鮑德里亞的冷記憶――語言的不確定


我最初讀冷記憶是在高中時期,那個時候我的世界裡,碎片化的信息還沒有發展得如此瘋狂。因此我並不反感這一系列片段化的思考。時不時我總會想到這系列書,上個星期我去中文書店看到了1995-2000年這一本,正好是我沒看過的,就買了下來。

這些片段的文字的時間性非常明確,因此某一段話並不能代表寫下它的人。因為文字一旦附著在時間線上,就是僵硬而脆弱的,會被使用的人背叛。(這很好理解,我們可以解釋說他在2000年時的確有過這樣的想法,但他現在不這麽想了。)但當語言以聲音的方式被創造出,它一發生即消失不見的性質使它跳脫了時間線,使它成為了不朽的。你無法否認一個已經消失的東西,就像你不能殺死一個死掉的人。因此,我害怕說話。我害怕語言遊走在我看不到的時間以外,隨時使我成為一個背叛者。

我知道我對於文字和語言都用了「背叛」這個詞,但背叛文字是灑脫的,進步的,反叛的,文字只能躺在紙上欣然接受你的背叛。如果你背叛語言,是會被控訴的,會被聲音的回聲追著質問。


脫離了時間線,遊走在時間之中的語言是可怕的。

十三歲的時候,我曾在背後說一個女生很賤,但實際上後來我發現她是一個很好的人,我和她成為了非常親密的朋友。我忘記了為什麼說出這樣惡劣的話,然而這句話和那天響著回音的中學走廊時不時便跳出來刺一下我的心,提醒我自己是一個糟糕的人。而我顯然並不是一個多麼正義的人,我做過不少不以為然的壞事,所以每當良知把這個聲音扔在我的臉上,我都感到十分生氣。

六歲的時候,我的爺爺去世了。他躺在午休時用的窄窄的床上,家裡的幾個人站在一個如此小的房間裡,他們都不說話,沈默的空氣壓在我小小的身體上,我說「爺爺的牙齒好白啊」,還不太明白死亡的我企圖用一個帶點玩笑的句子打破這種沈重。這太荒謬了!有一些時刻應該不被打擾地去感受,以一種優雅而模糊的姿態延續下去。妄想使用語言去打破它更是無力的。


然後你不能再回到那裡去改變任何東西,語言一旦發生,就確認了那個時刻的現實只有一種可能性。現在唯一能做的就是承受這些語言突如其來的侵襲,了解到它不能被抹去,只能等待著、期盼著它的力量越來越小。


下定決心要捍衛沈默的我,看伯格曼的「假面」時受到了極大的震撼,我完全被那個拒絕語言的人給吸引了。她所對抗的是語言的另一方面,是其可能(而且極有可能)導致的誤解和附媚。這是一件多麼可怕的事,語言從你身上發生,好像病毒那樣依附到他人身上,在那些地方或許被徹底無視了,也或許瘋狂滋長,最重要的是當語言從你身上脫離,就不再受到你的控制和影響。但當人們追究其來源的時候,你需要為它負責,哪怕你說的不(再)/(完全)是你所想的。

行為、動作、眼神――通常來說較少有一個明確的意思,並且它們附著在身體上,延續地發生著,因此存活在時間線上――是較為安全的溝通方式。





The Unreliable Language 
Thoughts after reading Cool Memory by Jean Baudrillard


I first read Cool Memory when I was in high school, a time when information fragmentation hadn't grown so furious. For this reason, I am not opposed to this series of fragmentary thoughts. I think about this series from time to time and feel like they are perfect to read on the subway. So I got the Cool Memory Ⅳ, 1995-2000 when I saw it in a Chinese bookstore last week. 

The timeliness of these fragments of text is explicit, and therefore a particular phrase is not representative of the person who wrote it. For words, once attached to the timeline, become rigid and vulnerable, and will be betrayed easily by those who use them. (It can be understood this way: she had this thought in 2000, but she changed her mind and is against it now.) However, when language is produced in the form of sound (spoken form), its nature of vanishing as soon as it occurs makes it jump out of the timeline, it become immortal. You can't deny a thing that has vanished, just as you can't kill a dead man. For this reason, I’m afraid of speaking. I'm afraid of words that wander outside of time, waiting to ambush me and making me a traitor. I use the expression "betray" for both written and spoken language, but the crucial difference is that the betrayal of texts is liberated, innovative, and rebellious, on the other hand, the betrayal of words that have already been spoken, will result in the speaker being accused of hypocrisy by the echo of the sound. 

When I was thirteen, I called a girl a slut behind her back, but later on, I found out she was a very nice person and we became close friends. I forget why I said such a terrible word, but that statement and the echoing middle school hallway just jump out at me now and then. I'm not much of a righteous person, I've done things that are not too ethical which I don’t care much about. So I feel so irritated every time when my conscience throws that echo of word in my face. 

When I was six, my grandfather passed away. He was lying on that narrow bed in an ordinary afternoon. Four or five people in the family stood around him in such a small room, they didn’t say anything for a long time. Silence was spreading and filling the entire room. The solid stillness pressed down on a little six-year-old body. Then I said, “The teeth of Grandpa are so white”. I, at that time, did not yet know much about death, tried to dispel the gravity of this silence with a playful sentence. How ridiculous! There are moments that should not be disturbed, they deserve to be sustained with a gesture of ambiguity and dignity. Even grief, especially grief. It is a delusion to try to disrupt it with the arm of language. You can’t go back there and change anything. The language, once it has happened, it is confirmed that there is only one possibility for the reality of that moment. The only thing you can do now is to bear with the unexpected attack of the language, to realize that it cannot be erased, and to wait and expect it to grow less and less powerful. 

While determined to defend silence, I was overwhelmed watching Ingmar Bergman's Persona, and I was fascinated by the character who refuses to use spoken language. She was confronting the other side of spoken language which I haven’t discussed above, the misinterpretation and adulation that it can, and most likely will, lead to. It is frightening that the spoken language comes out of you and attaches itself to others like a virus, in places where it might be invisible, or it might grow in madness. When it is detached from you, it is no longer under your control. But when they hold it accountable, you are responsible for it, even if the language or the thoughts behind the language no longer belong to you. 

Gestures, way of behaving, and expression of the eye…… are safer ways to communicate, for they are attached to the body, occurring continuously, and subsisting on the timeline. In addition, the symbolic meanings they imply are less certain. They are more similar to the shapes of the mind. 





2024.