马克思主义与形式
——弗雷德里克·
杨建刚，王弦
（山东 济南 山东大学文艺美学研究中心 250100）
摘要：马克思主义者往往忽视形式研究的重要性，而
关键词：弗雷德里克·詹姆逊 马克思主义 形式
Yang: As one of the most famous Marxist’s theorist all over the contemporary world, your thought, theory and method of academic study have an important influence in the field of theory, especially the field of literature, esthetics and philosophy. This is very prominent in China. More and more young scholars and students like your books. I am just one of them. Through reading your books I find that you are very interested in the question of form. Form is a main line in your research from the book Marxism and Form in the 70th of last century until Modernism Papers published in 2007. And in the interview with Weihua He last year at Duke, you summarized your academic research in the term “Marxism and Form”. As a Marxist’s theorist, why are you so interested in form? How important of form is for Marxism?
Jameson: That’s because most of the traditional Marxist criticism has concentrated on content and ideological analysis, but always in terms of content: what are the thoughts? what are the ideologies and so on and so forth. But very little…I think Lukacs was doing some of these, but not in a very complicated way, very little had to do with the nature of narration, the available narrative forms and the form that ideology takes and so on and so forth. This is especially a problem posed by modernism. But since many of the traditional modernists like Lukacs rejected modernism, they didn’t have to ask themselves these questions. So for me, it seems appropriate to look on the formal side of all these things. And I think the emphasis on the narrative is at least partly that.
Yang: It is well known that you had a very good command of German and French early in middle school years. The two most important books in your early academic life are Marxism and Form and The Prison House of Language which are on German Marxist’s philosophy and French theory respectively. How importantly these two books perform in your later research? Could I say that your concern for form is based on the research of Russian Formalism and French Structuralism in your early days? Or, it is the result of the influence of that research?
Jameson: No, they were originally parts of the same manuscript, but it was too long, so Princeton suggested moving the formalist stuff into another book and they printed two books. So originally that was all together. But the French stuff and Russian stuff went into another book. The whole structuralism was the moment of revival of the narrative analysis and the question of form in ideology and so on and so forth, so that is all part of the same project, but a lot of the formalist stuff gets done in The Prison House of Language. They were not meant to be separate. As for the Russians, I was never much interested in the debates about formalism, but certainly people like Shklovsky who was my favorite, innovated in narrative analysis, I thought something people should know about it. Because none of this stuff was known in United States. Little bit of structuralism was known. But I think I wrote first stuff on Bloch; I think I wrote some of the first things on Benjamin. It’s a critique nobody has written about it yet. Lukacs people knew about, but not very well. French and Russian stuff wasn’t even translated then. So a lot of these were introductions for American public. On the one hand, the academic public to Marxism; on the other hand, the Marxists were very primitive in the United States too, this formal development, which Europeans knew but what the Americans didn’t know.
Yang: As we know, classical Marxist’s theory borrowed Hegel’s theoretical model but pays more attention to content, not to form. The vulgar Marxism of Soviet Union pushed this conception to extremity. They value Hegel but turn back to Kant. Russian Formalism is the heritor of Kant. For the Marxism of Soviet Union, the content of arts finally turns to be a tool of the revolutionary propaganda, and the study of form is seen as the art for art entirely and is criticized as the heritage of bourgeois esthetics. It’s just like Trotsky and Lunacharski’s criticism to Russian Formalists. We could say that, to some extent, Marxist’s criticism to Russian Formalism turns out to be the needs of politics rather than be an academic discussion. What’s your opinion on this debate?
Jameson：In so far, it pushes people to invent some new solutions. I think Bakhtin invented some new solutions. A lot of the texts were just political texts. Trotsky, some of these were useful and important in literature revolution. They weren’t all hostile. After Stalin, there was a turn away from this kind of thing. Shklovsky survived. The rest of them did and started to write, they were very influenced by Eisenstein. What we did know was Eisenstein over here, because there have been lots of translations here; of course he has his contacts in United States and Mexico, but there was an interaction between Eisenstein and the formalists. And there are a lot of connections between film and modernism which related to some of those theories. I think in France, literary structuralism, it got deeply involved in film criticism. I mean a lot of works were done through film and the Russians are great pioneers.
Yang: In fact, after this debate, the dialogue between Marxism and Formalism has become the necessity in academic development. We could affirm that the relationship between Marxism and Formalism has developed in the course of conflict to dialogue, from Soviet Union to the West. Bakhtin was the representative of this dialogue in Soviet Union. The Frankfort School in Europe and the late Marxists in British and US, such as Althusser, Macherry, Eagleton and you, all pay great attention to the question of form and proceed to the job of dialogue with Formalism. From your point of view, what is the significance of this dialogue? Could we say without the absorbability and reference to Formalism, west Marxism can’t make the great achievements?
Jameson: Marx is a kind of formalist himself, capitalist, structuralist analysis and some sense, I mean The Eighteen Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte is a very complex formal analysis. Marx’s ideas on ideology were by no means is as simple-minded as us, some traditional Marxists later on. But you have to remember that Marxism is essentially a Germen tradition, and after all, that tradition continued through the Frankfort School despite the fact that they all have to leave or flee. I think the Russians had some very innovative things to add, but probably with Stalinism those things were less possible within the party. So, but I mean ideological analysis, Althusser doesn’t come from structuralism or formalism, psychoanalysis perhaps, that’s the other thing you don’t find in Russia, I think they translated Freud very early, just as they translated Capital, all Freud was translated in Russia at the early 20th, but there was not really much use of Freud. Whereas the Freudian tradition was also a complicated one and the connections between Freud and Marx were there practically from the beginnings. So I think Marxism had something to give to structuralism, Levi Strauss says that he rereads The Eighteenth Brumaire every few years to see the model of one kind of realistic historic analysis it is. So I think without the Marx’s questions, we wouldn’t have had the structuralist answers. But there is a move back and forth.
Yang: So，I think, just like Roland Barthe, when he was young, he was a Marxist, and influenced by Sartre, but then, he changed his mind and became a Structuralist.
Jameson：I think he more or less withdrew from politics. And I think lots of people were disturbed by the students’ revolts. I think after May 1968, these intellectuals thought that it was a failure and they moved into more private areas. Foucault is also communist, I mean not just Marxist but communist, and you can see that, but then he denounces communism all the time. But on the other hand, I think it really moved away from political and into the aesthetic much more decisively. But I think that’s a personal thing.
Yang: My doctoral dissertation is about the history of the dialogue between Marxism and Formalism. How do they communicate is the focus of my research. In my research, you are a very important theorist in this dialogue. I am very interested in your term “transcoding”. Thomas Kuhn thinks that the change of the paradigm of academic research depends on the new theory and new term. However, when I read your books, I find that you see “transcoding” as a kind of new method for the theoretical innovation. From changing the connotation and extension of a term of other academic school and giving it some new contents, we could make the term become a new one. In this way we make a theoretical innovation. Just as Structuralists’ “Text” and Freud’s “Unconscious” in your theory. Could you please make some further interpretation of this term?
Jameson: I think it’s the idea that all of the things that people have considered to be truths before, nature was a predecessor of all this, were really languages, and now today, we have a multiplicity of these languages. Marxists’ traditional idea is that language that isn’t the language we have true thoughts and so on so forth, but I think today, after Wittgenstein, Nietzsche and all the rest of them, even Marx himself, to certain degree, we understand that what we have is a code of language. So what we have to do even to get the debate going is to trans-code (translate) from one of these languages to another. So it’s a lesson to Marxists again, a lot of the fights with other philosophies have not been productive because the Marxists thought they were arguing about the ultimate truth, whereas they were arguing about languages. And a language is also ideology, so you can say that there is a struggle of ideologies, but you have to understand those are also in terms of codes, linguistic codes, so I think there is a method there, and it’s not just in the struggles between these philosophies that we have to think in terms of trans-coding. Each of these codes see something. It’s like lens in your glasses, it sees something very clearly, and the rest of those things are blurred, so moving from one code to another means moving from one set of glasses to another, maybe in distance, maybe simply in the focus. You have to understand what the moment of truth in each of these codes is before you decide. The same is true of languages, real and natural languages, I mean. One code may see something very clearly, and not be able to focus another thing which another code does, so that’s a whole preliminary work, I think, in terms of ideological debates and philosophical debates. The idea that the world has a history, that an idea has a history, that comes into being, that’s a fairly recent idea. I mean people think ideas are true like objects, I don’t think so, they are ultimately ideological commitments. But those are in the unconscious, I think. I don’t think there are things that you can reason with people about. But you can certainly show what the different codes are able to do in terms of analysis, literary or otherwise.
Wang: So do you regard trans-coding as one of your key concepts in your thinking?
Jameson: In a way, yes, and what you also should understand there are a number of different Marxisms and those Marxisms are all codes, so there are fights with each other, they are also fights about languages. I haven’t published my book on Marx yet, but from my perspective, what Marx discovered is, I would rather say, scientific than ideological. It’s a scientific construction. I think the way people have used that, including Marx himself on its political, Lenin, Trotsky, Mao, those have been ideological constructions. So any “ism” is an ideology. But the fundamental discovery of Marx, according to Althusser, is really “a discovery of a new continent”. There’s the continent of the unconscious for him to discover; Marx’s is the continent of historical materialism, the economic, that might be very crude about it. Those things and those places exist you may not want to live there, but I mean, those continents exist, they were not really discovered before. But that’s something different from ideology.
Yang: So, sometimes we don’t need to create new words, new term, just need to change the meaning of words.
Jameson: That’s very tricky. Look at Gramsci, Gramsci had to change all the words, invent new words, so the Italian fascist censor would not know what he is writing about. So he called Marxism the philosophy of praxis. He called ideology hegemony and so forth. Well, around the new words, suddenly a new kind of philosophy developes around it. And it may not fully be the old thing any more or identified with it. It’s a very delicate balance as towards extending a language over replacing it, and I don’t think it’s never really possible to decide, there were people who want to replace Marx with Gramsci, there were people who see Gramsci as an augmentation of Marx. That’s undecidable. It’s unless you use the language. The new words are sometimes very dangerous I think. I believe in the old words, but one has to then always re-explain them.
Wang: Do you think Zizek uses all kinds of new languages?
Jameson: Well, we don’t know, Lacan invented new words and concepts, Lacan was one of the great and original thinkers of the 20th century, and that’s a very rich thing which Zizek has exploited, but he also uses some of the old, he does move back and forth between psychoanalysis, Marxism and other philosophical traditions. What we are more in today is picking up these languages and using them when they work than substituting it with another, I mean, Zizek trans-coding throughout of his own work, now, does he invented a new language of his own? We would have to know Lacan better, because it’s not only Lacan, there is Jacques-Alain Miller, the successor (of Lacan), Zizek studied with him, so it’s hard to know…but certainly it brings to a creativity and likeness that people never had before.
Wang: But you said that it’s dangerous to create some new languages, right?
Jameson: I don’t think he (Zizek) does create a new language, I think he is trans-coding. Has anybody told us that what was specifically Zizek philosophy? I mean, it’s in constant transformation, all I recall, I am not sure if we want to admit his philosophy, but some people do, Badiou, for example, I think has tried to invent a new philosophy, keep some of the old terms, add new ones and so on. I don’t think it’s always successful, but I have to say I haven’t really studied Badiou, so I don’t know. Somebody like Ranciere, on the other hand, tries to avoid traditional languages. That’s also dangerous.
Yang: You had a very interesting viewpoint. I got this viewpoint from the interview you had with Xudong Zhang many years ago, which became the preface of the Chinese version of your book Late Capitalism. You said that history, politics (ideology) and form were a trinity. Marxist’s literary theory should pay attention to history, politics and ideology in literature. However, this criticism should use form as the mediation. Chinese Professor Xianzhang Zhao in Nanjing University also engages in the research of formal esthetics. He thinks that Marxist’s criticism “should not go to the subject (content) directly without paying any attention to the form”, but “should interpret the significance by form”. This relates to what you called “the ideology of form” and “the content of form”. How do you interpret the content, significance and political unconscious of the text through the form of literature? What methods could we use? I noticed that you used many methods of structuralism, such as Greimas’ “semantic rectangle”.
Jameson: That is a too best question that I can’t begin to do that. I would say for the stuff I work on narrative analysis is the best way you look for or something. That is a narrative that is able to seize the event, crystallize it, that draws on idea of what event is, what history is and so on and so forth, telling a story implies a certain number of deeper ideological concepts, and I think that’s the best way (interpret) to those concepts. So the content, I think the idea is that the opinions of the writers, that’s not content, that’s not interesting, I mean it’s interesting biographically…but it’s not our main business. The true ideology these people come out and therefore, in the form of narrative, that’s what we should concentrate on. Now I don’t say that content analysis is useless, maybe some day we know all these formal stuff so well, we will need to go back to the content and focus on that more, and readdress the balance, so to speak and focus on the nature of political of, even aesthetic ideologies and so on, but it’s very hard to put these two things together. One has to try, but it’s hard; but in any case, we want more complicated an analysis of these texts than simple content analysis. I would say the content always takes you back and forth, if you have a novel about a certain kind of experience, well, experiences is a historical. Where does that come from? Certain social possibilities and developments. Then we are back in history, so I think both form and content lead back in history, that’s the direction one has to go in, but one can get to that in various ways. I have just felt that there was less people would not emphasize form enough, people who are doing a kind of left the criticism I was interested in had to insist on that. Maybe the lesson has learned, we can go back to something else, or invent new places to think about this.
Yang: So, we need to find the content or the meaning of a work from the form of a work. Just like what Russian Formalism and New Criticism do. They pay attention to the music effect of a poem or the structure of a novel. But Marxists pay more attention to the content, the meaning or significance of a work.
Jameson: Yes, but not too quickly. We are talking about conditions of possibility, form depends on historical conditions of possibility, so does content. Adorno thought that the opinions of these people, Flaubert who was notoriously reactionary in his later years. The opinions are also a part of the raw material of the book. They are not the meaning of the book. They are built into the book. So there is a deeper form that includes those opinions, and maybe the opinions were necessary. I mean, various people have said that people had to believe certain things, in order to write, to be able to write what he wrote, he would not have written those things, Tolstoy maybe. Flaubert unless he believes those things. But the belief is just a precondition, it’s not the meaning of the work, even though those people think there’s a meaning, Tolstoy didn’t believe in history, and was very anti-political. Well, in order to write War and Peace he had to be that. That’s part of a larger form I think, of living history, I should say, and living life in a certain kind of society, it’s also because he had this profound attraction to peasant’s life, and he thought this, so in a way, it’s anti-bourgeois, but being a bourgeois can take a variety of forms. I think analyzing people’s political stances and ideologies is a perfectly proper thing to do. But maybe only indirectly connected to the form of the work, it’s the form of the work is more important. D.H. Lawrence said this in anther way, “trust the tale, not the teller”, that is to say, what the person or the artist thinks was not, that may just be things what he has to think in order to do what he is doing, but what he is doing is more concrete engagement with the social and ideological raw materials that he is living. So there’s a level of concreteness that’s more fundamental than political opinions, political positions and so forth. Although one should talk about those too, yes, I agree.
Wang：So do you think living in this world is more important than thinking about the meaning of the life?
Jameson：Living in this world, like do some concrete thing, is everyday life. That’s a historical development too, I think. Everyday life is a fairly recent concept, it’s probably a secular concept after the death of god, you know. Before that, people thought in other ways about life, sin and redemption and so on, so I would say one can never absolutize any of those things, one has to replace them in their historical situation. In other words, we talk about the “concrete” here, but you can’t formulate the concrete once and for all and in an ahistorical way, and even the very notion of the concrete, guess it gets invented in Hegel’s On Dialectic, is historical. So we are always back in history, we are back in codes, historical codes, historical possibility of thinking about these things, and there is no way out of that. Or to use the language of the existentialists, we are always in situation, so we can’t get out of our situation, we can use our situation as a privilege way of seeing certain things, but those are probably not the only things to see, and somebody else’s situation will provide another kind of perspective.
Wang: So what’s your definition about everyday life?
Jameson: Well, that very interesting. We had a thesis by somebody just recently on some interesting kinds of novels in which there’s kind of strange secular after-life, life after death in which people can’t do anything, but they survive in this empty world. And he said, look, this is our representation of everyday life, but it’s a representation of everyday life as emptiness. Very interesting, I think. So some of the people who invented the notion of everyday life, like Lefebvre, thought that you could distinguish between forms of this, there was a more vibrant kind of daily life in living in a kind of city, that the countryside offers a different kind of everyday life and so on and so forth. But it could also be the analysis of everyday life, maybe today shows its emptiness and so forth, so nothing we’ve done in advance.
Yang: In a long time, Marxist’s literary criticism has been discussing mainly on pure theories, such as the relationship between basement and superstructure, but in concrete literary criticism, these theories can not interpret as convincely as Formalists, and it is difficult to use Marxism in concrete textual analysis just like the job of the “close reading” of new criticism. It might be related to the fact that Marxists ignore the form of literature and arts. It also might be one of the reasons why Marxism is losing its influence gradually in the field of literary criticism. How do you see this contemporary situation of Marxism? Could the dialogue with Formalism make Marxism rejuvenated?
Jameson: But I don’t agree with that. I think Marxism has developed its own approach to form, and that is as successful as other kinds of post-formalist things. You could say the same thing about Deridianism. It has no way of dealing with the text, it just takes things apart. I think the problem is that most people associate Marxism with an ideological analysis that they always see as negative, as debunking, if you show someone the ideological approach, sort of reduce them, I don’t believe so, and I try to do something else that I considered Marxism, so I don’t really agree with those positions. And I wouldn’t any longer separate Marxism from formalism. I think there has been a mutual assimilation. I mean that a lot of the critics today that you may want to call formalists, they are post-Marxists, they know about all these things, but they just feel that they don’t need to take many consideration any more, that’s the matter of historical situation, I think. When that happens, there are historical and social reasons why people like Brecht (I am not very sure about this name here), for example, seemed to give up historical analysis. It’s not that they don’t believe it and practice it. They somehow don’t think it’s…they know it too well, that’s the case of Foucault. They presuppose it. Or on the other hand they think that it has already passed and we don’t have classes anymore.
杨建刚（下文简称杨）：作为当今世界最著名的马克思主义理论家之一，您的思想、学说和方法对理论界产生了重要的影响，这在中国表现得非常突出。越来越多的青年学子喜欢阅读您的著作，我就是其中之一。通读您多年来的著作，发现您非常关注形式问题。从您七十年代的《马克思主义与形式》到2007年出版的《现代主义论文集》，形式一直是一条贯穿始终的主线。在去年与中国访问学者何卫华和朱国华的访谈[②]中，您用“马克思主义与形式”来概括自己的学术研究。作为一个马克思主义理论家，您为什么对形式如此感兴趣？您认为对于马克思主义来说，形式的重要性在哪里？
詹姆逊（下文简称詹）：那是因为传统的马克思主义文学批评大都致力于内容和意识形态分析，总是关注内容因素，即作品的思想是什么？反映了什么样的意识形态？等等。很少有人研究叙事的特点，作品所采用的叙述方式以及意识形态得以呈现的形式。我想卢卡奇在这方面做了一些工作，但他所采用的也是比较简单化的方式。艺术形式问题是现代主义者所提出的独具价值的问题。我个人对形式问题非常感兴趣，而研究叙事问题至少是这种形式分析的一个方面。
杨：众所周知，您在中学时代就精通德语和法语，而您早期最重要的两本著作就是分别研究德国哲学和法国理论的《马克思主义与形式》和《语言的牢笼》，这两部著作对您后期研究的重要性在哪里？是否可以说，您后来对形式的关注是基于早年对俄国形式主义和法国结构主义的研究? 或者说是受其影响的结果？
詹：事实并不是这样的，它们其实是同一部手稿的两个部分，但是由于太长，普林斯顿大学出版社建议将形式主义那部分单独成书，所以最终出版成了两部著作。这两本书本来就是合在一起的一个整体，只是把研究法国结构主义和俄国形式主义的部分单独成册了而已。整个结构主义就是研究叙事分析和意识形态的形式等问题的复兴运动，也是同一个研究项目的不同部分，我把对他们的研究放在了《语言的牢笼》中。这并不意味着二者是分离的。在对俄国形式主义的研究中，我对围绕俄国形式主义所进行的那场论争并没有太大的兴趣，但是和很多人一样，我非常喜欢什克洛夫斯基，是他把叙事分析进行了革新，我想人们应该了解他的这一功绩。然而，除了非常少的几个结构主义者之外，美国读者对所有这些人物都一无所知。也是我第一次把布洛赫和本雅明介绍给美国读者。之前没有人对他们写过任何批评文字。人们对卢卡奇有所了解，但并不深入。而法国结主义和俄国形式主义的著作当时也还都没有译本。因此，这项研究的一大部分就是将他们介绍给美国读者。另一方面，在美国学术界，马克思主义研究也是非常落后的。欧洲学者对马克思主义的发展脉络已经耳熟能详，但是美国人对此却一无所知。这些都奠定了我以后学术研究的基础。
杨：我们知道经典马克思主义理论由于采用了黑格尔的理论模式，更多地关注内容而非形式，苏联的庸俗马克思主义更是将这一观念推向极端。他们看重黑格尔而反对康德，俄国形式主义正好是康德的继承人。在苏联马克思主义这里，艺术内容最终成为革命宣传的工具，而形式研究被看作纯粹的为艺术而艺术，作为资产阶级美学的遗留而受到批判。托洛茨基和卢那察尔斯基对俄国形式主义的批判就是这样。可以说苏联马克思主义对俄国形式主义的批判更大程度上是基于政治需要，而不是学理的探讨。您如何看待这场论争？
詹：迄今为止，这种状况促使人们去发明一些新的解决方案。在我看来，巴赫金就发明了许多新方案。马克思主义的很多文本都仅仅是政治性的。托洛茨基的著作就是如此，不过这些著作中的很多内容在文学革命中都是有用的和重要的。马克思主义与形式主义并不是完全敌对的。斯大林之后，这种情况出现了转机。什克洛夫斯基又开始了写作。其他的俄国形式主义者也开始了写作。他们都深受爱森斯坦（Sergey Eisenstein，1898～1948）的影响。我们认为爱森斯坦对他们影响巨大，是因为当时翻译了很多爱因斯坦的著作。虽然爱森斯坦跟美国和墨西哥也有联系，但是爱森斯坦与俄国形式主义者的相互影响更为明显。电影与现代主义之间也有很多联系，而这些都与俄国形式主义的理论有关。在法国，文学研究中的结构主义者也对电影批评很感兴趣。他们中的很多著作都是研究电影的，而俄国形式主义者则是他们的伟大先驱。
杨：事实上，在这场论争之后，马克思主义与形式主义之间的对话就成为学术发展的必然要求。可以说，马克思主义与形式主义的关系从苏联到西方经历了一个从对抗到对话的过程。巴赫金是这一对话在苏联的代表。而位居欧洲的法兰克福学派，以及英美的晚期马克思主义者，包括阿尔都塞、马歇雷、伊格尔顿和您，都极为关注艺术形式问题，都在从事与形式主义进行对话的工作。您认为这种对话的重要性在哪里？是否可以说，没有对形式主义理论和方法的吸收和借鉴，就不会有西方马克思主义所取得的巨大成就？
詹：从某种程度上说马克思本人就是一个形式主义者，他所做的就是对资本主义进行结构主义的分析。在我看来，《波拿巴的雾月十八日》就是一种非常复杂的形式分析。马克思的意识形态思想并不像我们和后来的传统马克思主义者想象的那么简单。但是我们必须牢记，马克思主义本质上是一种德国传统，毕竟，它是通过法兰克福学派而得以持续的，尽管事实上他们都不得不对马克思主义有所偏离或逃逸。俄国形式主义者提出了很多非常具有革命性的思想，但是在斯大林主义的影响下这些思想在党内是几乎不可能的。因此，我认为，在意识形态分析方面，对阿尔都塞影响最大的并不是结构主义或形式主义，而是精神分析，这一点是你对俄国理论家的研究过程中没有注意到的。俄国理论家很早就翻译了弗洛伊德的著作，就像他们很早就翻译了《资本论》一样。虽然在20世纪初年弗洛伊德的全部著作就已经译成了俄文，但是俄国理论界对弗洛伊德的思想并没有很好地应用。弗洛伊德的思想传统也非常复杂，并且几乎从一开始弗洛伊德与马克思之间就关系密切。因此，我认为，马克思主义给予了结构主义者很多东西，列维-斯特劳斯就明确指出，为了研究一种现实主义的历史分析模型，他每隔几年就要重新阅读《雾月十八日》。因此，可以说，没有马克思主义者提出的问题，就不可能有结构主义者的答案。不过二者之间的这种影响也是相互的。
杨：因此，我想，正如罗兰·巴特，他年轻的时候就是一个马克思主义者，并深受萨特的影响。但是后来，他改变了自己的思想，转变为一个结构主义者。
詹：我认为他或多或少是对政治的退却。很多人都受到了学生运动的困扰。1968年五月风暴之后，很多知识分子认为这是一场失败，并转向了较为私人的领域。福柯也是一个共产主义者，我并没有说马克思主义者，而是说共产主义者，但是在他的后半生却又公开批判共产主义。但是，另一方面，我认为这一变化很大程度上是从政治领域向美学领域的决定性转移。但是这也是个人的情况。
杨：我的博士论文就是研究马克思主义与形式主义之间从对抗到对话的发展过程，尤其是研究二者之间是如何对话的。在我的研究中，您是这场对话中的一个非常重要的理论家。我特别感兴趣的是您所提出的“符码转换”（transcoding）这一术语。托马斯·库恩认为学术研究范式的转换，需要提出新的理论和术语。但是，通过我的阅读，发现您也把符码转换作为一种理论创新的方法。也就是将其他学派的术语，通过改变它的内涵和外延，赋予其新的意义，从而转变成为一个新的术语，并达到理论创新的效果。比如说，结构主义的“文本”和弗洛伊德的“无意识”。您能否对这个术语做进一步的阐释。
詹：我认为，人们之前认为是真理的所有事情其实都只是语言，而今天这种语言已经更加多样化了。与传统马克思主义者通常认为的不同，今天，我认为，如果没有语言我们就不可能产生思想。可以说，维特根斯坦、尼采和其他理论家，甚至马克思本人之后，在某种程度上，在我们看来，我们所拥有的只是语言的符码。因此，我们必须做的，甚至将这一讨论继续向前推进的，就是进行语言间的符码转换。这也是马克思主义者必须吸取的一个教训。马克思主义与其他哲学之间的许多论争之所以缺乏生产性，原因就在于马克思主义者认为他们讨论的是终极真理，然而事实上他们所讨论的仅仅是语言。并且，语言也是意识形态。因此，可以说，这是意识形态的斗争。但是，也必须理解这种斗争都以符码，准确地说是语言符码为基础进行的。所以，这里体现为一种方法论，这种斗争不仅仅是不同哲学之间的斗争，我们必须从符码转换的角度对其进行思考。每一种符码都体现出一定的内容，就如同眼镜的镜片，它将有些事情呈现地非常清楚，而其他事情则相对模糊，因此从一种符码转换到另一种就如同从一副眼镜换到另一幅，有时是距离的调整，有时仅仅是对焦问题。语言中同样如此。一个符码可以将有些事情呈现地清清楚楚，但却不能呈现其他事情，这需要另一种符码。这就是我在意识形态和哲学论争中所做的全部基本工作。人们往往认为思想观念就像客观事物那样是真实的，但是我认为，从根本上来看，思想观念其实是一种意识形态，不过这种意识形态是无意识的。在此我并不是要和人们争论什么，但是我们必须看到，在文学分析活动中，不同的符码所起到的不同作用。
王弦（下文简称王）：您把符码转换看作您的思想中的一个核心概念吗？
詹：是的，我们必须看到存在许多不同的马克思主义，而这些马克思主义都表现为符码，因此他们之间就存在很多差异，也包括语言方面的差异。虽然我尚未写过研究马克思的著作，但是，在我看来，马克思的学说既是科学，也是意识形态。这是一种科学的建构，同时，马克思本人，以及列宁、托洛茨基、毛泽东等人的政治思想也都是一种意识形态建构。因此，任何“主义”都是意识形态。但是，在阿尔都塞看来，马克思最根本的发现的确类似于新大陆的发现。马克思所发现的新大陆就是历史唯物主义，这些之前都没有被真正发现。
杨：因此，有时候我们并不需要去创造新的词汇和术语，只需要改变已有词汇的意义就可以了。
詹：这是一种非常巧妙的做法。比如葛兰西，他不得不改变所有的词汇，并发明新的词语，从而使意大利法西斯主义审查官无法知道他写的是什么。因此他称马克思主义为实践哲学，并称意识形态为霸权，等等。借助这些新词汇，迅速发展出一种新哲学。它和旧哲学完全不同。有人想用葛兰西替代马克思，也有人把葛兰西看作马克思的延续和拓展。这些都无法做出判断，除非你借助于语言。使用新词语常常是非常危险的。我更信任旧词语，不过必须对这些已有的词语进行重新解释。
王：您认为齐泽克运用的是一种新语言吗？
詹：齐泽克有没有运用新语言我不清楚，不过拉康发明了新的词语和概念。拉康是20世纪伟大且具有原创性的思想家之一，他为齐泽克提供了可资利用的丰富资源。不过拉康同时也运用了一些旧的词语，他在精神分析、马克思主义和其他哲学传统之间来回自由穿梭。我们现在所能做的就是捡起这些语言，运用它们，而不是替代它们。齐泽克在他自己的作品中运用了符码转换，这能说他为自己发明了一种新语言吗？我们必须更加了解拉康，不仅仅是拉康，而且还有雅克-阿兰·米勒（Jacques-Alain Miller），他是拉康的继承人，齐泽克就是跟他学习的。我们很难说齐泽克创造了一种新语言，但是可以肯定的是，他的语言带来了一种创造力，这些都是人们之前所不具有的。
王：但是您刚才说创造新语言是极其危险的，对吗？
詹：我并不认为齐泽克创造了一种新语言，我认为他只是在进行符码转换。难道有人告诉我们什么是齐泽克所特有的哲学吗？他所做的只是不断地符码转换，因此我不能确定人们是否乐意承认齐泽克的哲学。但是人们可以肯定的是，阿兰·巴迪欧(Alain Badiou)在试图发明一种新的哲学。在此过程中，他保留了一些旧的术语，同时增加了一些新的术语。有些理论家，比如雅克·朗西埃（Jacques Ranciere）则试图避免使用传统语言，这也是极其危险的。
杨：您有一个很有意思的观点。您在多年前与张旭东的一次访谈中提到了这一点，这个访谈也成为您的《晚期资本主义的文化逻辑》的中译本的前言。您认为历史、政治（意识形态）与形式是三位一体的。马克思主义文学批评应该关注历史、政治和意识形态，但是所有政治批评都必须通过形式的中介。中国学者
詹：这个问题简直太好了，以至于我都不知道如何开始回答。我所写的关于叙事分析的书是对你所提问题的最好回答。叙事能够使我们把握一个事件，对其进行提炼，并总结出这个事件所体现的主要思想以及所反映的历史现实等等。讲述一个故事就暗含着一定数量的深层意识形态观念，我认为这也是表现或阐发这些观念的最好方式。所以，内容或者说作家的观点，这些我都不感兴趣。作家有意思的生平也不是我研究的主要任务。我们应该关注人们从叙述形式中所发现的真实的意识形态。当然，我并不是说内容分析毫无用处，也许有一天，当我们对艺术形式问题已经了如指掌的时候，我们就需要返回到内容方面，甚至更加关注内容，并再次强调二者的平衡，也就是集中于文本的政治性，更准确的说，集中于文本的审美意识形态，等等。虽然将二者结合起来是非常困难的，但是我们必须做这样的尝试，事实证明难度非常大。但是，无论如何，我们更希望一种对文学文本进行更加复杂的分析，而不是简单的内容分析。如果你拿着一本关于某种特定经验的小说，你就会很容易地被故事内容所左右。可以说，这种经验就是历史。那么这种历史经验又是如何获得的呢？当然是特定社会的可能性及其发展。这样，我们就返回到了历史。因此，我认为，是形式和内容的共同作用使我们重返历史，这也就是我们进行研究的必然方向，不过达到这一目标的途径可以多种多样。我的一个深切体会就是，人们对形式再怎么强调也都不过分，左派批评家更应该重视并坚持形式批评，我对这样的批评家都非常感兴趣。也许，当我们在这方面受到挫折的时候，我们才能够返回到其他方面，或者发明一些新的领域来思考这个问题。
杨：因此，我们需要通过作品的形式去发现作品的内容或意义。正如俄国形式主义和英美新批评派的理论家们所做的那样。他们致力于诗歌的音乐效果或小说的结构。但是马克思主义者却更多致力于作品的内容或意义。
詹：的确是这样，但是也不能如此绝对。我们所讨论的是一种可能的情况。形式依赖于可能的历史情境，内容也是如此。阿多诺认为这些理论家们（晚年的福楼拜以其反对者而名声在外）的观点也是其著作的原材料的一部分，而不是其著作的内容。内容已经融入到了文本之中。因此存在一种包含这些观点的深层形式，这些形式是非常必要的。也就是说，为了写作，为了将其从未写过的事情记录下来，人们必须对这些事情保持信念。托尔斯泰就是很好的例子。但是这种信念仅仅是一个先决条件，而不是作品所要表达的意思。尽管他们相信存在这种意思，但是托尔斯泰并不相信历史，并且持一种强烈的反政治观念。为了写作《战争与和平》，他必须如此。这也是某些特定类型的社会中活生生的历史和生活的更大形式中的一部分。因此，从某种意义上说，这也是反资产阶级的，但是，资产阶级可以采用各种不同的形式。我认为分析人们的政治立场和意识形态观念是一种非常合适的事情。不过这种政治立场和意识形态与作品形式之间是间接地联系在一起的，而作品的形式更为重要。劳伦斯从另一个角度对这种观点进行了阐释。正如他所言：“相信故事本身，而不是讲故事的人。”也就是说，人们或艺术家所思考的并不是为了使其要做的事情顺利进行而必须思考的事情，而是他所做的事情如何更加具体地融入他所生活的社会和意识形态的原材料之中。因此，存在一种具体的层面，它比政治观点和政治状况更具有基础性。所以我同意你的观点。
王：那么是不是说生活于这个世界上比思考生活的意义更加重要？
詹：生活于这个世界上，做具体的事情，就是我们的日常生活。这是一种历史的发展。日常生活是最近才出现的一个概念。众所周知，它是上帝死亡之后的一个世俗概念。在此之前，人们以另一个方式思考生活，那就是罪恶与救赎，等等。所以我想人们绝不能将这些事情绝对化，而是需要在他们自己的历史条件下将其置换。换句话说，我们这里强调“具体”，你不能一劳永逸地给其下定义，也不能采用非历史的方法，甚至不能采用黑格尔在《辩证法》中所发明的那种“具体”概念，尽管它具有历史内涵。我们总是返回历史，返回符码，历史符码，思考这些问题的历史可能性，除此之外别无他法。或者，用存在主义的话说，我们总是存在于特定条件下，所以我们无法超越我们所赖以存在的这个条件。我们可以把我们所赖以生存的条件看作用于审视某些事情的特有视角，但是这可能也不是我们所唯一看到的事情，其他人的生存条件可以提供另外一种审视的视角。
王：那么您对日常生活怎么界定？
詹：这个问题很有意思。最近我看到一篇关于一些非常有意思的小说的论文，文中描述了一种奇怪的、世俗化的、死亡后的生活（after-life）。在死亡之后的生活中，人们不能做任何事情，但是他们却依然生存于这个空虚的世界（empty world）之中。他说，看，这就是我们日常生活的表征，即就是空虚。非常有意思。像列斐伏尔这些发明日常生活概念的人认为可以通过表现形式对日常生活进行区分。生活在某种类型的城市中，日常生活会过的更加丰富多彩，而乡村里的日常生活却是完全不同的样子。今天，可能也正是这种日常生活分析表明了它的空虚，我们根本没有办法提前对此做出预测和应对。
杨：长期以来，马克思主义文学理论多进行理论探讨，比如经济基础与上层建筑的关系等等，而在具体的文学批评中，这些理论却并没有形式主义那么有解释力，很难像新批评的“细读”那样将马克思主义用来进行具体的文本分析。这可能与马克思主义忽视艺术形式问题有关。这可能也是马克思主义现在逐渐失去其影响力的原因所在。您如何看待马克思主义当前的这种状况？通过与形式主义的对话，能否让马克思主义文学批评再次焕发青春？
詹：但是我并不这么认为。在我看来，马克思主义已经发展出自己的形式方法，并且和其他后形式主义者所做的一样成功。德里达就是如此。除了将文本拆分开来，我们没有处理文本的其他方法。问题在于大多数人将马克思主义与意识形态分析联系起来，而他们往往把意识形态分析看作消极的，揭露性的。我并不这么认为，我会寻找一种我认为属于马克思主义的方法。我从来没有将马克思主义与形式主义分割开来，它们之间有一个自然的吸收和同化过程。我的意思是说，当今的很多批评家，你可以称其为形式主义者，而他们实际上也是后马克思主义者。他们对所有方法都了如指掌，所以不再需要对其多加区分，这是历史条件所致。在这种情况下，像布莱希特这样的理论家似乎放弃了历史分析，这具有历史的和社会的原因。这并不是说他们不再相信历史分析，或者不再实践这种方法。他们对这种方法太熟悉了，并且认为这是学术研究的先决条件。福柯就是个极好的例子。也可能是他们认为这种方法已经过时了，我们不再需要进行严格区分。这些问题都非常有意思，我们以后再继续讨论。
杨：非常感谢您百忙之中抽出时间进行这次访谈，也欢迎您再次访问中国。
作者简介：杨建刚，男，陕西咸阳人，现为山东大学文学与新闻传播学院和文艺美学研究中心讲师，访谈时为南京大学与美国杜克大学（Duke University）联合培
王弦，女，湖北武汉人，现为美国俄勒冈大学（University of Oregen）博士研究生，访谈时为杜克大学硕士研究生。
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地点：美国杜克大学文学系
访谈英文版载于《文艺理论研究》2012年第2期
[①]本文系国家社科基金青年项目“马克思主义与形式主义的关系史研究”（11CZW010）、第四十九批中国博士后科学基金项目（20110491610）和山东大学自主创新基金项目（2010GN001）的阶段性成果。
[②] 此访谈在国内已经发表，见何卫华、朱国华：《图绘世界:弗雷德里克·詹姆逊教授访谈录》，《文艺理论研究》，2009年第6期。