茨仁夏加（Tsering Shakya）：抗议语言的转变

作者：Tsering Shakya（茨仁夏加），英属哥伦比亚大学亚洲研究所

译者：黄潇潇  @xiaoxiaom

文章来源：《文化人类学》（Cultural Anthropology）学刊特刊

标题：Transforming the Language of Protest
原文网址：http://culanth.org/?q=node/524

四川藏区阿坝（Ngaba。CH：ABA）正被年轻藏人僧尼的自焚浪潮所席卷。截至本文写作时，已报道二十五起自焚事件，自焚也已蔓延到其他藏区。最近的报道，是青海省热贡（同仁县）的一位僧人点火自焚。为什么会有这样的行动？相关人士的理由和动机又是什么？

自焚作为一种公开抗议的形式，对西藏（唯色注：即图伯特）来说是新的，它表明许多藏人已经接受“自我牺牲”的叙述，并在藏民族主义复苏的背景中加以看待。毕竟，民族主义即身体与国家的合二为一，献上自己的身体是民族主义的一种关键的现代习俗。自焚与自杀式炸弹都不能从个人动机上得到解释。但与后者截然不同的是，自焚不是一种恐怖行为，而被视为施加于自身的痛苦，对他人并不造成伤害；它被视为一件可怖的事，其意在引起同情。对同族人和信仰者而言，这种行为是信仰和身份的宣示；前者迅速将自焚者奉为烈士。他们的行为提供了象征性资本，诉说着他们眼中的加害者与当权者的不公。这种行为的本意即为强迫对方妥协。但在中国，正如在所有威权政体下，这种结局不太可能，因为自焚行为对于当局就像绝食抗议。它们无异于勒索。

自焚作为一种抗议形式，并非佛教固有的行为，正如自杀式炸弹不是伊斯兰教固有的行为一样。把当前事件与宗教联系起来的原因是，多数自焚的藏人都是僧人或曾经是僧人，以及尼师。他们的行为并不是在顶礼宗教，实践善行。相反，这些行为表达的含义全然不同：它们是“愤怒”的产物，源自日常所受的侮辱以及令人无法忍受的强令一致与服从。西藏的宗教人士尤其要受“爱国主义教育”和反对所谓“达赖集团”的运动之管教。僧人认为这些运动是系统式的羞辱，要求他们无止境地阳奉阴违，强迫他们反复向共产党表明热爱和忠诚。那不是一项容易忍受的任务，而我们也看到他们终于拒绝接受。正如汉娜·阿伦特（Hannah Arendt）所说，愤怒不是由于贫穷而产生，却被激起于“我们的正义感遭到冒犯时”，人们愤怒并反抗是因为“有理由怀疑情况本可以得到改变，结果却没有。”[注1]

在突尼斯街头小贩穆罕默德·突阿齐齐（Mohamed Bouazizi）的例子中，自焚的动机既不是善行的宗教表达，也不为点燃阿拉伯之春。[注2] 那是一种对权威以及对国家在身体和生命上刻划烙印的否定。自从僧人释广德（Thich Quang Duc）于1963年以自焚抗议在他看来越南政府所采取的反佛教立场，自焚行为就进入了政治和抗议的全球语境，被那些有冤情并有理由与不公正做斗争的人所效仿和运用。对藏人来说，自焚极为情感化，在缺失其他表达选项的情况下，是很有必要的。自焚行为成为生命的记号，在强大的中国国家实力之下，证明了自身的存在。加诸自身的暴力是一种象征，以表达生存的意志以及抗拒强制性改造身体与空间的意志。

讽刺的是，牺牲作为一种政治行为，还是中国共产党引进西藏的。这是雷锋的残留效应。他是六十年代的模范士兵，在号召全国人民将自己完全奉献给国家的运动中，成为最著名的榜样。西藏的历史上没有为自己的民族或宗教牺牲自我的传统；这是一个外来概念，源自共产党所创造并捍卫的抗争语言，现在被藏人加以运用。

藏文里没有与英文“牺牲（sacrifice）”相对应的词。由于没有简单的方式来表达这个词所包含的情绪，藏人在寻找与此相关的适当用辞时很是费力。最近用来指作为一种牺牲行为的自焚时，意义最接近的词是“rang srog blos btang”（放弃自己的生命），但这并没有为一个伟大的事业献出自身的含义。同样的情况还有藏文词“lus sbyin”，意为“献上身体”，用来指佛陀以自己的身体作布施。将自身当做宗教祭品而献上，便没有任何抗议或否定的内涵。因此，寻找新的用辞反映出藏人中政治话语的流动性，以及抗议和抵制全球性语言的全面渗入。

无论藏人抗议者继续采取何种可怖行动，让中国当局有任何妥协的可能性都极为渺茫。在威权体制下，抗争和镇压的循环往复是政权僵化所导致的必然结果。再者，藏人的抗议也不会在多数中国人的意识中留下印记。这不仅是由于中国缺乏成熟的公民社会，也是因为中国人普遍认为，借用塔拉勒·阿萨德（Talal Asad）的说法就是，暴力和恐怖可以“用于未开化的人群”因为“他们没有主权国家。”[注3] 藏人的死亡并没有带来震惊，只是再次确定了他们的野蛮。这就是中央民族大学学者熊坤新的言外之意，他在官方报纸《环球时报》中说：“地理和历史因素让那里的藏族人民更好斗。”[注4]

藏人中有种感受，就是当前政权下不可能出现改变，因为现在看来政府已决意发展经济、开采资源，同时实施镇压。在政府眼中，僧尼的生活与现代中国格格不入，在经济上无生产力，又拒绝适应当前政府的新自由主义观点，即资本主义市场和消费会解救每个人。因为政府免除少数民族实行一胎制的优惠政策与他们不相干，他们的生活就否定了政府的生命权力（biopower），他们因此就要受到监视和特别管教，以确保其主观意识向政府意志屈服。如同一位僧人曾向我描述的那样，政府的诸多管教束缚之徒劳，就好像陶工要造无底的花瓶一样。在其他所有问题的背后，皆是这种“不可能过有意义的生活”的感受。这种“不可能”就是今日西藏自焚事件的根源。

2012年3月28日

注释：

[1] Hannah Arendt, Reflections on Violence, The New York Review of Books, February 27, 1969.

[2] Fassin, Didier, “The Trace: Violence, Truth, and the politics of the Body”, Social Research, 78:2, 2011, pp: 281-298.

[3] Asad, Talal. On Suicide Bombing, Columbia University Press, 2007, p. 26

[4] People’s Daily Online, 08:59, February, http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/102774/7725303.html

Transforming the Language of Protest

Tsering Shakya, Institute of Asian Research, University of British Columbia

The Tibetan region of Ngaba (Ch: Aba) in Sichuan province is engulfed in a wave of self-immolations by young Tibetan monks and nuns.  At the time of writing, twenty-five cases have been reported and immolations have spread to other Tibetan areas. The latest report is of a monk setting himself on fire in Rebkong (Ch:Tongren), Qinghai Province. Why are such actions happening? What are the causes and motivations of those involved?

Self-immolation as a form of public protest, new to Tibet, demonstrates that many Tibetans have embraced the narrative of “self sacrifice” and have come to see it in the context of the resurgence of Tibetan nationalism. After all, giving one’s body is one of the key modern idioms of nationalism: the conflating of body and nation. Like suicide bombing, self-immolation cannot be explained by individual motivation. Yet, in contrast to the latter, self-immolation is not an act of terror and is seen instead as self-inflicted pain that causes no damage to others; it is seen as a horror intended to induce empathy. For co-nationals and the religious, the act is a statement of faith and identity; the former are quick to embrace the self-immolators as martyrs. Their act provides symbolic capital; it speaks of injustice from the perceived perpetrator to those in power. It is an act that is meant to coerce concessions. But in China, as in all authoritarian regimes, it is unlikely to lead to such an outcome, since the acts of self-immolation are like hunger strikes to the authorities. They are tantamount to blackmail.

Self-immolation as a form of protest is not intrinsically a Buddhist act any more than suicide bombing is an Islamic act. What links the current incidents to religion is that most of the Tibetans who have committed self-immolation have been monks, former monks or nuns. Their actions were not an obeisance to religion or the performing of virtue. Rather, they signify something entirely different: they are a product of “rage,” induced by daily humiliation and intolerable demands for conformity and obedience. Religious figures in Tibet have been particularly subjected to the discipline of patriotic education and the campaigns opposing the so-called "Dalai clique.” These campaigns, viewed by the monks as a regime of degradation, require them to endlessly feign compliance, obliging them to demonstrate repeatedly their patriotism and fidelity to the Communist Party. That is not an easy task to sustain, and we see that it has finally become something they refuse to do. As Hannah Arendt put it, rage arises not as a result of poverty but “when our sense of justice is offended.” People react with rage “where there is reason to suspect that conditions could be changed and are not.”[1] 

In the case of Mohamed Bouazizi, a street vendor in Tunisia, self-immolation was neither intended as a religious expression of virtue nor as a spark to ignite the Arab Spring.[2]  It was a disavowal of authority and of state inscription over body and life. Ever since the monk Thich Quang Duc self-immolated in 1963 as a protest against what he considered to be the anti-Buddhist stance of the Vietnamese government, the act of self-immolation has entered the global vocabulary of politics and protest, where it is imitated and appropriated by those with grievances and reasons to fight perceived injustice.  For the Tibetans, self-immolation is invested with emotion and is deemed necessary in the absence of other options for expression.  It becomes a sign of life and demonstrates one’s existence against the might of the Chinese state.  Self-inflicted violence is a symbolic gesture of the will to survive and resist coercive transformation of body and space.

Ironically, sacrifice as a political act is something the Chinese Communists introduced to Tibet. It is a residual effect of Lei Feng, the model soldier of the 1960s who was the most famous exemplar in a campaign that called on all citizens to dedicate themselves totally to the nation. In Tibetan history, there is no tradition of sacrificing oneself for one’s nation or religion; this is an alien concept that Tibetans now have appropriated from the language of resistance coined and championed by the Communist Party.  

There is no Tibetan term equivalent to the English word “sacrifice.” Tibetans struggle to find appropriate terminology to express this concept, having no easy way to convey the sentiments it embodies.  The closest term used recently for self-immolation in the sense of an act of sacrifice is “rang srog blos btang” (giving up one’s life), but this does not have a sense of offering oneself for a greater cause.  Nor does the Tibetan term lus sbyin, meaning “offering of the body,” which is used for the Buddha’s offering of his body as alms. The offering of the self as religious gift holds no connotation of protest or disavowal. Thus, the search for new terminology reflects the shifting nature of political discourse among Tibetans and its permeation everywhere by the global language of protest and resistance.  

Whatever horrific forms of action the Tibetan protesters might continue to adopt, it is most unlikely they will achieve any form of concession from the Chinese authorities. In an authoritarian system, the cycle of resistance and repression is an inevitable consequence of the inflexibility of the regime.  Moreover, the Tibetans’ protests will not make a dent on the consciousness of most Chinese. This is not only because China lacks a developed civil society but also because it is widely believed in China that violence and terror can be used, to borrow a phrase from Talal Asad, “against uncivilized populations” because “they lack a sovereign state.”[3]  There is no shock in the death of Tibetans; it merely reaffirms their barbarity. This was the implication behind the statement by Xiong Kunxin, a scholar from Chinese Minzu University, in the state newspaper Global Times that “geographic and historical factors made Tibetan people there more aggressive.”[4]

There is a sense amongst the Tibetans of the impossibility of change under the current regime, bent as it is on economic and resource extraction and subjugation. The lives of monks and nuns are seen as incongruous in modern China, economically unproductive and refusing to fit into the current state’s neo-liberal belief that market capitalism and consumption will liberate everyone. Since the beneficent exemption of minorities from the one child policy is irrelevant for them, their lives negate the biopower of the state, and they therefore are subject to surveillance and particular kinds of discipline that must bend their subjectivity to the will of the state.  As a monk once described it to me, the disciplinary strictures of the state are as futile as a potter making a bottomless vase. Beneath all other questions is this sense of the “impossibility of making a meaningful life.”  This impossibility is the root cause of the self-immolations in Tibet today.

March 28, 2012

NOTES

[1] Hannah Arendt, Reflections on Violence, The New York Review of Books, February 27, 1969.

[2] Fassin, Didier, “The Trace: Violence, Truth, and the politics of the Body”, Social Research, 78:2, 2011, pp: 281-298.

[3] Asad, Talal.  On Suicide Bombing, Columbia University Press, 2007, p. 26

[4] People’s Daily Online, 08:59, February, http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/102774/7725303.html

延伸阅读：

《文化人类学》（Cultural Anthropology）关于藏人自焚之特刊http://woeser.middle-way.net/2012/04/cultural-anthropology.html