Networks of Early Writing
Networks of Early Writing
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早期写作网络
DOI：
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发表时间：
2010
期刊：
影响因子：
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通讯作者：
P. Adams
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文献类型：
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作者：
P. Adams
文字的文化创新是在上埃及、美索不达米亚、中国的黄河流域和中美洲等几个地区独立或通过刺激扩散而出现的。文字作为一种协调货物流动和记录物质交易的手段，作为一种扩大对人、空间和领土控制的技术，为一些最早的使用者服务。与此同时，文字与诸如占卜、祈祷、魔法和占星术等形而上的实践有着密切的联系。在某些地方和时代，文字的实用应用当然占主导地位。例如，关于保存下来的线形B语料库，我们“没有发现任何用于官僚目的以外的写作痕迹。”同样，早期的楔形文字主要处理商品和物质产品，记录了涉及纺织品、锭、牲畜和各种食品的税收和贡品。这个词的一种不那么实用的力量是刻在埃及坟墓内部的象形文字，用来引导人们的灵魂进入神的领域，或者是用于占卜的汉字。在所有这些实践中共享的是一种普遍权力的循环，我称之为王权。现在的问题是，文字是如何从一种转瞬即逝的表现转变为一种持久的、可携带的客体，将新的写作技术与既“实用”又“神奇”的权力网络结合在一起的。不管这些符号代表的是音素、音节、语素还是整个单词，也不管书写这些符号的“书页”是石头、粘土、纸莎草、木头还是骨头，单词的固定都启动了一个广泛影响的网络形成过程，这个过程隐藏在它自己的对立面背后，隐藏在一个神或半神人物的形象背后。要提出这个话题是充满困难的，因为正如桑德斯所观察到的那样，尽管地理研究在文本生产和接受问题中蓬勃发展，但“到目前为止，对写作实践的考虑有限，更具体地说，是对其历史化的文化实践的考虑。”因此，我们对写作的探索必须“超越个人作为一个不可渗透的实体，并欣赏其与各种人和地方的关系”，要做到这一点，我们必须以一种不稳定的方式对待“王权”，即国王作为一个人，同时认识到与潦草相关的行动者出现的新形式的权威
The cultural innovation of writing emerged independently or via stimulus diffusion in several hearths including Upper Egypt, Mesopotamia, China’s Yellow River valley, and Mesoamerica. Writing served some of its earliest users as a means to coordinate flows of goods and record material transactions and as a technique for extending control over people, space and territory. At the same time, writing had close associations with metaphysical practices such as divination, prayer, magic and astrology. Pragmatic applications of writing certainly dominated in certain places and times. In regard to the preserved corpus of Linear B, for example, we have “no surviving trace of [this] writing used for anything but bureaucratic purposes.” 1 Likewise early cuneiform dealt mainly with commodities and material goods, keeping track of taxation and tribute involving textiles, ingots, livestock, and various foods. 2 A less pragmatic power of the word is suggested by hieroglyphs inscribed on the inside of Egyptian tombs to guide people’s spirits to the realm of the gods or Chinese characters used in divination. What is shared among all of these practices is the circulation of a general power I will call “kingship.” The question at hand is how the transformation of the word from a fleeting performance to a durable and portable object allied the new techniques of writing with networks of power which were at once “practical” and “magical.” Regardless of whether the symbols stood for phonemes, syllables, morphemes or entire words, and whether the “page” on which they were written was stone, clay, papyrus, wood or bone, the fixing of the word set in motion a wide-reaching process of network-formation that hid behind its own antithesis, the image of a divine or semi-divine personage. To broach this topic is fraught with difficulty because, as Saunders observes, whereas geographical research has flourished in and around questions of textual production and reception, “limited consideration has, so far, been directed to the practice of writing, and more specifically, to its historicized, cultural practice.” 3 Our exploration of writing must therefore move “beyond the individual as an impermeable entity and appreciate its relationality with various people and places,” and to do so we must treat “kingship” in a way that destabilizes the king as a person while recognizing the new form of authority that emerged in scribally-linked actor