[光明译丛]
学术期刊完蛋了
——马克•泰勒采访记
吴万伟 译
光明网-光明观察 刊发时间：2009-01-14 11:44:14
艾夫·卡迈克（Emrah Efe ?akmak）：对这次参加出版界会议的所有代表提出的问题都是“一个社会需要多少共同性？”从拥抱差别的哲学角度来看，这样的说法显得笨拙。你怎么看待这个问题？这是讨论差异性和共同性的合适方式
吗？
马克·泰勒（Mark C. Taylor）：在西方历史上，或许不仅是西方，存在一个核心的先入之见：一和多的问题。这当然是一个哲学和神学问题，常常不被人特别注意，但是同样很重要的是它还是心理学和政治学问题。当然，二十世纪证明了这个问题的多面性。在二十世纪的后半叶，许多哲学家和社会批评家开始专注于差异和他者的问题。这在很大程度上是对于左派和右派专制主义的反应。德里达、福柯、拉康等思想家的分析的中心是颠覆身份认同哲学，考虑到它可能产生的破坏性政治后果。
但是钟摆朝其他方向摆得太远了，差异的崇拜开始出现。具有讽刺意味的是，差异性哲学导致了身份认同政治的出现。莫里斯·布朗修（Maurice Blanchot）和让·吕克·南希（Jean-Luc Nancy）揭露了这个立场的隐含意义，当他们主张我们共同的东西就是没有任何共同之处。
当然，这个议题不仅仅是哲学或者政治问题。虽然这些发展在展开，其他的变化也出现，重新提出了共同性问题。第一个是技术上的，第二个是环境上的变化。后结构主义和新信息技术和交流技术的出现之间存在有趣的相关关系。尽管有人认为网络造成独裁和霸权的倾向，但是也有人看到了多样性和多元化的增长。虽然双方的观点都有一定合理性，我们无法否认的是让当今世界陷入困境的众多冲突是全球化带来的相互依赖性增加的结果。随着距离的消失，差异性变得越发明显，冲突似乎难以避免。
与这个背景有关的第二个议题是环境和气候变化问题。如果我们研究物理、化学、生物过程，不能否认的是生物系和非生物系是非常复杂的网络。差异性哲学没有能认识到的是存在就是关系。这不是为了政治目的而创造出来的社会结构，相反，它是一个事实，如果我们忽视它，就能为自己带来危害。
问题是共同体是否还有可能，如果有，在多大规模上有可能？当今观察本地社会并不困难。但是，想象一个更广泛的或许是全球性的共同体就比较困难了。恰恰是因为我们过于关注本地利益使得想象更大的共同体变得十分困难。
虽然可能有人反对，我坚持认为我们事实上已经处在全球共同体中，所有的成员都有很多共同性。在一定程度上，这个说法建立在我对于技术和自然网络的理解的基础上。正如尼采曾经说过的，任何事情都是纠缠和交织在一起的。本体论位于价值论中，“是”隐含着“应该是”。在更具体的层次上，每个人都拥有的共同性是即将到来的气候灾难的前景，它将标志地球上人类生活的终结。对于海德格尔来说，从生到死构成了每个人的单一性，当死亡成为普遍性，从生到死就拥有了创造共同体的前景。
艾夫·卡迈克：我们怎么思考后民族国家的世界中的领土、语言、身份认同间的关系，同时不屈服于身份语言政治？正如我们在努力建立的跨越国家的跨越多种语言的公共领域所需要的交流前提是什么呢？
马克·泰勒：语言问题是过去的回声，反映了还没有适应现在的一个政治议题。请考虑这些术语“后民族国家”、“身份语言政治”、“交流前提”、“跨国领域”、“多元文化主义”等我们知道这些术语的意思，愿意理解其中的隐含意义。但是它们并没有给正在发生的事情提供任何新的光亮。如果语言重要，语言确实重要，那么我们就必须创立一种新的语言。
我想强调的是在今天的世界上语言不再首先是文字上的，更重要的是视觉上的。问题是我们是视觉上的文盲，在这方面大学表现得最明显了。在“真实”世界上，形象每次都战胜文字，而在学术界，文字一直压制形象。如果交流要成为全球范围的有效手段，我们必须把形象从文字的暴政下解放出来。这并不是说放弃我们熟悉的阅读和写作。但是光有阅读和写作已经不够了。今天的年轻人的多元文化主义就是多媒体。如果我们不学习用这种语言交流，我们就无话可说了。
艾夫·卡迈克：在变化中的媒体环境下，政治和文化期刊的作用是什么呢？
马克·泰勒：我们所熟悉的书籍和期刊已经是过去的文物了。不幸的是，最后认识到这个事实的是大学和学术界。这样说了后，如何回应的问题仍然有待解决。从个人电脑到手提电脑的转变激化了去中心化过程，改变了交流的本质。人们常常抱怨，至少教授们如此，年轻人不再读书了。但是这是不真实的。他们一直在阅读，不过不再读书或者长篇文章了。移动技术打乱了一切，让人们不得不重新考虑分析的术语。我认为“跨国”这个词已经没有用了。它带有过去的意味，但不能帮助我们理解已经出现的政治空间的重新构造。把任何东西都想象成随时都在变化的节点的网络，这些节点可能是个人的、社会的、经济的、生物的。问题是在什么地方或者如何接通这个网络。
现在存在的大部分报纸和期刊并不能为思想和文化发展的利益服务。相反，它们的泛滥是越来越超级专业化的症状，对越来越少的东西了解得越来越多。这是走向相互依赖性越来越多的历史潮流的相反方向。所以我的建议是期刊杂志已经完蛋了，我在多年前就已经不再阅读任何学术期刊了，也不再为它们投稿了。期刊杂志的唯一功能是给予在越来越小的圈子里撰写学术文章的人学术地位。如果观点才是最重要的话，我相信这是学术期刊的价值所在，那么，我们就必须彻底改变观点交流的方式。
译自：Forget journals! E. Efe ?akmak, Mark C. Taylor
http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2008-12-30-mctaylor-en.html
E. Efe Çakmak, Mark C. Taylor
Forget journals!
An interview with Mark C. Taylor
Emrah Efe Çakmak: The question being asked to all the participants of this publication is, "How much in common does a community need?" From the perspective of a difference-embracing philosophy, such a formulation could seem awkward. How do you receive this question? Is this the proper way of addressing difference and communality?
Mark C. Taylor: In the history of the West, and perhaps not only the West, there is one central preoccupation: the problem of the one and the many. This is, of course, a philosophical and theological problem; less often noted and no less important, however, is that it is also a psychological and a political problem. Surely the twentieth century testifies to the magnitude of that problem. During the latter half of the twentieth century, many philosophers and social critics became preoccupied with issues of difference and otherness. This was in large measure a response to totalitarianism on the Left and on the Right. The whole point of the analyses of thinkers like Derrida, Foucault and Lacan was to disrupt the philosophy of identity, given that it can have such devastating political consequences.
But the pendulum swung too far in the other direction and a fetishism of difference began to emerge. Ironically, the philosophy of difference led to a politics of identity. In different ways, Maurice Blanchot and Jean-Luc Nancy exposed the implications of this position when they argue that what we have in common is that we have nothing in common.
Of course, this issue is not only philosophical or even political. While these developments were unfolding, other changes were occurring that recast the question of community – the first is technological and the second is environmental. There is an interesting relationship between the emergence of post-structuralism and new information and communications technologies. While some see in networks a tendency to totalization and hegemony, other see a growth in pluralism and diversity. While there is some truth in both of these positions, it is undeniable that much of the conflict plaguing the world today is a result of the increasing interconnectedness that globalization brings. As distance vanishes, differences become more evident and conflict seemingly becomes inevitable.
The second issue that is relevant in this context is the environment and climate change. If we study physical, chemical and biological processes, it is undeniable that living as well as non-living systems are complex networks. What the philosophy of difference fails to realize is that being is relational. This is not a social construct created for political purposes; to the contrary, it is a fact that we ignore at our peril.
The question is whether community is possible any longer and if so, on what scale? It is not difficult to observe localized communities today. But it is more difficult to imagine a broader, perhaps even a global community. It is precisely the preoccupation with local interests that makes a broader community so difficult to imagine.
Protests to the contrary notwithstanding, I would insist that we are in fact a global community and all members have much in common. In part, this rests upon my understanding of technological and natural networks. As Nietzsche once said, everything is entwined, enmeshed. Ontology harbors axiology – is implies an ought. On a more specific level, what everyone has in common is the prospect of imminent climatic disaster, which will mark the end of human life on this planet. For Heidegger, being-towards-death constituted the singularity of each person; when death is universal, being-towards-death holds out the prospect of creating community.
EEÇ: How can we think about the relation between territory, language and identity in a post-national world without giving way to identitarian linguistic politics? What would be the communicative prerequisites for transnational, multilingual public spheres such as the ones we are working to establish?
MT: The language of the question is an echo of the past and reflects a political agenda that has not adapted to the present. Consider the terms: "post-national world", "identitarian linguistic politics", "communicative prerequisites", "transnational spheres" and "multilingualism". We know what these terms mean and readily understand their implications. But they shed no new light on what is occurring. If language is important, and it is, we must fashion a new language.
What I want to stress is that language in today's world is not primarily verbal but is, more importantly, visual. The problem is that we are visually illiterate – and nowhere is this more evident than in the university. In the "real" world, image trumps word every time; in the academic world, word represses image all the time. If communication is going to become effective on a global scale, we must liberate the image from the tyranny of the word. This does not mean giving up reading and writing as they have been known in the past. But it is no longer enough. The multilingualism of young people today is multimedia. If we do not learn to communicate in this language, we will have nothing to say.
EEÇ: What could be the role of political and cultural jounals in a changing media enviroment?
MT: Books and journals as we have known them are a thing of the past. Unfortunately, the last to understand this fact are universities and academics. Having said that, the question of how to respond remains to be addressed. In the coming decades, computing will become increasingly distributed and embedded. The movement from the PC to the handheld radicalizes decentralization and changes the nature of communication. People often complain – at least, professors do – that young people do not read anymore. But that is not true. They read all the time but they do not read books or long texts. Mobile technologies scramble everything and make it necessary to recast the terms of analysis. I do not think "transnational" is a useful term here. Again, it smacks of the past and does not help us to understand the reconstitution of political space that has already occurred. Think of everything as a web with constantly shifting nodes, which might be personal, social, economic or biological. The question is where and how to plug into this network.
For the most part, presses and journals as they now exist do not serve the interests of intellectual or cultural development. To the contrary, their proliferation is symptomatic of increasing hyper-specialization in which there is more and more about less and less. This is going in the opposite direction of history, in which there is increasing interconnectedness. So my advice is to forget journals – I no longer read any academic journals and I stopped publishing in them years ago. The only function presses and journals serve is to authorize those who write for them among a dwindling group of peers. If ideas are to matter – and I believe it is crucial that they do – we must completely change the way in which they are communicated.
