食人族、修辞与福音书--从海洋文学等看英国社会对南太平洋及加勒比岛屿土著的想像

摘要

Cannibal tales were widely spread in the colonial era of the UK. They had been recorded in novels, history books and letters of missionaries and logs of navigators. Before the 1820s, the British imagination of Cannibals was mainly related to the natives in the South Pacific and the Caribbean islands, and missionaries across the sea from England were the fabricators of cannibal stories. As the imagination and narration of colored people(heretics) by white race (Christians), Cannibal is in fact a symbol, which expresses the differences of races in colonial discourse and reflects the complex psychological fear and desire of the British and even Europeans for the oversea world. In essence, cannibal is a figure of speech invented by the imperial cultural elites for the imperial overseas colonial business. Just as the spread of Gospel in the colonial era, the political function of cannibal tales has far greater influences than the narrative function of them.%食人族传说在殖民时代的英国流布很广，作家小说、史学家著作、传教士信件和航海家日志都有记载。19世纪50年代前，英国社会想像的“食人族”主要是南太平洋及加勒比岛屿的土著居民，渡海宣教的传教士是食人族故事的主要编造者。作为白色人种（基督徒）对有色人种（异教徒）的想像与言说，“食人族”是殖民话语体系中表达种族/文化差异的符号，反映了英国乃至欧洲人对海外世界既渴望又恐惧的复杂心理。本质上，“食人族”是帝国文化精英为国家海外殖民事业所炮制的一个修辞。与殖民时代向外传播的福音书一样，食人族传说的政治功能远远大于文化叙事功能。