時尚．身體．現代性創傷(3/3)

Abstract

「現代性」作為一種現代城市經驗與物質文化的感知模式而言，跳脫了原有 強調政治經濟結構面的「現代化」與偏重文學藝術表現的「現代主義」之討論 框架，為當代學界的批評論述帶來一番蓬勃的新氣象，而「時尚」更成為城市 現代性討論中最重要的視覺隱喻與物質實踐。本研究計畫便是企圖以「時尚即 創傷」的角度，切入當前有關「中國現代性」的研究，以1840-1949 年為歷史 區段，探討百年以來服飾時尚變遷作為近現代中國的「創傷表面」，以及此時尚 變遷所引發的各種「身體徵候」。 從中國近現代風雨飄搖的歷史觀之，時尚作為一種「多重決定」的國族符 號，不論是中衣西穿、西衣中穿、男服女穿、女服男穿、內衣外穿、外衣內穿 所呈現的鬼魅性，或是旗袍、中山裝所展示的雜種性，皆涉及國族建構表意系 統的浮動不確定性，也涉及國族想像認同中相斥相吸、外射內納、交疊纏繞的 影像與幻象。 而同時在中國現代性主體的建構過程中，時尚反覆牽動著服飾文化差異表 面所造成的「恥辱經驗」與「自卑與自大情結」，更以其細節與官能的敏感，由 「符號的物質性」穿刺「身體的物質性」，在身體表面以各種「置移」與「換喻」 的方式流竄，造成中國／西方、傳統／現代、意識／潛意識、字義／譬喻、身 體／衣服的層次塌陷，而引發各種焦慮、偏執、戀物、色盲、噎疾、皮膚病等 身體徵候。換言之，此研究計畫所要探討的，便是近現代中國人如何將國仇家 恨穿在身上，如何將奇恥大辱化為現代性主體的時尚身體建構。

As a mode of perception strongly related to modern urban experience and material culture, “modernity” has successfully re-energized a new wave of scholarly analysis by breaking the conceptual boundaries of “modernization” as the effect of an industrializing economy and “modernism” as a study of high art and literature. Fashion as the central visual metaphor and material practice of urban modernity, inevitably, becomes one of the major defining features of this new wave. This three-year research project aims at exploring the formation of Chinese urban modernity from 1840 to 1949 in light of fashion as the traumatic surface. Judged from the turbulent history of modern China, the changes of sartorial style stand as an over-determined sign of nation-building and the constant inter-cultural and cross-gender dressing creates an atmosphere of disorder and chaos. The forced incorporation of the Western style entails a radical body (de)formation of Chinese modernity. No matter it is Western clothing dressed in the Chinese way or vice versa, or clothing worn inside/out or outside/in, no matter it is cheongsam or Sun Yet-sen suit, the uncanny and hybrid fashion of Chinese modernity presents not only the fluctuating signifying system of nation-building, but also the phantasmagoric introjections and projections, identification and desire of China’s mirrored relationship with the West. This project thus traces and evaluates the ambivalent and complex role played by sartorial fashion in the transformation of Chinese nation-state to foreground how the materiality of the sign penetrates the materiality of the body and how the shame experience and inferiority/superiority complex help to create the gendered subjectivity. It tries to map out in sartorial details the traumatic surface of the modern Chinese subject created by the mechanism of displacement and metonymy when the dualistic concepts of China/the West, tradition/modernity, consciousness/unconsciousness, the literal/the figural, body/clothing are all collapsed together.