癖嗜文化：論晚明文人詭態的美學形象

Abstract

癖，非病之病，變味的品味，存在的補遺，社會生存無用的習性，卻成為有癖之人不可或缺的生存條件。癖也許是文人階級的文化贅物，然而癖文化卻是文人形象建立不可或缺的一部分。明代以後中國文人對癖嗜的態度有明顯的轉變，此一轉變可以解釋為個人主義自我表述的社會實踐。本文視文人為一種藝術品，將這個文化商品放置在其文化生產的社會場域，檢視上述之假說。明清(1500-1800)之際，大量堵塞於仕途的文人形成一個特殊的社會階層，並大量投入文化商品市場。他們與士大夫和商人之間，在文化品味上相互競爭又模仿欽羨，共同成就了明清文化景致的新氣象。 文化商品市場下的文人以其文化素養所培植的文化資本，一方面試圖對具有特權的官員展示其業餘理想的閒賞美學，另一方面，又拒斥並否定來自商賈的任何文化善意學習。品味的競爭投注於癖嗜之上，明清文人透過養癖，相互標榜並確認其身分特權。一方面，以癖的非生產性無用，與俗人大眾區判(distinction)-「余觀世上語言無味面目可憎之人，皆無癖之人耳。」（〔明〕袁宏道）另一方面，文人之癖又以象徵性文化資本的炫耀展示，與商賈富家之附庸風雅區隔，分辨雅俗、真假之癖。最後，還必須以變味作為品味區判，以「怪」的詭態為美學，偏離了主流文化（辟，偏也，避也，闢也），但不意謂脫離了主流文化，而是反叛仕宦階級主流文化的品味，另創一種主導性的品味。 本文試圖勾勒癖文化的歷史，探討明清文人如何透過癖好的關注，展演其自身形象的問題意識，以及歷來文人如何透過養癖來將自己塑造成一件藝術作品。什麼面貌的藝術品？又展現了什麼樣的政治與美學行動？最後，在清初民初整個舊社會文明崩解的時候，這種癖的文化經歷了什麼樣的變化？

Pi (the obsession, the idiosyncratic habit, the hobby, the addiction)-the illness of not-being-ill, the taste of the degenerate taste, the supplement of being, and the useless habit for the social existence-becomes the indispensable condition of existence for those who have pi. It is perhaps a cultural appendix to the literati culture, but it is also a sine qua non for the construction of their figures. The attitude toward pi of Chinese literati had an obvious transformation in the Ming era. This transformation could be explained by the hypothesis to consider pi as the self expression of individualism in their social practices. This article examines this hypothesis by viewing the literati itself as a work of art, which is a cultural commodity produced in the socio-cultural field. In the Ming-Ching era (1500-1800), a mass of ”unofficial literati” failing in civil examinations formed a particular social class. Together with the officials and the merchants, they emulated the cultural taste and competed with one another, and thus a new scene in the cultural landscape was created. These literati, whose cultural capital came from their cultural literacy, rivaled the officials by showing their amateur ideal of leisure aesthetic on the one hand, and rejected the merchants by negating their good will of culture learning on the other. They cultivated their pi in order to identify themselves and to maintain their privilege status. This practice of ”cultivation of pi” revealed the competition of taste. In one way, the cultivation of pi distinguished the literati from the common people with its unproductive uselessness. In the other way, the literati's pi displayed a symbolic cultural capital which distinguished the elegant from the vulgar and the true from the false. Thus, it further distinguished themselves from the merchants. Finally, they had to let their taste degenerate and become as grotesque as possible, and this uncanny aesthetic could separate the literati from the current culture dominated by the titled officials without leaving the mainstream culture. In this way, pi, which in Chinese also means ”to separate, to avoid, and to clear a path,” created another dominant taste. This article tries to draw a history of the culture of pi and discusses the problematic of how the Ming- Ching literati performed their figure through their focus on pi? How did they, through the cultivation of pi, create themselves as a work of art? What image did this work of art have? What political and aesthetic actions did they display? Finally, when the civilizations of old society of the Ming and Ching Empires collapsed, what change was brought to this culture of pi?