被消费的"文革"历史与当代现实——消费文化语境下《兄弟》的生产与传播

余华的<兄弟>在2005、2006年的分期出版是当代文学的一次重要事件,它的生产与传播过程典型地显示了消费市场和商品文化主导与影响下的文学生产机制对文学的宰制作用.从文学叙事的角度看,消费文化及其文学生产机制影响了<兄弟>的审美品格和叙事特征,"文革"历史与改革时代的现实在小说中呈现出夸饰化、漫画化、荒诞化的倾向.这种文学症候标识出余华由先锋作家到畅销写手的某种隐形蜕变,同时,对于当代文学的发展来说,文学与市场、消费文化保持适度联姻时,要规避其对文学自主性和文学审美品质的潜在伤害,要对消费文化保持适当的警觉.     

Technology,Reason and Globalisation?—O Brother!

The Coen Brothers' movie O Brother Where Art Thou is a ragbag of intertexts and gags that also pays very serious attention to questions of community and culture, class and race. In tracing the path of the protagonists through De-pression-era Mississippi, it takes its audiences through the experience of social transformation, from superstition and local concerns to a supposedly brave new (global and technological) world. Although the film is set in a distant time and place, it is informed by a very contemporary issue—the politics of technology, and its relation to the forces of globalisation. It is also a film that exemplifies what Certeau describes as the "cleavage which organizes modernity", a cleavage designated by the terms "science" (which is predicated on a law of rationality, and an imperative to explain, control and order) and "culture". We analyse the work of the film by drawing on the writings of Manuel Castells, Arjun Appadurai and Armand Mattelart to trace its explication of the questions of progress and communication in a world increasingly dominated by neo-liberal values.