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【英国 Spiked 北京2008系列 之七】西藏抗议：把“我”放入国际主义
【标题】Tibet protests: putting the ‘I’ in internationalism 西藏抗议：把“我”放入国际主义
【来源】http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/article/5563/
【翻译】dakelv
【声明】本文翻译仅限Anti-CNN使用，转载请注明译者及出处。
【译注】本文是Spiked Online 的 “2008北京：挑战对中国的污蔑”系列文章之七。
【原文】
Tibet protests: putting the ‘I’ in internationalism
The arrest of four Free Tibet protesters in Beijing shows that Tibet still fulfills the fantasies of posh, disillusioned Westerners.
Tim Black
It looks like posh Brits have found something to do in Beijing this summer besides dressage and coxless pairs. That’s right, the banner-drop ‘free Tibet’ protest - all the toff kids are at it.
Just this Wednesday, Edinburgh-based Iain Thom, helped by Lucy Fairbrother, the daughter of a former Baring’s Bank Director, plus two Americans, Phill Bartell and Tirian Mink, successfully scaled 120ft lighting poles outside Beijing’s Bird’s Nest Stadium and unfurled some agit-prop for gleeful consumption by Western media. ‘Tibet will be free’ one banner announced in Chinese. Another parodied the Beijing Olympics tagline: ‘One World, One Dream, Free Tibet.’
The British press has lapped it up: ‘Graduate Activists who humbled might of China’s Security Forces’; ‘Britons brave China’s wrath to stage protest about Tibet’ came the headlines (1). It seems that it’s not just in sport that the image of the plucky Brit has resonance.
Their fate, however, with the Olympic Games so close, was never really in doubt. Arrested and deported before you could say ‘China is using the Olympics to ingratiate itself with the global community’, both Iain and Lucy are back home now, able to bask in the warm glow of sanctimony. And bask they certainly are: supporters have been cheering; reporters have been gushing; and their parents are just beaming (2).
‘I am very proud of him’, Iain’s father Brian told BBC Radio 4’s The World At One programme (3). Brian, however, has appeared a bit of a shrinking violet compared with the one-woman PR campaign of Lucy’s mum, Linda Fairbrother, a TV presenter: ‘Lucy has been involved with Students for a Free Tibet for quite a long time’, she told one newspaper, ‘and, although as a parent I am very concerned about the consequences and implications of being detained, I support her fighting for the freedom and democracy of Tibet.’ (4)
It comes to something when youthful protest gains enthusiastic establishment approval. And when it’s your parents, that should really give the game away. What it shows is that while some rebellion, such as seeking the removal of British state forces from Northern Ireland, for instance, might still be beyond the establishment pale, seeking the independence of Tibet is not. Little wonder Linda Fairbrother felt Lucy was a chip off the old (no doubt counter-cultural) block: ‘she is doing what she feels is right, and what I feel is right.’ (5)
‘Doing what I feel is right.’ Such all too deeply felt and conviction-heavy rhetoric has been to the fore in the pro-Tibet protests. While dangling from his Beijing lighting pole, Thom’s recorded message struck the same strangely self-aggrandising tone: ‘I’m here today because I’ve been a long-term Tibet activist and I feel like now is a really critical time for Tibet…’ (6) Notice how he talks about himself more than Tibetans - because these protests are about making ‘me’ feel morally superior rather than winning freedom for anyone.
While there’s no doubting Thom’s sincerity, there’s also no mistaking its self-dramatising nature: ‘We know that change only occurs when people of conscience openly confront injustice, and as the Chinese government has done everything in its power to silence Tibetan voices at this critical moment, it is imperative that global citizens speak out.’ (7)
A person of conscience? A global citizen? Some citizens, it often seems, are more global than others: it’s difficult to imagine a Chinese national draping a Free Northern Ireland banner from Big Ben. This is internationalism all right, but of the missionary variety rather than the socialist. Abstracted from anything like common material interest and shared struggle, to claim solidarity with Tibetans is nothing more than a parade of one’s superior ability to sympathise, a grand ‘I feel your pain’ gesture. It is a parade of preening compassion, an X-Factor for the self-righteous.
Not that the protesters would see it that way. For them, Tibetans really do appear as kindred spirits, and Tibet itself a magical kingdom. Since James Hilton’s Lost Horizon in 1933, with its depiction of the mythical Himalayan utopia Shangri-la, Tibet has long been the object of disillusioned Westerners’ fantasies. And the greater the disillusionment – and lets face it, there aren’t many celebrating modernity, capitalist or not, these days – the more attractive a reified notion of Tibet seems. Contrasted with what is perceived as the vacuous materialism and soulless consumerism of Western society, the idealised feudalism of Tibet, rich in mysticism and enchantment, becomes a promised land, a retro-future purged of all the foul-tasting fruits of modernity. The People’s Liberation Army’s defeat of the Tibetan army in 1950 was nothing less than the fall of paradise in some Westerners’ eyes.
If that seems crudely simplistic, that’s because it is. As Brendan O’Neill showed in a dissection of a Free Tibet campaign postcard, which depicted the Chinese as slitty-eyed automatons and the Tibetans as expressive, soulful humans, such a naive, simplified view of a complex situation pervades the pro-Tibet lobby (see Slitty eyes and buck teeth? It must be China, by Brendan O’Neill).
That it does so is because China’s occupation of Tibet has a largely metaphorical significance for the pro-Tibet lobby groups. China appears as the embodiment of rapacious Godless modernity, an unthinking menace to the spiritually soaked culture of Tibet. For example Free Tibet UK’s opposition to the Gormo-Lhasa railway turned on its threat to ‘wipe out Tibetan identity and culture altogether’ (8). The Students for a Free Tibet group articulates similar sentiments. Talking of China’s tellingly entitled ‘Western Development plan’, a scheme that will involve ‘natural resource extraction, large-scale infrastructure projects and population resettlement’, they argue that it will ‘erase existing economic, socio-cultural, and political divisions between eastern and western China’.
Erasure of socio-cultural divisions; wiping out of Tibetan Identity and Culture… what is at stake for pro-Tibetan protesters is not the self-determination of the Tibetans themselves, but a paradisical notion of Tibet, produced and reified in the West.
The tragedy of the pro-Tibetan lobby is that it threatens the very thing it pays lip-service to, namely freedom and democracy. By restricting freedom to the special, fetishised category of ‘Tibet’, they undermine the struggle for self-determination elsewhere. For freedom, if it is to be freedom at all, can only be a universal, not a petty, cultural category. But with no other objective than the celebration of an ossified, fetishised culture, the pro-Tibet lobby turns the Tibetans from potential subjects of liberation into objects of pity. As for the rest of China, well, it seems they’re not worth thinking about.
Tim Black is senior writer at spiked.
(1) See Graduate activists who humbled might of China’s security forces, The Times, 7 August 2008; Britons brave China’s wrath to stage protest about Tibet, Indpendent, 7 August 2008
(2) British activists return home as heroes, Indpendent, 8 August 2008
(3) Tibet protester’s father tells of pride over son’s actions, Guardian, 6 August 2008-08-08
(4) Bankers daughter arrested in Beijing protest, Evening Standard, 6 August 2008-08-08
(5) Tibet Demo Britons to be deported, Guardian, 7 August 2008
(6) Long record of protests by Scot arrested over Beijing Olympic stunt, Scotsman 7 August 2008
(7) Free Tibet activists arrive home after bold banner action in Beijing, Free Tibet 2008, 7 August 2008
(8) See Slitty eyes and buck teeth? It must be China, by Brendan O’Neill
(9) See Students for a Free Tibet website here
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【译文】
西藏抗议：把“我”放入国际主义 【译注：英文的国际主义（internationalism) 里含有“I"（“我”）这个字母。】
四个自由西藏抗议者在北京的被捕说明了西藏仍然在满足着那些养尊处优但却心灰意冷的西方人的幻想。
作者：Tim Black
看来今年夏天在北京，那些优雅的英国人除了驯马和划双人单桨艇外，又找到了其他消遣。是的，这就是以悬挂标语为方式的“自由西藏”抗议活动 -- 所有的富家子弟都在忙着做这件事。
就在本周三，来自爱丁堡的Iain Thom, 在前Baring 银行行长的女儿Lucy Fairbrother和另外两个美国人PhillBartell 和 TirianMink的帮助下，成功地登上了北京鸟巢外的120英尺高的照明灯杆，并把一些煽动性的宣传物展现在西方媒体面前，任其愉快地享用。一副标语用中文写道：“西藏将自由”。另外一副标语模仿奥运的口号：“同一个世界，同一个梦想，自由西藏。”
英国媒体充分地享受着这一事件：“大学生活跃分子使中国安全部队相形见绌”和“英国人不顾中国的愤怒举行西藏抗议活动”之类的标题充斥着媒体的头条。看起来勇敢的英国人不只是在体育比赛上才有共鸣。
Iain Thom 和 Lucy Fairborther回到英国后在西藏旗前合影。
然而，在奥运将至之际，他们的命运是可想而知的。还没来得及喊出“中国用奥运来迎合国际社会”的口号，Iain 和 Lucy就被拘捕并驱逐出境。现在两人都已回家，可以沐浴在伪圣人的温暖光环之下了 --事实也确实如此：支持者们欢呼着；记者们蜂拥而至；他们的父母也感到异常喜悦（2）。
“我感到非常骄傲，” Iain的父亲Brian 对BBC广播4台的《世界一点钟》节目说（3）。然而，和Lucy那位单枪匹马地进行公关活动的母亲 Linda Fairbrother比起来，Brian 就像一朵枯萎的紫罗兰。Lucy那位身为电视解说员的母亲说：“Lucy从事‘自由西藏学生’运动已经有很长时间了，‘她对一家报纸说，“而且，虽然身为一个母亲我十分担心她受拘役的后果，我支持她为西藏的自由和民主而斗争。”
当年轻幼稚的抗议活动得到权威的热情首肯的时候，这就意味着意味深长了；而当这权威是你的父母时，这背后的本质就昭然若揭了。这里所体现的是，当某种叛逆行为，比如试图让英国从北爱尔兰撤出国家军队的举动，也许仍然让当权者不能接受时，寻求西藏独立却完全不同。当 LindaFairbrother 感觉Lucy是有其母必有其女时（毫无疑问这家庭的衣钵是反文化的。）我们丝毫不感到奇怪：“她在做她认为是正确的事情，也是我们认为是正确的事情。”（5）。
“做我认为是正确的事。”这种感受深刻而又非常果断的辞藻一直体现在支持西藏的抗议活动的前沿。当悬挂在北京的照明灯杆上时，Thom的录音也有着这种奇怪的自以为是的语调：“我今天在这里是因为我一直是西藏活跃人士，而且我感觉现在对于西藏来说是一个非常关键的时期。。。”（6） 请注意，在这里他谈自己胜过谈论西藏人 --这是因为这些抗议活动是为了使“我”有道德上的优越感，而不是为任何人赢得自由。
虽然我们不能怀疑Thom的本意，我们同时也非常清楚地看到这种本意的戏剧性本质：“我们知道，只有有良心的人公开对抗不公的时候，现实才会改变。在这中国政府尽其所能压制西藏人的声音的关键时刻，全球公民必须发出自己的声音。”（7）
一个有良心的人？一个全球公民？某些公民通常看起来要比别人更“全球化”：我们很难想象一个中国人会在大本钟上悬挂“自由北爱尔兰”的标语。这确实是国际主义，但是这是属于传教士之类，而不是属于社会主义者的国际主义。置共同的物质利益和共同斗争于不顾，却去声明对西藏人的声援，这只不过是夸耀自己具有同情别人的优越能力，一种“我感觉到你的疼痛”之类的高姿态而已。这是对精心装扮的怜悯的夸耀，是一个伪善的不确定因素。并不是说抗议者会这样看。对于他们来说，西藏人确实看起来是志同道合的，而且西藏本身也是个奇妙的王国。自从1933年詹姆斯·希尔顿写了《失落的地平线》一书后，他对于神话般的喜马拉雅乌托邦香格里拉的描述，使西藏一直成为心灰意冷的西方人幻想的目标。这种幻灭感越深（让我们直接面对这样的事实吧，那就是当今很少有人赞美现代化，不论这种现代化是否是资本主义的），具体化的西藏就越有吸引力。与人们眼中的西方社会空虚的物质主义和无灵魂的消费主义相比，理想化的封建主义的西藏富有神秘的魔力，因而成为一个希望的土地和一个一个了无任何现代化恶果的怀旧式的未来。1950年中国人民解放军对西藏叛乱的平定对于某些西方人来说不啻是一次失乐园。
如果这听起来简单得到露骨的程度的话，那是因为就是这么简单。 BrendanO'Neill曾对一个自由西藏运动的明信片进行了详细分析，在这张明信片上，中国人被画成是长着眯缝眼的机器人，而西藏人则是富有表情的有灵魂的人类。这种对于一个复杂局势天真、简单化的看法充斥着支持西藏的游说运动（见BrendaO'Nell “眯缝眼，大板牙？那肯定是中国 ”【译注：这篇文章未翻译成中文。】一文）。
这是因为对于支持西藏的运动组织来说，中国对西藏的占领有一种象征意义。中国看起来是贪婪的没有精神内涵的现代化的代表，是对于浸淫于精神文化之中的西藏的一种鲁莽的威胁。例如英国自由西藏组织反对格尔木-拉萨铁路，因为这个铁路会“彻底消灭西藏的个性和文化”（8）。“学生自由西藏”组织也表达了一种类似的情绪。当谈论中国用意明显的“西部开发计划” -- 一个牵扯到“开发自然资源，大规模基础设施建设项目和人口再安置”的计划--时，他们说这个计划将“消除中国西部和东部现有的经济、社会文化和政治上的不同。”
消灭社会文化差别；消灭西藏的个性和文化。。。对于支持西藏的抗议者来说，收到威胁的不是西藏人的自决权，而是西方人创造并使之具体化的伊甸园般的西藏。
那些支持西藏游说组织的悲剧在于，它们正是自己所鼓吹的自由和民主的最大威胁。通过把自由限制在特殊的、偶像化的“西藏”范畴，它们也使其他地区的自决斗争受到破坏。因为自由，真正的自由，只能是带有普遍性的，而不是局限于一个小的文化范畴内。但是支持西藏的游说组织除了赞美一个僵化的、偶像化的文化之外，没有别的目的，因而它们也把西藏人从一个可能被解放的对象变成了一个被怜悯的对象。而对于中国其他地方的人们来说，西藏人根本不值当他们去为之伤脑筋。
Time Black 是spiked的高级撰稿人。
[ 本帖最后由 dakelv 于 2008-9-15 00:02 编辑 ] |
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狗仔卡
发表于 2008-9-15 14:01
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不是一点点的SB!