异质文化初次接触的启示——詹姆斯·库克之死个案研究

传统上,库克之死被归咎于夏威夷人的"野蛮",然而该观点却不能解释相关的另一现象:为什么在死后相当长的时间中,库克仍被岛民当做神灵祭拜?从18世纪的夏威夷社会文化本身去解读这一问题,会带给我们更具说服力的解释。在库克与夏威夷人接触的时候,"土著"文化与西方文化的交流还相对平等,夏威夷文化并且还起到更主体化的作用,库克为首的殖民者是被纳入到夏威夷本地文化中理解的。库克的死,可以启发我们去进一步探究异质文化初次碰撞的方式和模式问题。

The Enlightenment of First Contact between Heterogeneous Cultures: A Case Study of Captain James Cook's Death

Captain James Cook was killed by the Hawaiians in 1779.The Europeans traditionally attribute his death to the native's savage nature.But the explanation is powerless before the strange phenomenon that Cook was treated and worshiped by the islanders as a god for a long time just after his death.Can it be explained in a more reasonable way? The answer may lie in the Hawaiian society itself:its religion and customs at that time.When Cook encountered the Hawaiians,the native culture and the western culture exchanged in an relatively equal way.The former gained even more subjective status to a certain extent,because the colonialists were absorbed in and understood by the native culture rather than treated as heterogeneous people.Study on Cook's death enlightens us to further probe the mode of first contact between heterogeneous cultures.