订阅Postmodernism Unpeeled
后现代主义又被剥了皮
作者：David Thompson与Stephen Hicks @ 2009-3-22
译者：沈沉（@你在何地-sxy）
校对：Whig Zhou（@whigzhou）
来源：David Thompson 博客，http://davidthompson.typepad.com/davidthompson/2009/03/postmodernism-unpeeled.html
A discussion with Stephen Hicks.
与Stephen Hicks讨论。
“In politicized forms, then, postmodernists will behave like the stereotypical unscrupulous lawyer trying to win the case: truth and justice aren’t the point; instead using any rhetorical tool or trick that works is the point. Sometimes contradictory lines of argument work. Sometimes your audience’s desire to belong to the in-group can be played upon. Sometimes appearing absolutely authoritative works to camouflage a weak case. Sometimes condescension works.”
“因此，表现在政治形式上，后现代主义者的行为就像是典型的无良律师，一心想着打赢官司：真理和正义不是关键；相反，使用任何能够成功的修辞工具或策略才是关键。有时候相互矛盾的论证方式管用。有时候你的听众渴望自己属于某个小团体，这可以加以利用。有时候要表现得绝对权威，这有助于掩饰一个案子的虚弱。有时候则是纡尊降贵管用。”
Dr Stephen Hicks is Professor of Philosophy and Executive Director of the Centre for Ethics and Entrepreneurship at Rockford College, Illinois. He is co-editor with David Kelley of Readings for Logical Analysis (W. W. Norton, 1998), and has published in academic journals as well as The Wall Street Journal, The Baltimore Sun, and Reader’s Digest. His book Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault was published in 2004 by Scholargy Publishing and is now in its eighth printing. He is the author and narrator of a DVD documentary entitled Nietzsche and the Nazis, which was published in 2006 by Ockham’s Razor Publishing.
Stephen Hicks博士是伊利诺伊斯州罗克福德学院哲学教授、伦理学与企业家精神研究中心执行主任。他曾与David Kelly合作编辑有《逻辑分析读本》（1998），作品发表于众多学术期刊及《华尔街日报》《巴尔的摩太阳报》《读者文摘》等。其著作《解释后现代主义：从卢梭至福柯的怀疑主义与社会主义》于2004年由Scholargy出版社出版，如今已是第八次印刷。他还是题为《尼采与纳粹》的DVD纪录片的作者和解说，该纪录片于2006年由Ockham’s Razor出版社发行。
DT: In an exchange with Ophelia Benson, I mentioned Explaining Postmodernism and suggested one of the book’s main themes is that postmodernism marks a crisis of faith and a retreat from reality among the academic left. Is that a fair, if crude, summary?
DT【译注：即David Thompson，下同】：“在与Ophelia Benson的一次交流中，我提到了《解释后现代主义》一书，并提到，此书的一个主题就是后现代主义标志着一场信仰危机以及学院左派对于现实的一种逃避。这种总结算得上公平吗？即使过于直白。
SH: It is striking that the major postmodernists – Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Jean-François Lyotard, Richard Rorty – are of the far left politically. And it is striking that all four are Philosophy Ph.D.s who reached deeply skeptical conclusions about our ability to come to know reality. So one of my four theses about postmodernism is that it develops from a double crisis – a crisis within philosophy about knowledge and a crisis within left politics about socialism.
SH【译注：即Stephen Hicks，下同】很令人震惊的是，主要的后现代主义者——米歇尔·福柯、雅克·德里达、让—弗朗索瓦·利奥塔、理查德·罗蒂——在政治上都是极左。同样令人震惊的是，这四个哲学博士都得出结论，极度怀疑我们认识实在的能力。所以，我所提出的关于后现代主义的四个主题之一是，它发源于一种双重危机——一面是哲学领域中的知识危机，一面是左派政治领域中的社会主义危机。
DT: It seems to me that in its broadest sense postmodernism is as much a rhetorical device as it is a set of theories and political stances. For instance, Slavoj Žižek can dismiss aspects of postmodern theorising while employing much the same manoeuvres in his own writing. Much of what he says is clever in a rhetorical sense, in terms of manoeuvring around a dubious and unproven premise, while being enormously tendentious or simply glib.
DT：在我看来，最广义而言，后现代主义既是一种修辞工具，也是一套理论和政治立场。比如，斯拉沃热·齐泽克能够在拒绝后现代理论若干方面的同时将同样的操控策略用于自己的写作中。从操控暧昧不明、未经验证的前提这个角度来看，他所说的很多东西从修辞上看非常聪明，但其内容的倾向性却非常明显或干脆就是耍嘴皮子。
If you don’t accept the premise – say, a tarted-up rehash of “false consciousness” or an antipathy towards capitalism – then what follows is unpersuasive, even absurd. Geoffrey Galt Harpham pointed out that Žižek’s essays often disregard conventional argumentative structures in favour of stylistic effects and bald assertion:
如果你不接受其前提——比如，对“虚假意识”的一种改头换面式的打扮或者对资本主义的反感——那么随之推演而来的就不具说服力，甚至荒谬至极。Geoffrey Galt Harpham曾指出，齐泽克的文章经常无视传统的论证结构，喜欢追求文体效果和不加解释地提出断言：
“[E]ven the earnest reader who begins at page one has the constant impression of having opened to a page somewhere in the middle. This sense of an endless middle is achieved by reducing the conventional middle to almost zero. The typical Žižekian unit of discourse – a wittily-titled passage of between five and fifteen pages – begins abruptly with the kind of confident assertion commonly associated with the conclusion; there is no phase of doubt, no pretence of unprejudiced inquiry, only a series of demonstrations, exemplifications, and restatements.”
“即便是最为真诚的读者，刚刚打开第一页，也总是会有一种印象，像是自己翻到了该书中部的某一页一样。制造出这种无休止的中部感的，是他将传统上的中部几乎压缩为零的做法。齐泽克一篇典型论文——5到15页的一段文字，题目机智巧妙——开头总是突兀地提出那种充满自信的断言，通常还跟结论混同在一起；没有怀疑的段落，绝不假装自己要做无偏见的探讨，只有一系列展示、举例和重申。”
Bold yet unsupported claims are pretty much a signature of Žižek’s output -and of postmodernist writing more generally -and this is tolerated, indeed championed, by his more cultish admirers. What seems to matter is a “provocative” conclusion, at least of a certain kind, not how that conclusion was arrived at or whether it can be justified.
大胆而没有支撑的断言，几乎就是齐泽克作品的标志——也是更一般的后现代主义者作品的标志——而这得到了他那些狂热崇拜者的宽容、实际上是支持。对于他们来说，重要的是“令人振奋的”结论，至少是某种类别的此种结论，而不是如何得出这一结论或它是否可靠。
For instance, we’re told that fundamentalist Islam constitutes a “site of resistance” from which “one can deploy critical doubts about today’s society.” Yet “today’s society” – i.e. Western, liberal, capitalist society – is questioned openly, at length, and as a matter of routine – more so, I’d guess, than any other society in history. However, the societies envisioned by enthusiasts of fundamentalist Islam don’t seem likely to foster similar reflection or dissent; nor do they seem likely to equip their inhabitants with the tools of such endeavours. Yet these basic considerations don’t delay Žižek in his rush to assert.
比如，我们被告知，伊斯兰原教旨主义构成了一个“反抗地”，从此出发“人们可以对今日社会加以批判性的怀疑”。然而，“今日社会”——即西方，自由资本主义社会——经常公开地、详尽地、司空见惯地遭到质疑——程度超过历史上的任何社会，我想。可是，伊斯兰原教旨主义的狂热分子所设想的社会不太可能鼓励类似的反思或异议；他们也不太可能赋予其居民以从事这种事业的工具。但是，这些基本的考虑并不会耽误齐泽克匆忙提出其断言。
SH: Pomo is rhetoric-heavy, yes. But rhetoric is a tool, so one can ask how it’s being used and why it’s being used that way. The postmodernists have rejected reason, and along with it concern for evidence and consistency. What then is the purpose of rhetoric? In pomo practice, there are a couple of possibilities.
SH：是的，后现代确实修辞繁复。但修辞是个工具，所以人们可以追问，它是被怎样使用使用的，以及为什么要这样使用。后现代主义者已经拒斥理性，连带着也拒斥了对于证据和一致性的关心。那么，修辞的目的是什么？在后现代实践中，有多种可能的回答。
One is that rhetoric becomes a kind of subjectivist expressionism – you play around with language and hope that something interesting pops out. Derrida is often like this – I think of him as a performance artist of postmodernism. In its darker moods, this approach recalls a line from Kate Ellis, a sympathetic-to-postmodernism commentator, who noted “the characteristically apolitical pessimism of most postmodernism, by which creation is simply a form of defecation.” Whatever’s been processing and churning up inside you – you just let ‘er rip.
一是修辞成为一种主观主义的表现主义——你摆弄语词，期待有啥有意思的东西自己跳出来。德里达经常就像是这样——我把他看作是一个后现代主义的行为艺术家。如果这种路径的基调更为阴郁一些，那就会让人想起Kate Ellis说过的一句话，Ellis是一个同情后现代主义的评论家，她提到过“绝大多数后现代主义中典型的非政治的悲观主义，这种悲观主义认为创作只不过是排泄的一种形式”。不管你体内正在处理、正在搅拌的都是些什么——你只管有屁快放。
The other use of rhetoric is politically-charged persuasion. Pomo rhetoric becomes long on emotionalism, ad hominem, and so on, and it becomes short on logic and evidence. But the point of such rhetoric is effectiveness, not truth.
修辞的另外一种用法是作为一种充满政治意味的劝服。后现代主义修辞富于感情主义、以情动人等等，同时缺乏逻辑和证据。但这类修辞的关键是有效性，而非真实性。
You mention that much pomo political rhetoric is anti-capitalist and champions unlikely causes such as fundamentalist Islam. Here the pomo are taking a page out of Lenin’s and Marcuse’s playbooks. There’s a long-ish story here that I talk about in Chapter 5 of Explaining Postmodernism: Traditional Marxism said that capitalism would collapse from the inside (the exploited and alienated workers would rise); but when that didn’t happen, Marxists theorized that capitalism had exported its misery to the Third World (Lenin’s idea) or to outcast and marginalized subcultures (Marcuse’s idea). So the new strategy was to cultivate the anti-capitalist resistance in those places.
你提到，众多后现代的政治言说都反对资本主义且支持如伊斯兰原教旨主义之类的无望事业。这是后现代在利用列宁和马尔库塞的一部分剧本。这里有个略微有点长的故事，我在《解释后现代主义》第五章曾谈及：传统的马克思主义提出，资本主义将会从内部瓦解（遭到剥削和异化的工人会站起来）；但这事没有发生，于是马克思主义者就提出一个理论，认为资本主义已经将其不幸输出到了第三世界（列宁的观点）或者输出到了“被排斥者”和被边缘化的亚文化群体中（马尔库塞的观点）。所以，新的策略应是在这些地方培育反对资本主义的抵抗运动。
Like other pomo of this generation, Žižek is an evolving combination of the above.
跟这一代后现代的其他人一样，齐泽克是以上几种情形逐步发展出来的结合。
DT: You say, “The postmodernists have rejected reason, and along with it concern for evidence and consistency,” and I suspect some readers will find this hard to accept. It sounds outlandish. But, as you point out in the book, Lyotard explicitly rejected notions of truth and clarity as being synonymous with “prisons and prohibitions.”
DT: 你提到，“后现代主义者已经拒斥理性，连带着也拒斥了对于证据和一致性的关心。”我怀疑有些读者可能觉得这种说法难以接受。听起来很稀奇。但是，正如你在书中指出的，利奥塔明确拒绝了真理和清晰这两个概念，认为它们与“监狱和禁令”是同义词。
Foucault shared these sentiments, claiming “reason is the ultimate language of madness,” suggesting that nothing should constrain our beliefs and political preferences, not even logic or evidence. Frank Lentricchia, another left-wing theorist, said the postmodern movement “seeks not to find the foundation and conditions of truth, but to exercise power for the purpose of social change.”
福柯也持有这种观点，宣称“理性就是疯癫的终极语言”，认为我们的信念和政治倾向不应该受到任何东西的拘束，即便是逻辑或证据的拘束也不行。弗兰克·伦特恰瓦，又一个左翼理论家，曾说后现代运动“并不打算找出真理的基础和条件，而是要通过行使权力来致力于社会改造。”
And Stanley Fish, who rushed to defend Social Text after the Sokal hoax, had previously argued that theorising and deconstruction “relieves me of the obligation to be right … and demands only that I be interesting.” There is a pattern here.
而在“索卡尔恶作剧”【译注：物理学家Alan Sokal曾瞎写一篇充满后现代味道但胡话连篇的论文，成功发表在著名文化研究杂志《社会文本》上，然后将实情公开。】之后匆忙跳出来为《社会文本》杂志辩解的斯坦利·费什，之前则曾争辩说，建立理论和进行解构“将我从保持正确的义务中解放出来……只要求我是有趣的。”这里确实存在一种普遍模式。
SH:It is hard to accept the rejection of reason, especially if you’re outside of academic circles, but it’s no secret inside. You nicely quote some representative statements – it’s also worth noting that the leading pomo thinkers cite Nietzsche, Heidegger, and the Existentialists as their forerunners, and the rejection of reason runs deep in those lines of thought too.
SH：说他们拒斥理性，这种判断很难接受，特别是如果你身在学术圈以外，但在学术圈内这不是什么秘密。你引用的这几个有代表性的陈述就很精到——同样值得注意的是，后现代思想家中的领军人物经常引尼采、海德格尔和存在主义者为其先驱，在这类思想脉络中，对理性的拒斥也是根深蒂固的。
DT: A while ago, I quoted a chunk of Derrida prose that’s hilarious nonsense. I’ve defied several Derrida enthusiasts to explain what this particular passage means, or might mean if you squint and tilt your head, but so far no-one has managed to tell me.
DT：不久前，我曾引用过德里达的一段文章，那就是一段可笑的胡说八道。我拿着它去挑衅过几个德里达粉，让他们解释这段话的意思，或者如果你作眯眼翘首状，那在你的理解中它可能是什么意思，但迄今为止还没有一个人能回答我。
And the essay from which the quote is taken has numerous, equally baffling, paragraphs which could be arranged in almost any order with no perceptible difference. Much of the essay is wilfully incomprehensible, like some Dadaist prank that no-one dares to mention.
而且我引用的这段话所在的文章中到处可见诸如此类的令人困惑的段落，把它们按任何一个次序排列，你都不会看出有什么差别。文章的大部分是刻意写得难以理解，就像是某种达达主义的玩笑，没人敢于提及。
And there seems to be a taboo against even entertaining the possibility that such a thing could happen, and happen quite often, with little if any protest from colleagues and students. It’s unthinkable that such a con could be perpetrated, and maybe that’s why it goes on happening.
似乎还存在一种禁忌，连设想这种事情会发生并会频繁发生且几乎不会遭到同行和学生的抗议都不行。人们根本不会相信这种欺诈竟然能发生，这可能就是它得以发生的原因。
More recently, in a piece about the art world’s reliance on postmodernist rhetoric – what’s often called “art bollocks” – I pointed out that the artist Aliza Shvarts was mouthing opaque gibberish while pretending to be profound. The text she’d written and presented as a key part of her art was clumsy, incoherent and often simply meaningless. It was a kind of verbal flailing and rhetorical camouflage. (It’s difficult to determine exactly how wrong an unintelligible analysis is.)
最近，在一篇讨论艺术界对后现代主义修辞——经常被成为“艺术扯淡”——的依赖的文章中，我指出，艺术家Aliza Shvarts所夸夸其谈的，都是些晦涩的胡扯，她还装作很深刻。她所写的、作为其艺术的关键组成部分的那些文本词不达意、文理不通并且多数全无意义。那就是一种词汇抽搐和修辞伪装。（我们很难确定一则莫名其妙的分析到底有多少错误。）
One postmodernist commenter took exception to my criticism – first by accusing me of arguing things I clearly wasn’t arguing, then by saying I was holding “entrenched positions” in which “aesthetic values” (in scare quotes), “scientific reality/clarity” (again, in scare quotes) and my own “reliance on logical consistency” (ditto) were obstacles to comprehension. Specifically, they were obstacles to comprehending Shvarts’ alleged (but oddly unspecified) “arguments of power, control [and] dominance.” The tone was, of course, condescending and self-satisfied. I’m guessing the commenter in question didn’t pause to consider the possibility that one might find pomo bafflegab objectionable precisely because it represents the “power, control [and] dominance” of what amounts to a priestly caste.
有个后现代主义评论家对我的批评提出异议——首先是指责我所争辩的是我明显并未在争辩的事情，接着说我持有“根深蒂固的立场”，且其中的“美学价值”（此处加讽刺引号）、“科学实在/清晰”（再加讽刺引号）及我自己对“逻辑一致性的依赖”（同上符号）都是理解能力的阻碍。特别是，它们阻碍了我理解Shvarts那些据称（但奇怪的是并没有具体指出来）“充满力量、控制及支配力的论证”。这一批评的语调自然是高人一等、自鸣得意。我猜我所说的这个评论家可能都不曾想过，人们之所以觉得后现代黑话难以接受，有可能就是因为它代表了一个相当于祭祀阶级的群体的“权力、控制和支配力”。
SH: A lot of what you’re getting from your various commentators seems like third-raters playing the game, so it’s probably not worth focusing on them – instead of attending to the lessons they’re learning from the leading pomo strategists.
SH: 你从针对你的各种不同评论家那里获得的，就像是一群三流玩家在玩游戏，所以他们可能并不值得去关注——不如去注意他们都在学习的那些最重要的后现代战略家的教义。
Another clue is that some postmodernists prefer “neo-pragmatist.” Rorty, Fish, and many of the legal postmodernists sometimes use that label. Pragmatism as a school of thought thinks of knowledge, truth, and certainty as chimerical quests and suggests that we focus our efforts on what works.
另外一条线索是，某些后现代主义者喜爱“新实用主义”。罗蒂、费什和许多法律后现代主义者有时会使用这个标签。实用主义这一思想学派认为知识、真理和确定性都是虚假问题，建议我们把自己的努力集中到真正起作用的东西上来。
In politicized forms, then, postmodernists will behave like the stereotypical unscrupulous lawyer trying to win the case: truth and justice aren’t the point; instead using any rhetorical tool or trick that works is the point. Sometimes contradictory lines of argument work. Sometimes your audience’s desire to belong to the in-group can be played upon. Sometimes appearing absolutely authoritative works to camouflage a weak case. Sometimes condescension works. And so on.
因此，表现在政治形式上，后现代主义者的行为就像是典型的无良律师，一心想着打赢官司：真理和正义不是关键；相反，使用任何能够成功的修辞工具或策略才是关键。有时候，相互矛盾的论证方式管用。有时候你的听众渴望自己属于某个小团体，这可以加以利用。有时候要表现得绝对权威，这有助于掩饰一个案子的虚弱。有时候则是纡尊降贵管用。如此等等。
DT: I suppose, then, “neo-pragmatism” is often a euphemism for “bad faith,” or “rhetorical authoritarianism”?
DT: 因此，我想，“新实用主义”通常就是“毫无诚信”或“修辞独断”的委婉语吗？
SH: Not necessarily. Some neo-pragmatists take the milder position that truth is hard, our data always partial, and the world always evolving – and so rather than obsessing about truth we should be flexible and focus on working hypotheses and workable results. Susan Haack comes to mind here. That doesn’t have to be bad faith or authoritarianism. But other neo-pragmatists do push hard on the skepticism-about-truth button, as Rorty does, and that takes them into postmodernism.
SH: 并不必然如此。某些新实用主义者采取更为温和的立场，认为真理很难，我们的资料总是不全，而且世界总在变化——所以我们不能执迷于真理，而应更加灵活，专注于可行的假说和可用的结果。这里，我想到的就是苏珊·哈克。这就不一定会是毫无诚信或独断主义。但其他新实用主义者，如罗蒂做的那样，确实会使劲地按住这个“对真理持怀疑主义”的按钮不放，而这就会令其陷入后现代主义。
DT: It’s interesting to contrast Explaining Postmodernism with some of the material you criticise. The writing is always clear, even when you’re dealing with quite detailed and knotty concepts or loaded obscurantism. I suppose some pomo theorists might consider your prose “unproblematic,” which is a pejorative, apparently.
DT: 如果把《解释后现代主义》一书与你所批评的一些材料对比一下，就很有意思。你的写作总是清晰的，即便是在处理非常微妙且棘手的概念或者意味深长的玄虚隐晦时也是如此。我想，有些后现代理论家会认为你的文章“没有疑问”，而且显然用的是贬义。
Writing in Innovations of Antiquity, Ralph Hexter and Daniel Selden dismissed “transparent prose” as “the approved mode of expression for the society and values of the newly empowered middle class.” In the Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Mas’ud Zavarzadeh denounced “unproblematic prose and clarity of presentation” as “the conceptual tools of conservatism.”
在《古代之创新》中，Ralph Hexter和Daniel Selden将“清晰的文章”拒斥为“得到社会以及刚刚获得权力的中产阶级的价值观批准的表达方式”。在《美学与艺术批评杂志》上，Mas’ud Zavarzadeh贬斥“没有疑问的文章和清晰的表述”，认为它们都是“保守主义的概念工具”。
The rejection of transparency as “conservative” is particularly odd, since transparency makes a claim amenable to broad critical enquiry, and thus public correction. Without transparency, what do we have? A private language shared only by likeminded peers, in which one is “free” to assert, largely unopposed? Is that really a marker of progress?
将清晰拒斥为“保守”，这一点特别怪异，因为清晰性使得一个断言能够经受广泛的批判性考察，因而能够得到公众的纠正。没有清晰性，我们还有什么？只有一种私人语言，由几个想法相近的同类来分享，人们可以“自由”断言，基本上说不会遭遇反驳？这真是进步的标志吗？
In the essay linked above, Keith Windschuttle names various academics and educational advisors who claim that truth and reality are “authoritarian weapons” and that disinterested scholarship is merely “an ideological position” favoured by “traditionalists and the political right.”
在上面链接的文章中【译注：大概是指前面提到的Ralph Hexter和Daniel Selden的文章，标题是Truth and Tribalism，不过链接已失效】，Keith Windschuttle列举了许多学术界和教育顾问，他们声称真理和实在都是“专断工具”，而不偏不倚的学术研究则仅仅是“传统主义者和政治右派”所喜爱的“一种意识形态立场”。
This presents a rather handy excuse to dismiss political dissent without having to engage with inconvenient arguments. Presumably, if you prefer arguments that are comprehensible and open to scrutiny, this signals some reactionary tendency and deep moral failing.
这就给人提供了一个顺手的借口，无需通过麻烦的论证，就可以无视政治上的异议。他们假定，如果你偏爱那些能为人所理解、允许人审查的论证，这就标志着某种反动的倾向和深层的道德过失。
On the other hand, if you sneer at such bourgeois trifles, you’re radical, clever and very, very sexy. (Though I wonder what mathematicians and structural engineers would make of this claim. Is there such a thing as a rightwing calculation, or a rightwing bridge – I mean a bridge that’s rightwing because it doesn’t promptly collapse?)
另一方面，如果你会嘲弄这类资产阶级的细枝末节，那你就是激进的、聪明的，而且特别特别性感。（尽管我很想知道数学家和结构工程师会如何看待这一断言。是否存在一种叫做右翼计算的东西？或者是否存在右翼桥梁——我指的是那种因为不会立即倒塌而成其为右翼的桥梁？）
SH: There’s that line from Nietzsche about obscurantists – they muddy the waters to make them appear deep.
SH: 这里有尼采论故弄玄虚者的一句话——他们把水搅浑，以使自己看上去深沉。
But there is a deeper point about form following function, or in this case rhetorical style matching the content of one’s beliefs. The function of language is to express one’s thoughts. If you think truth is possible, then you work hard to understand the world clearly and completely.
但是，形式服从功能——或者在我们当前讨论的问题中即修辞风格对应个人信念内容——还有一层更深的意思。语言的功能就是表达人的思想。如果你认为真理是可能的，那你就会努力争取去清晰、完整地理解世界。
But if you doubt that truth is possible, that has psycho-epistemological consequences: you come to believe that the world is at best fuzzy and your mind incapable of grasping it – you come to believe deep down that all is fractured and disjointed – and your writing will tend to the fuzzy, the fractured, and the disjointed. And in consequence you will come to be suspicious of clarity in others. Clarity, from this perspective, must be an over-simplifying.
但如果你怀疑真理的可能性，那就会引发一些心理-认识论上的后果：你会开始相信，世界最多就是朦胧模糊的，而你的心智无力理解它——你内心深处会相信一切都是破碎的、脱节的——而你的写作就会倾向于模糊、破碎、脱节。结果就是你会开始怀疑他人写作的清晰性。在这种视角看来，清晰必然就是一种过分简化。
And there is a cheap rhetorical variant as well: if the data and the arguments, when presented clearly, are going against you, muddying the waters gives you some breathing room, so to speak.
当然，也存在一种粗劣的修辞形式：如果清晰表述的资料和论证都与你的观点相左，这时把水搅浑一些，可以说，就能给你留点可以呼吸的空间。
DT: How was the book received by defenders of the faith? Was there any serious attempt at refutation by those whose views you criticise?
DT: 这种信仰的捍卫者们是如何看待你的书的？在其观点被你批评过的人中，是否有人真诚地尝试过反驳你？
SH: It’s been well received and reviewed by realist liberals, conservatives, and libertarian intellectuals. From postmodernists, I have received only a few email denunciations.
SH：在现实主义的自由派、保守派和自由意志论知识分子那里，我的书都得到了很好的反响和评论。至于后现代主义者，我只收到过几封谴责性的电邮。
DT: One of the recurrent themes here is the self-inflicted disrepute of large parts of academia. Whether it’s the spread of political lockstep and the consequent intolerance and extremism, or hucksterism and incompetence (and those who champion it), or student “activists” who regurgitate postmodernist clichés while enacting their dreary psychodramas. It seems to me that many of these things are related to the subject of your book. Whether viewed as a set of claims, as a political movement or as a rhetorical device, how would you describe the general fallout of postmodernism?
DT：此处，一个反复出现的论题就是学术界很大一部分人自己给自己造成的声名狼藉。这既表现为政治上的因循守旧及随之而来的不宽容与极端主义，也包括自吹自擂与颟顸无能，还有拾人牙慧的学生“活动分子”，在出演那些做梦一样的心理剧时总是重复后现代主义的陈词滥调。在我看来，许多此类事情都跟你书中的主题有关。不管后现代主义被看做一套主张，还是一种政治运动，还是一种修辞工具，请问你会如何描述其一般后果？
SH: In the shorter term, postmodernism has caused an impoverishment of much of the academic humanities, both in the quality of the work being done and the civility of the debates.The sciences have been less affected and are relatively healthy. The social sciences are mixed.
SH: 短期来看，后现代主义已经导致了众多人文学科的贫乏，不管是说既有成果的质量，还是说学术讨论的礼节。自然科学受影响较小，相对来说更加健康。社会科学居中。
I am optimistic, though, for a couple of reasons. One is that pomo was able to entrench itself in the second half of the twentieth century in large part because first-rate intellectuals were mostly dismissive of it and focused on their own projects. But over the last ten years, after pomo’s excesses became blatant, there has been a vigorous counter-attack and pomo is now on the defensive.
不过，我还是个乐观主义者，理由有好几个。首先是，后现代之所以能在20世纪下半叶变得根深蒂固，很大一部分原因在于一流的知识分子大多不屑于理它，而是专注于他们自己的工作。但过去十年间，在后现代过分猖獗之后，已经出现了一轮强有力的反击，现在后现代已处于守势。
Another reason for optimism is that, as a species of skepticism, pomo is ultimately empty and becomes boring. Eventually intellectually-alert individuals get tired of the same old lines and move on. It is one thing, as the pomo can do well, to critique other theories and tear them down. But that merely clears the field for the next new and intriguing theory and for the next generation of energetic young intellectuals.
另一个保持乐观的原因是，作为怀疑主义的一个类别，后现代最终来说空洞无聊。最终来看，对于智识非常敏感的个体将会厌烦一模一样的陈旧言辞，就会另寻出路。批评其他理论并把他们推翻，这方面后现代可以做得很好，但这只是事情的一个方面。它做到的仅仅是清理了场面，留待下一个新的、有意思的理论出现，留待下一代充满活力的年轻知识分子。
So while the postmodernism has had its generation or two, I think we’re ready for the next new thing – a strong, fresh, and positive approach to the big issues, one that of course takes into account the critical weapons the pomo have used well over the last while.
所以，尽管后现代主义占据了一代或两代人，我想我们已为下一个新事物做好了准备——一种探讨宏大问题的强劲、新鲜、积极的路径，这种路径当然会将后现代在上一阶段中充分使用过的批判武器考虑在内。
It’s a big and interesting world out there. Let the best arguments prevail.
前面是一个无比广阔而有趣的天地。让最好的论证遍布其中吧。
Update: Over at The Augean Stables, Richard Landes has some interesting commentary on the above. Well worth reading.
更新：在The Augean Stables上，Richard Landes对上述内容提出了一些有趣评论，值得一读。
（编辑：辉格@whigzhou）
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