Author: Cloud in Qingtian reposted from: Tianya Virtual Community
Fredric Jameson, a famous American cultural critic, said: The texts of the Third World, even those that seem to be about individuals and Bidone's attraction, always project a kind of politics in the form of national fables: the stories about personal destiny contain fables about the mass culture and social influence of the Third World.
Mr. Shen Congwen's Border Town is such a classic text about the "national fable" of Miao nationality in western Hunan.
By using the methods of physical symbols and psychological analysis, we can see the deep cultural metaphor in Border Town, and find Mr. Shen Congwen's totem of thinking in images about Miao culture in western Hunan, as well as his thoughts and worries about Miao/Han and cultural conflicts between China and the West.
( 1)
Cui Cui is the goddess of Xiangxi Miao culture in Shen Congwen's mind and the "essence" of Xiangxi Miao culture seen by Shen Congwen from the perspective of "the other" (the west).
"Cui Cui grew up in a windy day, with dark skin and clear eyes like crystal. Nature has nurtured her and educated her. She is innocent and lively, just like a small animal that can be seen everywhere. People are so good, like the yellow deer on the mountain, never consider cruelty, never worry, never get angry. Usually when a stranger pays attention to her on the ferry, she looks at the stranger with bare eyes and makes it look like she can escape into the mountains at any time, but after understanding the inorganic heart of people, she plays leisurely by the water. "
This image can be said to be "beautiful, healthy and natural". However, this image also contains a deep hidden pain: "Like a yellow deer, it can escape into the deep mountains at any time", which means that Miao ancestors migrated from the Central Plains to Dongting Lake and retreated back to the deep mountains in western Hunan under the oppression of the Han nationality. The deep mountain is their last refuge, a free world and their "home".
The image is based on the girl in Luxi wool shop, the rural woman in Laoshan, Qingdao and the bride Mrs. Shen around her. The love story in Border Town discusses cultural issues, and sexual discourse and cultural discourse are intertwined. The image of Cui Cui embodies Shen Congwen's cultural Oedipus complex, and engraves Shen Congwen's endless grief and attachment to Miao culture in western Hunan.
Cui Cui's life experience is a tragedy. Cui Cui's father is a soldier in Tunpu green camp. Strictly speaking, it is a kind of heterogeneity of Miao culture. Cui Cui itself is the product of the fusion of Han culture (paternal culture) and Miao culture (matrilineal culture). From the love tragedy of Cui Cui's parents, we can see the unequal relationship between Han culture and Miao culture, and the historical conflict and tragedy of this power relationship in the relationship between Miao and Han (such as Ganjiamiao Uprising).
Cui Cui, a homeless orphan, is undoubtedly a symbol of Miao culture in western Hunan.
In a miracle, the orphan actually grew up and was thirteen years old in the blink of an eye.
Grandpa, a well-read and weather-beaten old man, is a symbol of the ancient history of Miao nationality. Grandpa and Cui Cui is a description of a Miao nationality with an ancient nation and a young culture. Grandpa witnessed the tragedy of Cui Cui's parents. "I don't complain in my mouth, but I can't fully agree with this unfortunate arrangement in my heart." He never thought about the significance of his position to himself, but lived there quietly and faithfully. "Cui Cui is a big shot, he has to give Cui Cui to a person, and his career is over! To whom? What kind of person must not wronged her? " An elderly grandfather is Cui Cui's only support. If Grandpa Dies, can Cui Cui, an orphan of history, join the new historical footsteps?
The yellow dog has something to do with the worship of Miao people's Pan Hu and the ancestor myth of the dog, and it is also related to parents' sending Nuo. In the tenth section of Border Town, parents rowed a dragon boat and capsized into the water. Cui Cui scolded the yellow dog and said, "Come on, pretend to be crazy and sell silly. Who wants you to fall into the water if you don't capsize?" In the third chapter of Feng Zikai, the gentleman named his dog "Nuosong"-"The gentleman took the letter and said to the older dog,' Nuosong, open the door.' "
The symbol of the traditional values of Baita Miao people, such as simple customs, emphasizing righteousness over profit, is what Shen Congwen called "integrity, simplicity and beauty of human nature".
The square-headed ferry is very distinctive: a bamboo pole is erected on the boat, an iron ring is hung on it, and a section of waste cable is pulled on both sides. When someone crosses the border, he hangs the iron ring on the waste cable and leads the boat to transition back and forth. This is a closed and monotonous image, a state of existence (linear time, unitary history) that has nothing to do with the river, and a metaphor for the ancient lifestyle of the Miao people.
"Fengtan and rosewood are not fierce, and there are chicken cages around them; It's easy to get down around the henhouse, and the waves on Qinglang Beach are as big as houses. Grandpa, can you get off Fengtan, Zitan and Qinglang Beach by ferry? "
Cui Cui hummed the wizard's Song of Meeting God in December, and invited Zhang, Guan Fuzi, Weichi Gong, Hong Xiuquan and Li Hongzhang to "walk in the clouds". "What happened to the table today!" -This is a primitive sense of time. Here, all time periods: past, present and future are displayed in time. Time description based on ancestor worship and prototype regression is constantly reborn through myths and ceremonies during festivals.
People in border towns use periodic festivals such as Dragon Boat Festival, Mid-Autumn Festival and Spring Festival to record time. The changes in the Han Dynasty had little influence on them. The western calendar (AD) has not yet entered the border town. In the eyes of westerners, Border Town is outside the history of the world.
On this day and night river, Cui Cui's family guarded the ferry and lived a very poor life day after day. The White Pagoda guards the ferry, the Cui Cui family, and Cui Cui's dream (Cui Cui sleeps in the White Pagoda in the afternoon, and the dream is floated by the singing of mountain birds).
(2)
Cui Cui is old, so she thinks more and dreams more-seeing Miss Wang, the head of the delegation, has a twisted silver bracelet, which makes her feel envious and crazy. "White chickens are released by tigers to bite people, but they don't bite others. The young lady in the group is the first ... My elder sister is wearing a pair of gold hair clips, and my second sister is wearing a pair of silver hair clips. Only my third sister has nothing to wear. She wears a bean sprout all year round. " Cui Cui knows herself through the differences with other girls, which is the inevitable way for her to form her "self".
When the boatman proposed to Cui Cui, Cui Cui thought a lot: "The story of the tiger biting, four folk songs when swearing, the square pit in the paper mill, the iron juice oozing from the melting furnace in the iron works …".
The Story of Tiger Biting is related to Miss Wang, the general manager of the Alliance. Miss Wang and her parents got married by grinding the house, which weighed heavily on Cui Cui's heart. "The white chicken will bite when it is locked out by the tiger, but it won't bite others." This is Cui Cui's illusory transcendence of "grinding a house to get married".
"Four folk songs are sung casually by children watching cattle, chopping wood and cutting pig grass"-Cui Cui was still in his childhood.
"Square pit" is related to sex (concave object) and death (grandpa's grave is "square well"). In a sense, the rebirth and adulthood of Cui Cui (Miao culture) is the death of Grandpa (Miao ancient history).
Iron Juice is a mature girl's sexual awakening-Cui Cui is on the edge of a young girl and a young woman.
Cui Cui's age-a girl of fifteen or sixteen-is very important. This "essence" (girl) of Miao culture in western Hunan is regarded as "the other" by Shen Congwen from the western perspective; In other words, Xiangxi Miao culture has been "girlish" here. In Takeuchi's words, for non-western nations, "modernity" first means a state in which their subjectivity is deprived.
The relationship between Cui Cui and the second child is Hegelian binary opposition between subject and object: Cui Cui is a girl, a spectator and an audience, and the second child is always a man, a spectator (the second child always praises Cui Cui for her good looks) and a speaker (matchmaking singing). Only when Cui Cui is awakened and affirmed by men (Han nationality and the West) can he grow up from a girl and have the "subjectivity" that only adults have. The happiness of Cui Cui's love is not only Cui Cui's personal rite of passage, but also the modern transformation of Miao culture in Xiangxi. Here, Cui Cui's personal development and growth process is synchronized with historical development. It is the mode of bildungsroman to show the self-transformation of the nation through personal experience. Of course, at the end of Border Town, Cui Cui's growth is not finished.
The boss always falls in love with Cui Cui at the same time, which is a historical conflict between the two cultural concepts on the ownership of the Miao cultural goddess in western Hunan. The images of the eldest, the second and the eldest, as well as their different "views" and "statements" about Cui Cui, should be interpreted according to the "national discourse code".
(3)
The old man is like his father-the boat is always smooth.
Shen Congwen said that Shunshun's prototype was the eldest son's fourth uncle (1926.438+0 1). An important plot in The Past is that Shen Congwen and his eldest brother are sitting in a laundry basket, and the fourth uncle of the eldest son carries them from the city to the countryside. The past relationships are as follows: the eldest son, the fourth uncle, the eldest brother and the second brother, Shen Congwen; The relationship between the characters in Border Town is: Shun Shun-Da Tianbao-Raú rno. In Border Town, the metaphor of "the eldest child is old" has come to the fore. However, in my opinion, Shun Shun is a metaphor of Chen Quzhen, the king of Xiangxi.
The ship is always smooth. He is "a figure who lived in a camp in the Qing Dynasty and became a captain in the famous Army Bid 49 during the revolutionary period". He was only fifty years old when he replaced the dock clerk.
"King of Xiangxi" Chen Quzhen (1882~ 1952), a native of Fenghuang, was appointed as the 49th team officer of the Army in 1906, and was 38 years old when 1920 succeeded Tian Ying, the garrison in Xiangxi. In the eyes of the military and political personnel in western Hunan at that time, he was a "father" image. Shen Congwen expressed his admiration for Chen Quzhen in many works such as Autobiography of Congwen and Xiangxi. A passage in "Long River Inscription" is applicable to both Chen Quzhen and Shun Shun: "The local people who have been working for a long time this year are exhausted, and their emotions are almost frozen, so it is inevitable to be conservative. Only in this way, there are still some beautiful and noble rulers. "
The image of "elder" is a metaphor for the soldiers of the same age as Shen Congwen in Xiangxi regime of Chen Quzhen. In a sense, Shen Congwen's eldest brother Shen Yunlu, cousin Huang Yushu, cousin Shen, friends, and young officers in Xiangxi Gu and Dai are all prototypes of "elders".
The old man seems to be smooth. He said, "Cui Cui is so charming. I'm afraid she is only suitable for listening to the songs of tea cave people and can't do all the serious things of a tea cave woman as a daughter-in-law. " I want a lover who can listen to my singing, but I can't lack a wife who does housework. For the life after marrying Cui Cui, the boss always imagines: "If things are finished, I will take the old-fashioned hand-pulled ferry. I like this thing. I also want to buy two hills in Bixizui, plant southern bamboo on the boundary, and enclose this stream as my dam! "
Aird's idea is easily associated with Chen Quzhen 1923' s Autonomy in Western Hunan. From 65438 to 0920, after Chen Quzhen was appointed as the commander of Xiangxi patrol, Xiangxi was unified through army consolidation, martial arts and suppression. He put forward the slogan of "saving the country by environmental protection" and built Xiangxi behind closed doors in this independent kingdom. Chen Quzhen has established education and teacher training workshops, joint demonstration middle schools, intermediate girls' schools and vocational girls' schools, as well as various factories, industries and forest farms, and established Xiangxi Rural Bank and Xiangxi Rural Research Institute. Chen Quzhen's "Xiangxi autonomy" is an important page for Xiangxi to move towards modern times. Of course, Chen has a conservative side. According to the characteristics that many natural villages in western Hunan are families with the same surname, he imitated the ancient tribal system to rule: the same family formed Dabao or Lianbao; Below it are a number of natural villages with the same surname, which is equivalent to a big family. Below the big family is the so-called "ten households and one joint" small family; Several tribes form an administrative township together, and the head of the township is directly appointed and removed by Chen Quzhen. In this way, layers of nets were set up, and finally Chen was in charge. Therefore, some people compare Chen to "Xiangxi Tusi". Xiangxi people are also called "China Cossacks".
The old man asked Baoshan to propose to Cui Cui, but there was no result. Knowing that singing was not an old enemy, he gave up on himself and left the cave. It seems accidental that the old man drowned on the beach. Later, my parents said, "That old guy (by, referring to grandpa) is crooked and clumsy, and always beats him to death." This sentence is worth pondering. Grandpa is a metaphor of the ancient history of Miao nationality, and the death of elders implies some inevitability.
Long River Inscription says: "1In the winter of 934, I went back to Xiangxi on business from Beiping and took a boat from Shui Yuan to my hometown Fenghuang County. I have been to my hometown for eighteen years. Once I entered the Chen Valley, everything was different. On the surface, everything has naturally made great progress. If you try to pay close attention, you will see the tendency of degeneration in the process of change. The most obvious thing is that the integrity, simplicity and beauty of human feelings in rural society are almost disappearing, replaced by the vulgar outlook on life successfully cultivated in the actual society in the past two decades. ..... The word "modern" has spread to Xiangxi ... At that time, I thought the only hope was that a few young officers in their prime could cultivate some noble ideals in their simple minds. However, in their environment, it seems that nothing can be done. We must cope with tomorrow's difficulties, and everyone can see clearly, but there is no way to prepare personnel in advance. So, I wrote a novel named Border Town and a travel note named Hunan Travel Notes, in which soldiers appeared. In the inscription of Border Town, a question has been raised, that is, comparing the past and the present, where the so-called disappearance and reconstruction of national morality may begin.
Shen Congwen's return to Xiangxi this time was the time to write Border Town. The ancient tradition of Xiangxi has almost disappeared under the impact of "modernity"; Shen Congwen's disappointment with the only promising young officer; Shen Congwen's thinking on the question "Where does the disappearance and reconstruction of national morality begin" is the fundamental motivation for Shen Congwen to write Border Town. The contents of these three aspects are shown by the images of Cui Cui, Lao Dai and Erlaosan.
The inscription in Border Town says: "My grandfather, father and brother are all in the army. Those who die will die in their posts, and those who don't die will inevitably die in their posts. " "Skills" says ... because of such a bizarre tradition, the way out for all young people is inevitably pinned on officers. All the talents and excellent endowments are summarized and absorbed in this huge and simple organization, and are consumed one by one in the organization. This organization is introspective at home, but if it is completely isolated or free, it will have no belonging and no return. ..... Chen Quzhen, who took Tian Yingxin's hand, had a new mind and little ambition. In fact, psychologically, "isolating the regime to protect itself" prevailed. ..... This naturally has a problem, that is, the internal progress is stagnant, and it is impossible to make any other improved design that meets the strength. ..... He is self-disciplined and eager to learn. He can read old and new books to a certain extent, but he does not encourage his subordinates to learn. Therefore, with more officials and fewer people, it is inevitable that we can't cope with change. Externally, it has been isolated, misunderstood and taboo, and it is getting stronger and stronger, isolated by various organizations. The greater its strength, the greater its difficulties. ..... I remembered two centuries after growing up in that small mountain city. ..... In the social changes, the life and death of young people in my hometown and other places, because innocent blood is flowing on every land, how those blood and tears increase the difficulty of moving forward tomorrow. What I think of is the emotion, desire and motivation of the younger generation formed in the development of this social background, which lacks the guidance and induction of truly great thinkers. Many people are full of energy and often don't know how to play effectively. Therefore, they will inevitably fall into a tragic fate that is almost periodic. "
In a sense, even if the "old man" does not die in the torrent, he will certainly die in various civil wars and vendettas (such as Shen, Shen's cousin, Man Shuyuan's brother, etc.). ), or destroyed by time and opium (such as "friend who loves his nose" and "his wife" Zhao, etc. ). Tragedy is doomed.
Shen Congwen keenly saw the tragic fate of the "elders", and he didn't want them to get green. In Shen Congwen's view, it is impossible for his father to "subjectivize" Cui Cui and modernize Xiangxi, so he died in the torrent. This is Shen Congwen's profound cultural criticism ("national character" criticism) on the elders in Xiangxi represented by Chen Quzhen from the western perspective.
Shen Congwen's works with soldiers, sailors and peasants in western Hunan as themes, such as Hui Ming, Bai Zi, company commander, legend is not strange, consultant, Zhang Daxiang, Gui Sheng, legendary skills, friends who cherish their noses and love their wives, etc.
(4)
The image of parents is Shen Congwen's own metaphor.
In many of his autobiographical works, Shen Congwen appeared in the name of "Second Brother". There are similarities between Shen Congwen and Raul in many aspects: "My tolerance is less influenced by my father and more influenced by my mother". "Temperament close to the mother with white face and black hair. She doesn't like to talk, but her eyebrows are very conspicuous. At first glance, she is very smart and emotional. " Both of them have the temperament of poets and are good at singing love songs (writing love letters). In Border Town, Raul proposed to sing instead of the elder, and Shen Congwen once wrote love letters instead of his cousin topaz in Changde.
Shen Congwen analyzed the difference between himself and his "elders" in this way: "... due to an accidental opportunity, a few people are outside the vicious circle of * * (according to which" * * * goes with the flow "and" vicious circle "refers to the tragic fate of Chen Quzhen and other soldiers in western Hunan) ... I and this young woodcut artist (according to which, Huang Yongyu) can just represent one.
So, are parents better off than their elders? Can parents make Cui Cui grow up? Raul and Cui Cui love each other, however, the young woman of Wang Tuan's family has a mill to marry him and stands between Raul and Cui Cui. In the multi-power relationship among Miao culture, Han culture and western culture, the image of "grinding a house to get married" has multi-layer cultural meaning, and we will analyze it from three aspects.
1) Mill Bookstore-Miss Wang
The matter of "grinding a house and marrying him" is a heterogeneous cultural tradition of Miao nationality in Xiangxi represented by Cui Cui. "Cui Cui thinks; "It's strange to marry this house," "In some people's eyes," a brand-new mill is better than a house for ten years. "The promised mill can receive seven liters of rice and three barrels of chaff every day. This heterogeneous, pragmatic and mercenary value concept, which is contrary to the traditional simple folk customs of attaching importance to righteousness and neglecting profit, has entered the border town irresistibly and quietly, changing people's way of life. "The word' modern' has reached Xiangxi", and this "great potential energy from the outside" will destroy the foundation of the traditional way of life with unprecedented depth and breadth, and the ancient traditional world in Xiangxi will collapse.
As Marx said:
"Because of the rapid improvement of all means of production and the extremely convenient transportation, the bourgeoisie has pulled all ethnic groups, even the most savage ethnic groups, into civilization. Its commodity price is low, and it is a heavy artillery used to destroy all the Great Wall of Wan Li and conquer the most tenacious xenophobia of barbarians. It forces all ethnic groups-if they don't want to perish-to adopt the bourgeois mode of production; It forces them to carry out the so-called civilized system in their own places, that is, to become the bourgeoisie. In short, it created a world for itself according to its own appearance.
The bourgeoisie subjugated the countryside to the rule of the city. It has created a huge city, and compared with the rural population, the urban population has greatly increased, thus making a large part of the residents get rid of their ignorance of rural life. Just as it makes the countryside subordinate to the city, it makes the uncivilized and semi-civilized country subordinate to the civilized country, the peasant nation subordinate to the bourgeois nation, and the East subordinate to the West. "
"Cui Cui's heart is a mess ... Grandpa is seventy years old this year, and Song ... three years and six months-who sent the white duck? ..... Good luck to the mill, whose mill is luckier? ……'"
"Cui Cui feel like something is missing. It seems that the day is about to pass, and I want to climb up in a new personnel, but I can't. It seems that life is too ordinary to bear. "
So, Cui Cui imagined running away-
"I want to go down to Taoyuan County by boat and cross Dongting Lake, so that my grandfather can call me all over the city and light lanterns and torches to find me."
"Running away" is a very cultural image, very "modern". Because of the impact of western modernity, the feeling of "at home" (homogeneous state) has been broken, the traditional harmonious world is no longer complete, and the home has become a ruin. So I want to escape-to find a spiritual home.
Where's grandpa? "What should I do? Take the knife, put it in the bag and kill her by boat! "
Cui Cui was scared and shouted, "Grandpa, grandpa, pull the boat back!" " "I want you!
Cui Cui needs grandpa and tradition. She can't cut history.
Cui Cui "sat on the cliff and felt very sad."
The image of "cliff" accurately reveals Cui Cui's predicament on the brink of abyss: when she wakes up, there is no way to go-this is the common fate of all non-western nations and cultures facing the impact of western modernity.
If Cui Cui really ran away, what happened after Cui Cui left? -"Or there are really only two ways: fall or come back" (Lu Xun's language). Shen Congwen's novels about girls or young women in western Hunan, such as A Woman, Sasha Vujacic, Sansan, Qiaoxiu and Dongsheng, Husband and Xiaozhai, can be regarded as "Cui Cui Series". In these novels, we can see Cui Cui's "running away" and their desperate struggle between "falling" and "coming back".
2) Parents-Mill-Miss Wang
The mill is a closed circular image, which transforms the linear flow of water into the periodic cycle of the stone mill and can be regarded as a symbol of Chinese culture (Shen Congwen's paternal culture).
Wang Tuan's family married the boatman in the way of "grinding the family to marry him", which is easily reminiscent of the complicated in-laws of Tian (apricot tree), Shen (Hongfu) and Xiong (Xiling) in modern Xiangxi. According to the autobiography of a woman, when Shen Congwen was in Yuanzhou in 192 1, he had four squire daughters to choose from, one of which was Shen's menstruation cousin Xiong Jiesan (Xiong Xiling's seventh brother). "Those four girls are all decent, much better than the other one (damn, referring to the beloved Ma girl), and they all dare not expect it." "If fate doesn't give me some torture and allows me to send away the years, I think I should be a little gentleman in that place at this time. My wife must be the daughter of a businessman with some property. I must have been a two-term governor, I must be the father of more than four children, and I must have learned to smoke opium. According to the situation, my life should be developed according to this formula. " "A strange fate is about to snatch me from this vulgar life and relocate me to various changes since then, so I said to my relatives at that time,' That's no good, I won't be your son-in-law, nor will I be the son-in-law of the shopkeeper. I have a plan, and I must follow my own plan. "
The lifestyle predicted by "grinding a house to get married" is a "vulgar life" developed by "one formula", which is very incompatible with Shen Congwen's very strong enthusiasm and fantasy from the ancient Miao culture and his unstable development personality. In Shen Congwen's own words, "I don't need what you call' society'. I hate ordinary standards, especially the stupid homesickness set by some thinkers to distort and erode human nature. " Parents' resistance to "grinding the house and marrying him" can be regarded as Shen Congwen's resistance to the cultural hegemony of the Han nationality.
3) Parents-Mill-Ferry
"I don't know whether I should get a mill or a ferry. I may only have a ferry in my life! "
Here, "Ferry" is a symbol of the particularity of Miao culture, and "Mill" is a symbol of "great potential energy from outside"-the universality of Chinese culture and western culture.
Choosing a ferry means defending the tradition and particularity of Miao culture. However, the parents "remember their brother's death". Perhaps, in the eyes of parents, Cui Cui, like Saxifraga, symbolizes love. Good things are often poisonous?
Choosing the mill is to recognize the universality of Chinese culture and western culture and give up its own particularity. In this way, Cui Cui, an orphan of history, will be abandoned by history forever, and Shen Congwen himself will lose his place to live.
Shen Congwen, an old man, is in a dilemma: "Should I stay here and enjoy absurd enthusiasm and let the son of God dominate my life, or should I take her away and take her to this world distorted by wealth, power, city etiquette, morality, ready-made clothes and hairdressers to abuse the body and soul of this semi-primitive creature?"
In the eyes of parents, Cui Cui, Baita and Ferry are inseparable. To get Cui Cui, we must inherit the ancient ferry handed down by grandpa. In other words, the only way and result of falling in love with Cui Cui is to inherit the ferry. Without the White Pagoda and the ferry, Cui Cui is not Cui Cui; The urban civilization, which is completely different from the Miao culture in Xiangxi represented by Cui Cui, will devour this "semi-primitive biological body and soul".
Shen Congwen's predicament is caused by western power and cultural logic. In the process of globalization of its own culture, the West has gained self-knowledge through "seeking differences". The west always establishes the universality of western culture by describing non-western culture as something special. With the globalization of western culture, "seeking differences" has become the basic way for all non-western nations to know the world and themselves. Shen Congwen's understanding of Xiangxi Miao cultural tradition (essence) can only be realized by "looking for the other", looking at his own culture from the perspective of the other, and looking at his own particularity from the perspective of the other-in fact, from the perspective of the West. Without the west as the carrier of universality, it is impossible to find its own particularity (essence) in its own field. In the binary opposition of Hegel's universality and particularity, the more we emphasize the particularity of non-western culture, the more we strengthen the universality of western culture, and resisting universality with particularity can only aggravate the problem.
Shen Congwen has a pertinent analysis of himself: "I still haven't freed myself from another local limitation, which is incompatible with the uncertain atmosphere of the times." That is, the result will inevitably be like the fate of other fellow villagers, and sooner or later it will be frozen on another battlefield and accept the same tragic ending. "
"Another local limitation" can be understood as Shen Congwen's position of cultural relativism, emphasizing the value and particularity of Miao culture itself and resisting the cultural hegemony of Han nationality and the West. "Uncertain climate of the times" refers to various cultural universalism thoughts that transcend and attack each other in China, which is eager to develop modernity and build a modern nation-state.
In the existing power order, resisting western cultural universalism with cultural relativism (Miao culture standard) may be doomed to failure, which is the "same tragic ending" of Shen Congwen's "being in another battlefield".
Parents "were forced to accept the mill by their families, which meant they were still on the ferry, so they got off the boat angrily" and left. Knowing that singing was not an old rival, the elder gave up and left the cave.
"Xiangxi Ming" said: "So far, Xiangxi is relatively backward in production, construction, education and culture. Generally speaking, it is really a wrong old saying to think that the land is barren and the people are poor. The older generation can use it to make fun, and young people should never use it to shirk their responsibilities. Young people under the age of 20 must understand that this is the result of Xiangxi people's anger and self-abandonment! Anger and self-abandonment are two different things, the former is due to the tough nature of the mountain people, and the latter is due to the habit of lack of knowledge; These two weaknesses are combined into one, resulting in a very stubborn rejection of others. ..... grief and self-abandonment make Xiangxi known as Miao Man Bandit Area ". Parents and elders seem to have "negative attitude and self-abandonment" respectively. Here, "negativity" means defending tradition and resisting the hegemony of the Han nationality and the West; "Desperate" is due to lack of knowledge ("Western learning", of course). The statement that "resentment and self-abandonment make Xiangxi known as the Miao-barbarian bandit area" is similar to Li Zehou's theory that "saving the nation over enlightenment". In fact, saving the country and enlightenment are unified and related to the power of the West. As the West took the lead in the industrial revolution and entered the modern era, non-Western nations were forced to develop modernity and establish a modern nation-state. For non-western nations, enlightenment itself is a national salvation activity, the purpose of national salvation is enlightenment, and their common goal is to establish a modern nation-state. This is reflected in Shen Congwen. In Shen Congwen's works in Xiangxi, he adopted the dual discourse of enlightenment and national salvation. Whether it is a romantic exploration of the Miao cultural tradition in western Hunan or a cynicism about the national character of fellow villagers in western Hunan, there is only one purpose, that is, to make western Hunan no longer "known as the Miao bandit area".
(5)
On a thunderstorm night, the ancient ferry was washed away by the flood, the white pagoda related to geomantic omen in the border town collapsed, and the worried grandfather died, interrupting the ancient history of the Miao nationality.
Grandpa was buried behind the leaning white tower.
Yang sang for his mother when he was young. He took over the heavy responsibility of singing from his grandfather and arranged everything for him. "I want a grandpa like, you also like people to receive the ferry! I can't do what we want. Although I am old, I can still fight them with a sickle. "
The words "we" and "they" are intriguing. People in Border Town know themselves through the differences and opposites between "us" and "them", and strive to maintain the identity of their own culture and resist the impact of different cultures. This is a typical "seeking difference" method and a way for the West to know itself and the world. Because of the strength of the West, it has also become a way for non-Westerners to know themselves and the world. When we see non-Western resistance to the West, we have to use Western logic (Hegel's binary opposition). This kind of resistance can only mean recognizing and strengthening the western power and cultural logic, but the problem is that we have to use it! This is the meaning of "fate".
Does Cui Cui know who her opponent is? Do people in the border town understand the significance of this tragedy?
The White Pagoda has been repaired again (this is Shen Congwen's dream-urging to restore the past).
References:
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