空間想像：施堅雅「人類互動系統」與漢人儀式中空間意象及主體性之角色

SPATIAL IMAGINATION: Skinnerian “Human Interaction Systems” and the Roles of Spatial Imagery and “Subjection” in Chinese Rituals

G. William Skinner’s complex apprehension of China as a nested hierarchy of regional (“human interaction”) systems revolutionized subsequent understanding of what “China” is in temporal and spatial terms. The prodigious spatial imagination embodied in Skinner’s project develops from an explicitly objectivist-cum-behavioralist perspective. For the most part, Skinner argued that emic perceptions-- for example, of local identities, the structure of imperial bureaucracy, pathways for social and economic mobility--reflect these “natural systems” (i.e., emergent mainly on the basis of rational economic decisions, on the one hand, and the logic of political control and extraction, on the other). Spatial imagination figures importantly, but very differently, in the structure of ritual production of subjectivities (in the sense, broadly speaking, developed in Judith Butler’s Psychic Life of Power). Based on analysis of a variety of ritualized contexts (individual worship, domestic architecture, territorial-cult celebrations, pilgrimages, imperial rituals), I propose that Skinner’s framework nonetheless possesses potential insights regarding how emic spatial imagination figures in the production of these subjectivities. This juxtaposition of emic and etic vantages, on the one hand, troubles the distinction between ideology and social reality, but on the other hints at an encompassing theoretical synthesis.

G. William Skinner提出將中國視為具有套疊性階層之區域（「人類互動」）系統的複雜研究，徹底顛覆了爾後我們對所謂「中國」的時間與空間層面上的理解。Skinner研究所體現出來的巨大的空間性的想像力，得自於明確的「客觀主及行為主義」（「objectivist-cum-behavioralist」）觀點。Skinner認為，在多數情形下，主位（emic）觀點----例如地方性認同、官僚系統結構、社會經濟流動----皆反映了「自然系統」（即主要基於經濟理性決策，但又受到政治控制與榨取的邏輯）。空間想像具有重要性，但在主體性的儀式建構上是非常不一樣的一件事（廣義來說，這是從Judith Butler《權力的精神生活》中所發展而來的）。基於對各種儀式化脈絡的分析（個人信仰、家內建築、地方信仰慶典、繞境、國家祀典），我認為Skinner的架構仍能幫助我們來討論，主位的空間想像如何在建構主體性過程中發揮作用。這裡將主位與客位（etic）並列的好處是，一方面對意識形態與社會現實間的區分提出詰問，同時也暗示了一個涵蓋更廣的理論性的統合。