What's in a Field? Women, China, History, and the "What Next?" Question

研究領域內乾坤：女性、中國、歷史與“之後又如何”問題

賀蕭(Gail Hershatter)

《近代中國婦女史研究》 13期 (2005/12) Pp. 167-196

https://doi.org/10.6352/mhwomen.200512.0167

摘要

在2004年11月號的Journal of Asian Studies (JAS)中，我發表了一篇名為〈研究現況〉的論文，討論約五百篇關於20世紀中國女性的學術近著。本文參考卻不重述那篇文章。我所採的其實是一種延伸的事後反思方式，以及在悚然不安的狀態下所作的一連串針對近代中國女性研究的建議。我們不該認為，讓性別看得見、聽得見就意味著研究的終結。但如果重視過去三十年來我們所認識到的一切，我們就不能將「性別研究領域」當作成一個疆界確定的空間來繼續挖掘。若將此「領域」視為遇合(conjuncture)而非空間，也許更適當。此一遇合的出現、強度和複雜性並非一成不變；對學者來說，這些都與主體形成的其他過程的勾勒有著千絲萬縷的關係，將來也必繼續如此。
何以有此研究熱潮的迸發？何以是現在，又何以在中國領域之中？這個新的學術領域啟發了什麼，又可能使我們忽視了什麼？我們要如何令此領域的探索保持開放，寧冒使其消失的風險，也不描劃其疆界而使之封閉？若我們要求有一種強力的滲透性，或設想有一個和我們一樣隨著時間而出現、轉變和消逝的探索對象，我們可把哪種新問題帶進視野呢？

關鍵字

性別 ； 婦女 ； 中國

並列摘要

In the November 2004 issue of the Journal of Asian Studies, Ⅰ published a state of the field article covering about 500 recent scholarly publications about women in China's long twentieth century. This paper takes the form of an extended afterthought and a series of suggestions for the study of women in recent Chinese history, made in a spirit of creeping discomfort. Making gender visible and audible cannot be considered a finished project. If we take seriously what we have learned in the past three decades, however, we cannot continue to mine the gender field as though it were a space with fixed boundaries. It may be more useful to regard the field not as a space but rather as a conjuncture. The emergence, intensity, and complexity of gender as a conjuncture are not fixed; for scholars, these are and must continue to be entangled with the tracing out of other processes of subject formation.
This paper addresses these questions: First, why this explosion of scholarship, why now, and why in the China field? Second, what has this new scholarship illuminated, and what has it possibly caused us to look away from? Third, how can we keep this area of inquiry open, even risking its dissolution, rather than delineating its borders in ways that seal it shut? Fourth, if we were to require a rigorous permeability, or imagine an object of inquiry that emerges, changes, and dissolves over time, what sorts of new questions might we bring into view?

並列關鍵字

gender ； women ； China

參考文獻

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Bray, Francesca(1997).Technology and Gender: Fabrics of Power in Late Imperial China.

Brown, Wendy(1997).The Impossibility of Women's Studies.Differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies.9(3)

Chow, Ray(1991).Third World Women and the Politics of Feminism.

Fronteras, Sin(2005).Women's Histories, Global Conversations 13th Berkshire Conference on the History of Women.