认同建构中的时间取向

民族认同的建构与“时间性”密切相关。通过分析中国现代民族认同的两大建构路径,即“现在—未来”导向路径和“现在—过去”导向路径,可以看出,在时间性的三个层面里,“现在”扮演了极重要的角色。“现在—未来”导向的路径从未来寻求合法性,主张现代与传统的断裂,民族认同的建构所依据的是精英知识分子所设定的民族国家的规划。而“现在—过去”导向路径则是从过去寻找合法性,以回归传统、挖掘新的传统或是重构传统的方式,通过与“过去”建立起联系,使自身权威化。无论是哪一种路径,民族认同建构都是以“现在”为核心的。因此,在民族认同建构的“时间性”问题中,“现在”之重要不仅仅在于“民族认同”是现代现象,它更是重组过去和未来关系的关键。相对于“真实的过去”的不可改变,“未来”的不确定,“现在”却为建构者的主体经验参与到认同建构中提供了机遇。在重组过程中,建构者得以充分调用“过去”和“未来”的资源,使民族认同获得它所需要的多元的合法性。

Construction of National Identity and Its Time Direction

The construction of national identity is closely related with time. When analyzing approaches to the reconstruction of Chinese modern national identity, we can see that the present time plays the most important role of three phases of time. The present-to-future approach seeks its legitimacy from the future time, insisting a rupture between the present and the past. The construction of national identity takes as its premise what the elite intellectuals propose as a blueprint of nation-state. The present-to-past approach finds its legitimacy in the opposite direction, and takes it for granted that connecting the construction of national identity with the past by returning to the tradition, finding out new tradition, or reconstructing tradition is a necessary route to gain its authority. Nevertheless, the present is central in either approach. The national identity is not only a modern phenomenon, but a linchpin to relate the past with the future. While the past is established as truth, the future is uncertain, and the present is indeed an opportunity for the subjective experience to be involved in the reconstruction of identity, during which, the national identity will obtain its multi-legitimacy from the past and the future.