民族國家的想像與測繪：孫中山的「鐵路夢」

Remapping an Imagined Community: On Sun Yat-sen’s Railway Thoughts and Plans

本文主要探討孫中山的鐵路規劃思想與民族國家論述之間的互動對話，考查鐵路規劃這一烏托邦實驗所折射出的思想概念與視覺隱喻對共同體的建構作用。本文第一部分討論孫中山早期的鐵路計劃，及其關於鐵路對於促進共同體形成的思想觀點。一個在地理空間上統一、可感的現代中國形象其實是很晚近的發明，正是藉著孫中山的鐵路規劃而逐漸顯現於歷史的語境中。本文第二部分聚焦於孫中山後期對於全國鐵路系統的規劃與繪圖，特別是製圖學衍生出的視覺隱喻之於現代領土想像的意義。這些圖中的鐵路線路一方面以視覺隱喻的形式加快同質空間的確立，另一方面形成新的知識空間，為想像一種新形式的共同體提供了合法性。本文最後借助對孫中山民族國家學說的反思，比較鐵路與民族主義之間的同構性，揭示民族國家統一、同質的理想訴求背後存在著物與主體的依托。本文認為，孫中山的「鐵路夢」對中華民國這一新的共同體的形成至關重要，其不僅參與了共同體的想像實踐，更是承載實現從天下到國家、從帝國疆域到主權領土、從多元民族到單一國族諸種認識論轉變的重要橋樑。

"This paper examines the interaction between Sun Yat-sen’s railway plans and the emerging discourses of nation-state in early Republican China. It takes Sun’s “railway dream” as an Utopian experiment with substantial ideological significance, revealing the constructive role played by the conceptual frames and visual metaphors of this dream in the formation of a new community. The first section discusses Sun’s early railway plans and his thoughts of railways’ contribution on shaping a new community. An imaginable unified image of modern China on the dimension of geographical space is a very late invention, arising in the historical contexts with the help of Sun’s advocating for railways. The second section focuses on Sun’s mature planning and mapping of a national railway system with its visualization, especially its effects on modern imagination of territories. The visual metaphors of railways set stages for the establishment of homogeneous space and provide legitimacy for a new imagined community. The last section demonstrates a comparative study between nationalism and railways with a reflection on Sun Yat-sen’s thoughts of nation-state. Through revealing the isomorphism relation among them, the paper points out that the desire for an unified and homogeneous nation-state and the demand on a single subject are supported by material and concrete things, namely railways. Based on above, I argue that Sun Yat-sen’s railway thoughts and plans are extremely significant to the shaping of Republican China. Not only does Sun’s “railway dream” involve the practice of imagining a new community, but the dream itself carries many important epistemological shifts, such as from “under Heaven” to nation-state, from imperial regions to sovereign territories, from multiple nationalities to one single subject, etc."