當我們談激情主義時，我們談的是什麼？;What Is It We Talk about When We Talk about Sensationalism?

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Title:	當我們談激情主義時，我們談的是什麼？;What Is It We Talk about When We Talk about Sensationalism?
Authors:	司徒尉
Contributors:	英美語文學系
Keywords:	激情主義;美國;印刷文化;十九世紀;閱讀;情感;研究領域：語文
Date:	2011-08-01
Issue Date:	2012-01-17 18:01:56 (UTC+8)
Publisher:	行政院國家科學委員會
Abstract:	激情主義、美國、印刷文化、十九世紀、閱讀、情感。十九世紀印刷文化有兩個術語用來描述情緒，其一是激情主義，另一個是感傷主義。然而，不像隨著Ann Douglas的The Feminization of American Culture出版而成為美國文學與文化研究焦點的感傷主義，激情主義大多被忽視。當然，我們仍使用此術語。基本上，它代表誇大描寫情緒的讀物，其表現手法結合性與暴力的內容和詞彙的操弄。媒體歷史學家認為，在1830年代隨著通俗報業出現的小報呈現激情主義，並在1830年代之後的19世紀隨著醜聞黃色新聞一起興盛。有時論者斷言，激情主義製造感官的反應。然而，這些論者所提到的身體不過是用來點綴對文本及其意義的主張，和身體及其情緒的關聯不大。這樣的論點將激情主義簡約為籠統的身體詞彙。雖然數十年來感傷主義的研究有豐富的論著，激情主義仍是空洞之詞。此計畫有兩個目標。第一是要解釋一個現象：在我們已克服對感傷一詞的偏見，在大家關注媒體所呈現的情感，此時激情主義理應成為優先議題，但為何評論家極少關注激情主義？我探討此現象的因素有兩方面。一方面是和身份認同政治有關的體制因素。因為此政治，我們草率處理種族歧視、女性歧視、本土意識這類的議題，而不把這類議題當作對情感現況合理的反應，但這類議題卻是帶有激情主義之媒體的特色。另一方面是代表激情主義的各種情感(如偏執、淫慾、和厭惡)的特質。如Sianne Ngai所指出，感傷主義的情感(如同情和羞愧)具有救贖的情感，但激情主義的情感卻是不名譽的。因此，後者無法如前者一般受到肯定。第二個目標是為激情主義提供實質內涵。激情主義是「漫長的十九世紀」美國通俗印刷文化的一種形式。所謂的「漫長的十九世紀」指的是美國獨立革命到第一次世界大戰的時期，而第一次世界大戰也是電子媒體開始轉變激情文學市場的年代。獨立後一個半世紀，美國形成民主社會，對於印刷文化如何促進社會轉型，目前已經有新的理解。近年來，人文學科與社會科學情感的研究也有新發現。在方法上，我將少作歷史回顧，多作理論討論。本計劃將著重歷史主義，以範例討論把情感研究的新發現落實於印刷文化與社會轉型的新理解。分析的關鍵將是激情主義如何影響美國人的物質及肉體生活，以及這種影響與感傷文學的關係。雖然感傷主義和激情主義在形式上與歷史上息息相關，但是在所牽涉的情感和社會關聯(尤其是性別和階級的關聯)方面，兩者明顯分歧。Sensationalism is one of two terms commonly used to describe emotion in nineteenth-century print culture. Sentimentalism is the other. Unlike sentimentalism, however, which with the publication of Ann Douglas’s The Feminization of American Culture (1977) became a major preoccupation of U.S. literary and cultural studies, sensationalism has been largely ignored. We still use the term, of course. Typically it signifies reading deemed emotionally inflated, usually through a combination of content (sex, violence) and manipulative rhetoric; a claim is sometimes added that such reading produced a sensate response in readers. Media historians take sensationalism as a defining characteristic of tabloid forms that emerged with the penny press in the 1830s and flowered later in the century with muckraking and yellow journalism. Again, the body is often identified as the object of address. Yet even in analytical work this body serves as little more than window dressing for claims made chiefly about texts and their meanings rather than readers and their emotions. The sensate is reduced to one form or other of vaguely embodied language. While decades of research have produced a remarkably rich literature on sentimentalism, sensationalism remains an all but empty category. This project aims to do two things. The first is to explain why sensationalism has attracted so little attention from critics and theorists long after we overcame bias against the sentimental and at a time when widespread interest in media affect should make it a priority. The reasons I will explore stem from (a) institutional factors related to identity politics that make racism, nativism, and misogyny common to sensationalism easier to dismiss than to treat as a logical response to existing conditions, and (b) the nature of emotions that distinguish sensationalism such as paranoia, prurient interest and disgust. As Sianne Ngai points out, such emotions are low and selfish, and so carry none of the redemptive promise of sympathy and shame, which in being identified with sentimentalism helped to validate it as an object of academic study. The second aim is to provide content for sensationalism as a form of popular print culture in U.S. during what is often called the long nineteenth century, from the Revolution to World War I, when new media (film especially) seriously transformed the sensational marketplace. The approach will not be chronological or descriptive; it will be theoretical with a historicist emphasis, using empirical examples (sensational texts and their consequences) to position what has been learned from the turn to emotion in humanities and social science research within current understanding of the role played by print culture in the formation of the United States as a modern democratic society. Of key concern will be how sensationalism affected the social and material lives of Americans, and how it did so in relation to sentimentalism, which while closely linked formally and historically to sensationalism, diverged notably in its social affiliations (gender, class), and in the emotions its engaged. 研究期間：10008 ~ 10107
Relation:	財團法人國家實驗研究院科技政策研究與資訊中心
Appears in Collections:	[Department of English] Research Project

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