statement in On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense, Nietzsche defines truth, “veritas,”not as a statement or representation of things as they are, but as a tropological fabrication, in short, as literature. “Truth,”says Nietzsche, “is a mobile army of metaphors, metonymies, and anthropomorphisms.”

…

No doubt about it, these two forms of critical reading, rhetorical reading and cultural studies, have contributed to the death of literature.

我提倡兩種閱讀方式，一種是天真無邪的閱讀，一種是去神秘化的閱讀。兩者相互矛盾，一種方式阻止另一種方式發(fā)揮作用，閱讀的困境由此產(chǎn)生。要在一次閱讀中融合上述兩種閱讀方式，這很難做到，或許根本不可能做到，因為兩者相互限制、相互妨礙。你怎么可能既全身心投入一部文學作品，讓它發(fā)揮自己的作用，又和它保持距離，帶著懷疑的態(tài)度審視它，拆卸開來看它如何發(fā)揮作用？你怎么可能在閱讀中同時依照快慢兩種節(jié)奏，在閱讀之舞中同時踩著快慢兩種節(jié)拍？

文學能為我們打開異界之門，展現(xiàn)無數(shù)幻象。為什么會有人想剝奪這種神奇的力量？這看上去就是卑鄙的毀滅之舉。很遺憾，你現(xiàn)在所讀的這個章節(jié)，正是這種毀滅之舉的例證。本章既頌揚了文學的魔力，又通過公之于眾使其魔力盡失。

這種去神秘化的努力有兩個動機。第一個動機是文學研究。文學研究大部分在院校內(nèi)被體制化，少數(shù)在新聞報紙中被體制化。它是我們文化中的普遍信條，即為求知而求知。如哈佛大學的校訓“察驗真理”所言，西方大學致力于尋找一切事物的真理。這包含關(guān)于文學的真理。對我來說，對文學的研究取代了我對科學的探索。我本科讀到一半時將研究方向從物理轉(zhuǎn)向文學。我的動機是一種類似科學研究的好奇。我當時對文學作品本身、每部作品之間的區(qū)別、書面語和日常用語的區(qū)別懷著強烈的好奇，現(xiàn)在依然如此。我問自己，究竟是什么使得丁尼生，這樣一個看似理智的人，以如此奇特的方式運用語言？他為何那么做？那種語言在當時有什么可以料想的用途？現(xiàn)在又如何？我曾經(jīng)想，現(xiàn)在也想，像物理學家解釋黑洞或類星體發(fā)出的不規(guī)則“信號”1那樣解釋文學作品。我現(xiàn)在仍在努力，仍在困惑。

另一個動機是驅(qū)邪。這種動機是高尚還是卑劣，要看你如何判斷。人們對文學的力量有一種有益的恐懼，害怕文學會向我們灌輸關(guān)于種族、性別或階級的危險假設(shè)或偏頗觀念。文化研究和修辭閱讀，特別是后者的“解構(gòu)”模式，就擁有這種保健或防衛(wèi)的目的。當修辭性的閱讀或曰“慢讀”揭示了文學發(fā)揮魔力的機制之后，這種魔力就消失無蹤了。它看上去就像是一種戲法。當對《失樂園》進行女性主義解讀之后，彌爾頓性別歧視的假設(shè)就顯露無遺，比如“他只為上帝，她則為他心中的上帝”這句。然而，這首詩也失去了魔力，無從展現(xiàn)那對美妙伉儷棲息的虛構(gòu)的伊甸園?！八麄兪譅渴?走過，那對愛侶/自從相遇擁抱之后?！辈灰啦火埖呐u家會提醒“去神秘化”的讀者，這幅景象是撒旦——那個又妒又恨的目擊者——眼中的伊甸園。撒旦說：“見鬼！我悲愴的眼中看到了什么！”

彌爾頓筆下的撒旦，可以稱為去神秘化的原型。心存懷疑的讀者和評論家都屬于這一類?；蛘哒f，弗里德里?！つ岵梢苍S是現(xiàn)代批判型讀者的原型。尼采接受過古典修辭學的專業(yè)訓練。他的《論道德的譜系》和其他一些著作，都是“文化批評”一詞出現(xiàn)前的文化批評?！冻赖乱饬x上的真理和謊言》記載了尼采對“真理”界定的著名論點——不是對事物原本形態(tài)的陳述或展現(xiàn)，而是比喻的造物，簡而言之即文學。尼采說：“真理是一支由隱喻、轉(zhuǎn)喻、擬人組成的移動軍隊?！?

……

上述兩種批判性閱讀方式——修辭閱讀與文化研究，無疑對文學的滅亡起到了推波助瀾的作用。

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1．黑洞是一種引力極強的天體，連光也不能逃脫它的引力。類星體是一種光譜像行星狀星云但又不是星云的天體，它們會向宇宙發(fā)出脈沖信號，這種信號被科學家稱為“來自外星的信號”。

2．“亞當與夏娃手牽手”是《失樂園》一再出現(xiàn)的主題，牽手代表兩人成為一體。