在智识家园寻找身份认同的归属与解放——哥伦比亚大学2017届博士毕业典礼学生代表发言
喻俐雅在博士毕业典礼上发言,摄影：宁屹
今天，马里兰大学的毕业典礼上中国留学生发言在网上引起了很大的关注和争议。趁此机会，我们介绍一位同样在毕业典礼上应邀发言的中国留学生——喻俐雅。这位生于中国，长于德国，负笈英、美，2008年从剑桥大学本科毕业，今年获得哥大博士学位，并被选为研究生院唯一的学生代表，在几天前的博士毕业典礼上发言。
在她的发言中，喻俐雅谈到了跨文化的成长经历与边缘身份曾经为自己带来的困扰。相信许多朋友对此心有戚戚——尽管每个人的经历独一无二，困扰的原因和时机也不尽相同：也许出于性别，也许出于民族，也许出于北漂，也许出于留学。不论如何，希望俐雅的挣扎、求索、抗争、自我和解，能为更多人带来共鸣、激励与启发。
以下她演讲的中英文稿。中文翻译林三土：
Columbia University 2017 Ph.D. ConvocationStudent Speech
哥伦比亚大学2017届博士毕业典礼学生代表发言
Dear Provost Coatsworth, Executive VicePresident Madigan, Dean Alonso, faculty, and administrative staff; dear families and friends, but most important, dear Ph.D. class of 2017,
亲爱的寇兹沃思校务长，麦迪冈常务副校长，研究生院阿隆索院长，各位老师与行政员工；亲爱的家人朋友，以及最重要的，亲爱的2017届博士毕业生们：
I feel extremely honored to deliver the student speech today, and would like to start by thanking my two advisers in the political science department, David Johnston and Jack Snyder, as well as my committee members Robert Jervis, Helen Verdeli from TC, and Lasana Harris; as well as my parents, husband, son and friends who are sitting in the audience today.
今天能够作为学生代表发言，我感到极其荣幸。我首先要感谢我在政治学系的两位导师，戴维·庄士敦和杰克·斯奈德；我的几位答辩委员：罗伯特·杰维斯，来自教师学院的海伦·维尔德利，和拉萨纳·哈里斯；以及今天在台下就座的，我的父母、丈夫、儿子和朋友们。
I am here today to talk about what Columbiameans to me as a place – as an enigmatic place of arrival and possibility, as a place that marks my intellectual biography, as a tangible place in which a multitude of my identities found a space to speak to each other.
今天我发言的主题是，哥伦比亚大学作为一个「地方」，对我来说意味着什么：一个在我抵达时弥漫着无限可能性的神秘的地方，一个标记着我的智识成长的地方，一个为我的多重身份提供了相互对话空间的、有迹可寻的地方。
On one of my first lush summer evenings on campus seven years ago, when I was sitting with a newly made friend on the steps of Low Library, we were watching how the lights of Butler Library opposite of us were beginning to pierce brightly into the soft, darkening sky, one small window after the other.
七年前初次体验这个校园令人迷醉的夏夜时，我和一位刚刚结识的朋友坐在洛氏图书馆的台阶上，看着对面巴特勒图书馆的灯光一格窗子接着一格窗子亮起，渐次穿透正在变暗的柔和天幕。
My friend and I talked about how for our hypermobile generation, places and locations are often piled onto each other without clear order, whereas recounting specific years provides more structure and clarity. For this generation, the memories of places that we travel to andfrom, and that we leave behind and immerse ourselves in a new, can quickly become a jumbled and bewildering collection of facts. Instead, specific yearsbegin to structure us – almost as if they light up in front of our eyes, like the row of bright windows of Butler Library, into the darkness of the sky.
我和这位朋友讨论到，对于我们这样高度流动的一代人，到过的地方和居所如何常常毫无确凿次序可循地叠垒在一起，而对具体年份的讲述则有助于其结构化和清晰化。对我们这代人来说，关于我们去过或来自的所有那些地方的记忆、关于我们抛在身后或亟待融入的所有那些地方的记忆，都会迅速缠绕成一团由事实堆砌而成的、令人头昏脑胀的乱麻。相反，具体年份则逐渐成为我们梳理自身经历的出发点——仿佛巴特勒图书馆的那一排排窗子，在我们眼前亮起，照向黑暗的夜空。
Yet today I want to make the case that our memory of Columbia is especially precious for a hypermobile generation likeours, because it is deeply etched into us as a memory and experience of place,above all.
不过今天我特别想说的是，关于哥大的记忆，对我们这样高度流动的一代人而言尤为珍贵，因为对这个「地方」的记忆与体验，在我们身上打下了深入骨髓的烙印。
I came to Columbia from having studied political philosophy in the UK, I grew up in Germany, was born in China, and thus arrived at Columbia with many question marks about my cultural and intellectual belonging.
进入哥大之前，我在英国学习政治哲学、在德国长大、在中国出生。因此伴随我抵达哥大的，是我对自身文化归属与智识归属的无数问号。
I wrote an interdisciplinary dissertation that employs the social neuroscience on prejudice, stereotyping and dehumanization of others, to build a neuropolitical theory of how we can live together cooperatively in hyperdiverse and divided societies. Columbia’scampus, its winded corridors in the prewar buildings, the seminar rooms, the libraries, and above all, its people became a physically tangible and contained place where I could draw connections between my conflicting identities.
我的博士论文是一项跨学科的工作，运用社会神经科学中关于偏见、刻板印象、以及对他者非人化态度的研究，针对我们如何能够在高度多元与割裂的社会中合作共处的问题，发展出一套相应的神经政治学理论。哥大的校园，那些筑于战前的楼里刮着穿堂风的长廊，那一个个研讨室，一座座图书馆，以及最重要的，校园里的人们，共同构成了一个实实在在有迹可寻却又自成一隅的地方，令我得以身处其间，为自己相互冲突的各种身份搭建联系。
Academically, it became a place where in my quest to create a new neuropolitical language and interdisciplinary theory fortoday’s identity politics, I could literally cross disciplinary boundaries by walking over to the offices and seminar rooms of different departments and library rooms on Morningside campus, within a matter of hours, within a wholelong day. As I was contemplating during my graduate years what impact the brain has on politics, and how politics reflects in the brain, I criss-crossed campus and connected the disparate intellectual fieldsin my mind – neuroscience and political philosophy – by walking across the campus space.
在学术上，哥大对我意味着这样一个地方：在我力图为当今的身份政治创建一套全新的神经政治话语和跨学科理论时，我可以说到做到，在几个小时之内「跨越」学科边界，用一整天时间走遍晨曦高地校区不同院系的办公室、研讨室、图书馆阅览室。就读研究生这些年里，每当需要思考脑神经如何影响政治、政治如何反映在脑神经中之时，我便在校园里信步漫游，通过穿越校园空间，将神经科学与政治哲学这两个迥然有别的智识领域在自己脑海里串联起来。
But just like any physical place that is able to grip our imagination, Columbia is a place that at once attracts our most daring visions and yet most vulnerable longings. If, like me, you have ever wondered and despaired about who you are, how you are supposed to think,and how you are supposed to talk about yourself in light of the often conflicting cultural, racial, linguistic and gender identities that you carry within you, then you will know that words such as belonging, home and liberationare not just abstract concepts but powerful and enticing sounds that compel you to explore them with an almost irrational yearning and resolution.
但是与任何能够攫住我们想象的现实空间一样，哥大这样一个地方，既激发着我们最天马行空的想法，同时也吸引着我们内心最脆弱的渴望。如果你和我一样，曾经在面对各种与生俱来却又常常相互冲突的文化、种族、语言和性别身份时，为你究竟是谁、究竟应当如何思考、究竟应当如何谈论自身，而困惑过、绝望过，那么你一定理解，像「归属」、「家园」、「解放」这样的词汇，绝不仅仅是抽象的概念，而是令人心神悸动的天籁，驱使你以一种近乎非理性的饥渴与决绝，去一探它们的究竟。
When I arrived at Columbia, I wanted tounder stand the force of social identities such as race, culture and class, indetermining political outcomes in our post-Cold War world order. I was motivated by my upbringing by Chinese parents in post-War, unified Germany: Iwas puzzled how identity politics could lead to such disastrous outcomes such as the Holocaust and the Cultural Revolution, but at the same time, how it could also lead to empowering triumphs such as the Civil Rights Movements and Desegregation in the U.S., as well as the Feminist Movement and postcolonialliberation. Why did identity politics in the 20th century lead to such disastrous and yet triumphant outcomes? And how are we to learn from this for the identity politics of the 21st century, in our increasingly hyperdiverse and divided societies?
当我来到哥大时，我一心想要研究诸如种族、文化、阶级这样的社会身份，在我们所处的后冷战时代世界秩序中的政治影响力。由华裔父母在冷战以后统一的德国养育成人，构成了我兴趣的发端：我困惑于身份政治何以能够导致犹太大屠杀和文化大革命这样的灾难，同时又何以能够成就美国民权运动、反种族隔离、女权运动、殖民地解放这样激动人心的胜利。为什么二十世纪的身份政治造就了如许灾难与如许成绩？我们能从中为二十一世纪的身份政治、为我们这个日益高度多元与割裂的社会，汲取怎样的经验教训？
But of course, as is so often the case, the deepest and most hidden, but also most desperate and powerful drive behind these questions came from my own Self. They came from my own experience as an intercultural minority woman, who did not know whether she belonged to the Westor the East. From my experience of being rejected as too Western by fellowChinese and as too foreign by fellow Western colleagues, professors and friends.
不过当然，正如现实中常常发生的那样，这些问题背后最深的、最隐蔽的、同时也最刻骨铭心和最强大的驱动力，其实源于我对自身「自我」的困惑。源于我自己作为一个跨文化的少数族裔女性，在东方与西方之间无所归依的体验。源于我在华人同胞眼里太过「西化」，在西方同僚、教授、朋友眼里又太过「外族」，而屡遭排斥的体验。
From my experience of not knowing which history was truly writing me, and which history I should help writing. From yearning for a place that I could call my intellectual home, where I belonged without being put into a set of identity categories, where I could ask questions and try to answer them in a crispness and unfussiness that allowed me to focus completely on the question itself.
源于我不知道哪部历史真正写就了我、我又应该帮助书写哪部历史的体验。源于我对一个可以称为我的智识家园的地方的向往：这样一个地方，能够给予我归属感，而不把我划入一系列身份范畴；能够允许我提出问题，并以一种干脆利落、不大惊小怪、令我得以全神贯注于问题本身的方式全力寻找答案。
A place where the beginning of each day wasnot marked by that stinging sense of shame that still too many of us who move from identity margins into the center allow to wash over ourselves. I was looking for a place where it didn’t matter so much who you once were but wherewhat you said, thought and responded to in this very moment in a seminar room,a research lab and a lecture hall, took on importance and reality. Columbia as a campus and New York as a city became that place where the words belonging, home and liberation could be uttered completely anew.
在这样一个地方，许许多多像我一样从身份认同的边缘地带迁至中心的人们，每天醒来时能够不必再被刺骨的羞愧感萦绕。我一直在寻找这样一个地方：在那里，你曾经是怎样的人不再重要；在那里，你每时每刻在研讨室、实验室、教室里的言谈、思考、回应，都能获得认真切实的对待。哥大这个校园，纽约这个城市，恰恰是这样一个令「归属」、「家园」、「解放」之类词汇焕发生机的地方。
However, I am not trying to idolize Columbia: my memory of Columbia is also marked by contestation of its place,and by who is represented and allowed entry here. I am thinking back of my timeas student senator when I engaged in heated debates about Columbia’s global identity in light of ROTC’s return to campus, about Columbia’s responsibility to invest ethically, low-income students who confessed about their struggles with food stamps and finances, Black Lives Matter demonstrations, as well as the historic erection of a plaque that honors the Lenape people in 2016.
话说回来，我也并不想过分美化哥大：我对哥大的记忆同样包括了围绕对这个地方的解释权——谁能得到代表、谁被允许进入——的斗争。我还记得身为学生会代表参与的历次激烈讨论，比如因为预备军官训练团重新入驻校园而引起的就哥大全球身份的讨论，和关于哥大在投资方面的伦理责任的讨论，也记得低收入学生敞开心扉讲述他们面对食物券与财务困难的挣扎，记得「黑人性命举足轻重」的示威，记得2016年学校史无前例地树立了一块勒纳佩部落纪念碑。
Therefore when I think back, my time hereat Columbia is marked both by the liberation that the space offers to intercultural people like me, but also by the constant awareness that this space needs to be continuously contested, reclaimed and transformed by adiverse assembly of voices.
所以回想起来，我在哥大的时光，既充斥着这个地方为和我一样的跨文化人群提供的解放，也时刻伴随着一种警醒：这个地方需要由各种不同的声音来不停地抗辩、争取、和转化。
The meaning of a place also comes from seeing it through someone else’s eyes. I would not be the person I am today without the undergraduate students that I have taught – to consider the identity challenges of our time through the perspective of this youngest generation on campus has been deeply humbling for me, giving me true joy and purpose. Likewise, our parents and family who are sharing this special moment with us today carry within them the knowledge of other continents, histories and political eras – which is why seeing us on stage today, in this place, in this city, at this moment, is deeply touching and meaningful to us, but perhaps even more so to them.
一个地方的意义，同样来自别人眼中的审视。如果不是因为我教过的本科生，我不会成为今天这个人——从校园里最年轻一代的视角思考我们这个时代的身份挑战，令我深深地反躬自省，也为我提供了真正的快乐与目的。同样地，与我们分享今天这一特殊时刻的父母家人们，也各自有着他们自己关于其它大陆、其它历史、其它政治时代的知识——正因如此，今天在这个地方、这个城市、这个时刻看到我们登台，对我们固然有着深深的触动和意义，但对他们恐怕更是如此。
Dear class of 2017, I leave you with this image of Butler Library’s lights lighting up like the years that are to unfold before us after our graduation, but also, with a visceral sense of place connected to Columbia – of that period in your life where the fractured identity parts within you found enlightenment and meaning, and a true sense of belongingin a single haven of time and place.
亲爱的2017届毕业生们，请随我一同回想巴特勒图书馆渐次亮起的灯光，一如想象即将在我们毕业后渐次展开的年华，也请与我一同回味与哥大这个地方紧密相连的——终于在人生中的某个阶段为你内心深处支离破碎的身份认同找到启蒙与意义、终于在某时某地的某个港湾找到真正的归属——那种发自肺腑的感受。
演讲人：喻俐雅。中文翻译：林三土。本文原载公众号林三土（ID：linsantu），版权归属作者/译者/原发媒体。
有兴趣的读者可扫描以下微信号联系本号工作人员加入成长视角微信群交流美国留学经验。
希望了解孩子是否适合低龄留学美国，为今后升学做好扎实准备？