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保罗·德曼

维基百科,自由的百科全书

保罗·德曼Paul de Man,1919年12月6日—1983年12月21日)是比利时解构主义文学批评家文学理论家

生平

他于1950年代后期获得博士学位,然后曾于康乃尔大学哈佛大学约翰·霍普金斯大学苏黎世大学任教,亦曾于耶鲁大学法语及比较文学系任教,部分解构主义耶鲁学派的思想正是在该处建立的。德曼于患癌症病逝后获颁耶鲁大学人文学科的斯特林教席。然而,人们发现了二百多篇他在第二次世界大战时为敌方报章所写的文章,其中一份报章更带有鲜明的反犹太人主义色彩,此发现令人重新审视他的生平及作品。

德曼亦是佳亚特里·斯皮瓦克及芭芭拉·约翰逊(Barbara Johnson)的论文导师。

战时文章与反犹太著作

德曼死后,他在第二次世界大战期间为一份比利时通敌报纸所写的二百份文章被人们发现。曾有人就此咨询过德里达。

在一篇题为“Jews in Contemporary Literature”的文章中,德曼考察了“[v]ulgar anti-semitism willingly takes pleasure in considering post-war cultural phenomenon (after the war of 14-18) as degenerate and decadent because they are [enjewished].” 他注意到:“Literature does not escape this lapidary judgement: it is sufficient to discover a few Jewish writers under Latinized pseudonyms for all contemporary production to be considered polluted and evil. This conception entails rather dangerous consequences... it would be a rather unflattering appreciation of western writers to reduce them to being mere imitators of a Jewish culture which is foreign to them”。这份文章宣称,现代文学并没有因为第一次世界大战而从传统中断裂,而且“the Jews cannot claim to have been its creators, nor even to have exercised a preponderant influence over its development. On any closer examination, this influence appears to have extraordinarily little importance since one might have expected that, given the specific characteristics of the Jewish Spirit, the later would have played a more brilliant role in this artistic production”。文章总结道:“our civilization... [b]y keeping, in spite of semitic interference in all aspects of European life, an intact originality and character... has shown that its basic character is healthy”。文章的结论是作为“a solution to the Jewish problem”(这可能指的是马达加斯加计划(英文:Madagascar Plan),而非在这个时期还未被广泛了解的希特勒最终解决方案(英文:Final_solution))的“the creation of a Jewish colony isolated from Europe”并不会给“the literary life of the west”带来任何“deplorable consequences”。

虽然还有两三篇文章对放逐犹太人以及剥夺犹太人选举权持有毫无异议的接受态度,但这是德曼如此明确宣称这种观点的唯一一篇文章。在德曼发表这篇文章时,1941年3月,比利时通过了反犹法案,将犹太人排除在法律、教育、政府服务、新闻职业之外。1942年8月4日,第一列载有比利时犹太人的火车离开梅赫伦驶向奥斯维辛。战时,德曼继续为纳粹控制的报纸Le Soir写作,直到1942年11月。当时他并不太可能知道犹太人在奥斯维辛的情况。随后,一些事实被曝光,使得反犹太断言可疑:“...in 1942 or 1943, about a year after the journalistic publication of his compromising statement, he and his wife sheltered for several days in their apartment the Jewish pianist Esther Sluszny and her husband, who were then illegal citizens in hiding from the Nazis. During this same period, de Man was meeting regularly with Georges Goriely, a member of the Belgian Resistance. According to Goriely's own testimony, he never for one minute feared denunciation of his underground activities by Paul de Man.”(译:1942或1943年间,在德曼发表他的妥协声明后的大约一年后,他和妻子让犹太钢琴家Esther Sluszny及其丈夫在他们的公寓中隐藏多日。Esther Sluszny及其丈夫当时是非法居民,正在逃避纳粹追捕。与此同时,德曼还经常与比利时抵抗组织成员Georges Goriely会面。根据Goriely的证词,他从没有任何一刻会担心德曼告发他的地下活动)。许多评论者注意到,德曼赞扬犹太作家卡夫卡展示出现代欧洲文学的健康本质,然而德曼并没有提及他是一位犹太人。

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