《Superfluous Things》读后感100字

《Superfluous Things》是一本由Craig Clunas著作，University of Hawaii Press出版的Paperback图书，本书定价：USD 24.00，页数：240，特精心收集的读后感，希望对大家能有帮助。

《Superfluous Things》读后感(一)：《长物志》——中国前现代社会的物质文化

克鲁纳斯教授从明代文震亨的《长物志》入手，从物质文化的角度介入中国古代艺术史的研究，并把明代定义为中国前现代社会。书中一反常规美术史过分依赖卷轴画作为研究对象的作法，把研究的领域扩展到整个视觉文化，大量引用明代的小说、文集以及版画，在上世纪90年代中期，克鲁纳斯的研究方法很有开创意义，启发了众多美术史学者拓展研究的视野和角度。

《Superfluous Things》读后感(二)：Material cultural of luxury goods in late Ming dynasty

In the book Superfluous Things Clunas suggests that the when studying a material thing, people always do it in a positivism way instead of treat it as a symbolic language to convey the message about society. Material culture of things is always neglected. In this book he studies the case of the luxury objects in late Ming China and compare it to that in early modern Europe.

One important issue this book discusses is the relationship between the manufactured things of the material world and the social order favored by the literate elite in the late Ming dynasty. Texts like Wen’s Treatise have been designed mostly for spread the commodity enjoyment rather than for understand the society of Ming China. One reason is that the most articulate elites held a rigorous attitude after survived the conquest of Manchus. The social background of the flourish luxury consumption of late Ming was a society that culturally exquisite bloom but rotten inside. The elites had improperly attention to the luxury objects and pursued too much selfish aesthetic gratification while disabled in having enough unified responsibility for the nation, which result in faction strife and insubordination in the government, finally made the Han Chinese ruling class lose their authority.

Clunas suggests that the discourses of historical material like luxury goods in late Ming should not limit in aesthetic aspect. Instead, it should be considered key evidence in sketching the social change, either as one of the main force of economic growth or as the spin-off of class conflict.

《Superfluous Things》读后感(三)：Things in use, discourse, and conception

Between painting proper and visuality in general, “things” lie in between. They exist in material forms, in discourse, in imagination, and in mobility. Drawing from Zhangwu zhi by Wen Zhenheng, Clunas depicts a general picture of things in mainly late Ming China.

Chapter 1 introduces books about things. From 說郛 in the Song to Essential Criteria of Antiquities in 1388, books about things had obtained a pattern: 1) a concern with authenticity; 2) the author’s self-presentation as a person of detachment and indifference to worldly affairs; 3) an anxiety about forgery. Later, Gao Lian(1573－1620) produced Eight Discourse on the Art of Living 遵生八箋, followed by Wen(1585-1645)’s 長物志.

Chapter 2 further explores “Ideas about Things”. A major theme of things in this book is that things are social actors, serving as medium of distinctions between people. Citing Boudieu, he writes, “The constant assertion of difference between things in the Treatise is nothing more nor less than an assertion of the difference between people as consumers of things.” The grounds of distinction include gender, geographical origin, name of craftsman---trademarks, etc.

To elaborate on this theme of distinction, Clunas summarizes some terms, categories, and concepts in thinking about things---the general contours of the terrain for thing appreciation. They include:

Things: wu and qi

Antique and old: gu and jiu

Elegant and vulgar: ya and su

Lovely and refined: jia and jing

Use and pleasure: yong and wan

Rarity and skill: qi and qiao

Connoisseurs and dilettanti: shangjian and haoshi

Objects as commodities: gudong

Qu

Grading, ranking serve as means of distinction.

The following two chapters respectively focuses on the use of the antique in Ming material culture, and Ming luxury objects as commodities. The books ends with a chapter on the anxieties about things: an agricultural society’s suspicion over the thrive of material, in particular, commercial culture. This relates to Brook’s Confusions of Pleasure.

It is nothing novel to explore things in daily use, but this never counted as serious scholarship in China until very recent times. What has Clunas, Hay, Cahill, Brook brought to us in revealing Chinese people’s production, consumption, and appreciation of things as ordinary objects？ Do they provide us more than “sensuous surfaces”？

《Superfluous Things》读后感(四)：长物志 导言

顺手翻译一下导言 不过还是希望三联能快点儿出中译本。

最后一段致谢的话就省略了。

这不仅仅是一本关于物的书，它讲述的是明代后期人们看待物的方式。然而，它确实源于我在维多利亚与阿尔伯特博物馆任远东部的管理员时与馆藏物品接触的经历。在工作的过程当中，我第一次与我开始诠释为在16世纪末17世纪初生产的文人鉴赏家的文本相遇，而这构成了此书核心的原始材料。尤其吸引人的是，那个时期存留下来的手工艺品与文本中的精确描述相当一致，并措辞文雅而无有意掩饰。实际上，它是如此地吸引人，以至于最开始似乎掩盖了在晚明对于物品的专门论述的创造中更为广阔的含义。这些文本，如《遵生八笺》、《长物志》，经常被阅读并用于清楚描述幸存下来的文物，主要是绘画，也包括陶瓷、玉雕、金属器物的残片等等，但对于他们所显示的业已消亡的物质文化方面，关注并不够。他们普遍地被运用于实证主义的框架内，而这仍然被视为过去博物馆报告中的主要弱点之一。

然而，“物”近来被认定相当重要，以至于不能仅仅留给管理员，它越来越多地吸引了接受更广泛的历史学与人类学训练的学者的注意。玛丽•道格拉斯（Mary Douglas）与巴伦•伊舍伍德（Baron Isherwood）的作品，尤其是《商品的世界》（The World of Goods），向广泛的读者介绍了商品体系作为象征语言、收发信息的方法与个体在其中的地位的概念。为了找寻资本主义的增长与现代的世界观，坎德拉•穆克吉（Chandra Mukerji）的《始于偶像》（From Graven Images）一书也广泛声明了物质文化的角色。她写道：“物品是观念的承载者……它们被生产后长期存留于物质世界，并借此有助于在观念之外制造自主的力量……这样，物质与符号的限制都可以在人类活动之上给予物质文化一种独特的权力。”通过聚焦于特定的历史情境，理查德•歌茨维特（Richard Goldthwaite）关于在文艺复兴时期佛罗伦萨“物的帝国”的概念与生产新的更为复杂的社会认同的新消费方式相关，并认为这一时期一些新兴的消费习惯支撑着现代的世界观。西蒙•沙玛（Simon Schama）带来了关于荷兰“黄金时代”的相同观点，阐释了在广泛的变迁方式中将消费者与消费品之间的关系制造为一种变动的力量的观点。

穆克吉、歌茨维特与沙玛关于物质文化作为社会变迁的工具与象征的观点与美国文献中的物质文化研究有着异曲同工之处，而后者是由如Jules Prown和Henry Glassie一般的学者领导的正在发展中的学科，并已经在美英的博物馆管理实践中有了相当的影响。一本新近的汇集这些作品的文集的导言很明确地将近来历史学家摸索的对“物质生活”的更深层的关心追溯到费尔南多•布罗代尔（Fernand Braudel）的作品。然而，在这一学派中被很多批评指出的弱点是这样一种趋向：将归于物质文化条目中的意义视为在生产的时刻便永久地明确固定下来。最近，Arjun Appadurai和Ignor Kopytoff似乎为物质文化（管理员和考古学家的领域）与其“文本”（历史学家的领域）中历史感的缺乏提供了一种解决方案。Arjun Appadurai写道：“即使从理论的视角看，人类行动者将意义的密码编制进物品当中；从方法论上来讲，变动中的物品阐明了它们的社会与人类背景。”同时，皮埃尔•布迪厄（Pierre Bourdieu）的富有争议性的作品，以其精当的理论和缜密的方法论强调了在给定情境中密切关注文化实践的精确形式的重要性。这些并不是武断的选择。

迄今为止，大部分处理“消费问题”的理论作品基于欧美传统的历史研究经验。因此，本书有两个目标。一个是让中国的历史学家认真的给予物质文化的论述以更多的关注。每一个明代精英的成员都做消费选择，比如衣服或家具，因此尝试发现是什么决定了这些选择是合情合理的。第二个目标是研究西方传统的学者注意到中国商品世界的存在，并在有些时候显著预示着或平行于早期现代的欧洲。这必须在“消费社会的诞生”作为“西方崛起”的新解释之前得到认知。

我在由维多利亚与阿尔伯特博物馆和皇家艺术学院共同提供的关于设计史的艺术类硕士课程上遇到与西方消费问题相关的文献。课程的导师，Charles Saumarez Smith以及他的学生都是我最好的老师。这个项目的目标之一是检验设计史视角（它很典型地将19世纪中期视为背离的关键点）对前近代制造的大量商品的洞察力的合理性限度，这些商品现在构成了如维多利亚与阿尔伯特一样的博物馆中的藏品，也作为在艺术市场的鉴赏话语中的物品。“新艺术史”的宣言提供了接近这批物品的方式，这些物品多年以来已被学生们研究过，但结果并不令人满意。这在很大程度上是由于，尽管这些宣言否定了业已建立的典范中的全部概念，但近来大部分的作品仍然在重复它们试图取代的艺术实践方式。因此，我在本书中试图寻找探讨晚明中国调度奢侈品的方法，这在不同的类别中是同等有效的，比如有着高度自我审美意识的绘画，以及在中国材料中没有连贯的观念框架存在的服饰。

也正是这一课程，将研究早期现代欧洲的历史学家带入博物馆，比如彼得•伯克（Peter Burke）、Lorna Weatherhill、Margaret Spufford、 Keith Thomas 和Peter Earle，他们的新作都处理了引人入胜的涉及操纵奢侈品的奢侈品消费与社会策略的问题，但艺术品（尽管也算作其中一类）并不包括在他们处理的范围之内。通过运用比较与方法论框架，他们的作品似乎呈现了一种更好理解中国商品完整与原始意涵的可能性。特别是彼得•伯克在其文艺复兴时期意大利的文化与社会的研究中对17世纪日本状况的简要说明，似乎要求通过对晚明中国的比较性视角来做出回应。我特别希望在我运用早期现代欧洲的比较性素材时没有中伤到那些我所依赖的历史学家的成果，我将事先提供一些汉语的素材并将其放回到到他们的事业中来进行评判。

“早期现代”时期，大概从1500年到1800年，这一概念对西方历史学家来说很熟悉，但运用到中国并不那么轻松。当我看到具有革新精神的中国历史学家朱维铮的《走出中世纪》一书（卜正民[Tim Brook]向我介绍了此书）认为明末清初是一个转折点，我更增强了运用“早期现代”的信心。在看待这一时期的问题上，“早期现代”似乎比业已陈腐的“资本主义萌芽”论争更富成效，而后者开始于1950年代的中国，它将16、17世纪的历史变迁中有限的证据纳入精细考察，以寻找中国资本主义自发性根基的迹象，并进一步证实马克思的历史铁律。在处理有关农业的原始材料时涉及的关于商品经济、劳动力市场和有限的工业变化的材料相当珍贵，但他们的意义仍存在争议。同样的引文却被直接相反的方法诠释，而晚明观察到的现象却在11世纪甚至更早的时期被找到。现在的研究尝试着去对此问题做相关的解答，它们要是将关注点由生产转到消费之上该多好。我很明白这是历史调查中的一个“时髦”主题，但我同时也确信这一路径可以产生对于那一历史时期的新颖理解，但愿这是由于此为中国社会的文人精英关注的问题并做了很好的记录与表达。

我并没有尝试书写明帝国晚期的历史。明帝国是一个大致与欧洲相同面积，并在1600年左右拥有150,000,000至175,000,000人口的政治单元，在地理观念上它也有着相同的幅员，从行进速度上看，从北方到南方也大致等同于从威尼斯到伦敦。现在关于中国这一时期的英文二手研究相对较多，但对于寻找更多新颖主题的人，它们并没有提供多少观念上的思考。另有一些相当数量的综合性文献让我受益匪浅，这些大部分都是近来的作品，在其中晚明帝国摆脱了将其视为停滞与衰退的历史性重压。

在万历皇帝漫长的统治时期（1573-1620），本书运用的大部分原始材料都在这时编辑出版的，这可能是官僚体制的核心渐渐僵化的时代，但这也是一个见证中国整合进正在发展的世界经济之中，并在拥有占世界四分之一人口的情况下的农业秩序得到巩固的时代，这一点仍令人记忆犹新。那种农业秩序起源于人口的激增，并与农村地区回避长子继承导致的人均占地面积的下降有关。不仅仅是农产品在空前的规模上转变了商品，而且政府税收也渐渐商业化，赋役都用白银来交纳。

现存市镇规模的膨胀以及新市镇的建立创造了市镇经济的繁荣，他们在行政版图上比例的仍然停滞而不重要，这与其作为中心市场的重要性完全不相称。在国家与地区水平上中国市场体系的规模与复杂性与任何“商人的崛起”都不相称，因为并没有任何保证个人企业家事业兴旺的手段，也不可能将商业力量转化为政治影响力。那仍牢牢地掌握在官方知识精英的手中，并通过科举考试中获得的出身得以确认。在他们的控制下，中央集权的帝国政权在刺激“现代”式的商业活动中没起到任何作用，而仅仅是间歇性地利用它。

我已经说过，此书有意地不主要针对汉学家。因此，在任何时候我都尽力运用西文作品来支撑我的观点，允许读者来检验其有效性，我同时也受惠于大量的研究中华帝制晚期的专家的著作中详细列出的二次文献目录。我对日本汉学家的运用主要来自二手的欧洲语言的描述，我很明确地意识到这是我研究的主要缺点。我尽量限制这种引用的数量并尽可能简单。除非另行说明，所有明清资料都是我自己翻译的。在运用他人的翻译时，为了保持一致性，我运用标准罗马字母的拼音体系来标注，希望其他的译者原谅。在我自己的翻译中，我将号、字或艺名都转换成了此人的名而未作标注，这些人名被列在《明人传记辞典》（Dictionary of Ming Biography）或其他传记资料；我也将文献中城市、省份和地区的名字统一成现在大多数地图集上普遍运用的名称。出于对建立专家学者与其他领域的对话的兴趣，这样做就方便了不熟悉中国文献惯例的读者。尽管这样，中国文献中不熟悉的名称仍然令人望而生畏，所以我尽力在第一次出现时列出传记参考资料，如果有可能，我就运用《明人传记辞典》，如果其中没有所需材料，我就参考更为广泛但不那么详细的用汉语写成的《明人传记资料索引》。需要提醒读者的是，中国人的姓在前，名在后。文震亨是文徵明的曾孙。

《Superfluous Things》读后感(五)：A Short Sketch

In this book, Craig Clunas shows how traditional elites in sixteenth century Ming China investigated the special taste to distinguish them from the others who only possessed luxury goods. Focusing on the manner of possessing those kinds of collections and commodities, the author highlights the role that material culture played in the late Ming connoisseurship.

Chapter 1 introduces the literatures that are related to connoisseurship. Some famous resources are Cao Zhao’s Essential Criteria of Antiquities (Ge gu yao lun), Zhao Xigu’s Records of the Pure Registers of the Cavern Heaven (here the author probably made a mistake: in fact it should be Dong tian qing lu ji洞天清禄集 instead of洞天清录集), Tao Zongyi’s Tales within a City Wall (Shuo fu), Lu Shen’s Record of Curious Ancient Vessels (Gu qi qi lu), Xiang Yuanbian’s Nine Records from a Banana-shaded window (Jiao chuan jiu lu) and of course, Gao Lian’s Eight Discourses on the Art of Living (Zun sheng ba jian) and The Jade Hairpin (Yu zan ji) and Tu Long’s Desultory Remarks on Furnishing the Abode of the Retired Scholar (Kao pan yu shi) (Some of Wen Zhenheng’s materials were drawn from it) (p.28). Clunas indicates that Cao Zhao’s book sets a pattern “which is to be replicated in a number of later texts,” including the authenticity, the self-presentation, and the anxiety about forgery, in authenticity and fraud (pp.11-12). Clunas also devotes great effort to describe the backgrounds and relations of connoisseurs. Chapter 2 generally introduces the ideas about “things.” Chapter 3 generalizes the special word usages in the elites’ world: Wu物/Qi器, Gu古/ Jiu旧”, Ya雅/Su俗, Jia佳/Jing精, Yong用/Wan玩, Qi奇/Qiao巧, and also Shang Jian赏鉴, Gu Dong古董, Qu趣 etc. Clunas summarizes the formulae that Wen Zhenheng generally used was: “X is best/ most elegant/ loveliest, then comes Y, then again comes Z.” (p.89) Chapter 4 tells us about the uses of things in the past. The author argues that “the late Ming was a period when the multiplicity of things had a central role in Chinese culture which they had not previously enjoyed and when the categorization of things, the listing of them, ranking of them, feeling uneasy about them, praising them and blaming them became an issue of some intellectual concern” (pp.92-93). The notion of “antique” could not be a chronologically old one, and that is why elites had the power to interpret it. Chapter 5 narrates the circulation of things: luxury goods as commodities. Clunas informs us that some paintings were concentrated capital, “not just in monetary terms but in terms of cultural prestige.” (p.139) In this sense, Fuchun Mountains is a good example. The final chapter talks about consumption and class, which caused the anxieties of obtaining luxury goods. Even though the social role of artisans was constrained deeply by the Chinese traditional political economy (and so did their products), we could find the significant meaning of this social practice. But on the other hand, however, it is also not easy to conclude that the “invention” of taste was new in the late sixteenth century. For instance, Gao Lian, the wealthy merchant and connoisseur, “with a high degree of cultural tastes and accomplishments to make him presentable to the cultural elite.” (p.15) Another case is Wen Zhengming, the great-grandfather of Wen Zhenheng, “enmeshed himself provide ample evidence for merchant collectors of paintings and antiquities in the first half of the sixteenth century.” (p.xiv)

As a work that was published in 1991, it seems like any kinds of critiques on the Superfluous Things are superfluous. Well defined as a material culture study, it opens a new field to study consumption other than the traditional producing analysis. It is also different from the simple Euro-centric comparative perspective or the “Capitalism” occurrence perspective. The only thing I want to argue is that the specific category manifesting in the 16th century, was not merely a “commodity” or “material” item which reflected the real development of capitalism. It was more, no matter how sophisticated, the “traditional” identity existed among the “officers” (shi, scholar-officials), but not a special thing in the “new” period. Scholar-officials lived in the medieval era also liked to create special ways to show their status, to distinguish themselves from the “vulgar” merchants, even though their way to purchase things may not be as delicate as the elites in the late Ming.

Boyi Chen (Department of History, Wash U)