書評:激進的快樂

This month marks the anniversary of the global protests following Donald Trump’s inauguration as US president. The Women’s March on Washington and its sister events brought millions of people together and was, for many participants, an extraordinary, all-too-rare moment of collective pleasure.

本月標誌着唐納德?特朗普(Donald Trump)就任美國總統後引發全球抗議活動一週年。“婦女向華盛頓進軍”(Women's March on Washington)及類似活動使數以百萬計的人聚在了一起，對許多參與者來說，那是一次非同尋常、極爲罕見的集體快樂時刻。

“Sometimes, the strength we gain from moments of joyful solidarity lasts a very long time,” writes Lynne Segal towards the end of Radical Happiness: Moments of Collective Joy, which unpicks what she acknowledges is the “intangible” notion of joy. Segal’s thesis is that in losing one’s sense of self and self-consciousness, becoming part of bigger political and societal movements, one can achieve both personal joy and hopeful belief in the possibility of changing the world. Subsequent events in 2017, such as the #MeToo movement, suggest that she has a good point.

“有時，我們從歡快的團結時光中得到的力量可以持續很久，”琳內?西格爾(Lynne Segal)在《激進的快樂：集體的快樂時刻》(Radical Happiness: Moments of Collective Joy)快要結尾的地方寫道。該書剖析了她承認“難以捉摸的”快樂概念。西格爾的論點是，人們在放棄小我和自我意識、成爲更廣大的政治和社會運動的一份子後，既可以實現個人愉悅，也可以產生自己有可能改變世界的信念。2017年之後發生的事件——比如#我也是(#MeToo)運動——似乎表明她說得很有道理。

Segal, a professor of psychology and gender studies at Birkbeck College, London, recounts her own experience as a leftwing feminist and activist to back up her wider point about the power of mass movements — which in this book means gatherings of real people. Little space is devoted to social media-driven activism. It feels like an omission but she is perhaps right: young feminist activist thinkers such as Zeynep Tufekci are better placed to offer techno-sociological analysis.

西格爾是倫敦大學伯貝克學院(Birkbeck College)心理學和性別研究教授，她回憶了她本人作爲左翼女權主義者和活動人士的經歷，來支持她關於羣衆運動力量的廣義觀點。在本書中，羣衆運動是指人們在實體世界集會。沒有什麼篇幅被用來論述由社交媒體推動的維權活動。感覺像是一個遺漏，但她或許是對的：像澤伊內普?蒂費克奇(Zeynep Tufekci)這樣的年輕女權主義思想者更有資格提供技術-社會學分析。

Segal focuses instead on lessons of the past: the British women’s liberation movement of the 1970s, she writes, offered “experiments in collective living and the establishment of many other spaces for everyday resistance such as communes for shared child-raising, women’s centres, squatting advice centres and numerous other collective community spaces, many of which I participated in”.

西格爾更關注以往的教訓：她寫道，上世紀70年代英國女性解放運動“提供了集體生活的實驗，並建立了其他很多抵抗空間——比如共同撫養孩子的社區、女性中心、佔屋建議中心和衆多其他集體社區空間，其中很多我都參加過”。

This collectivist mindset was once far more prevalent than it is now. Segal reminds us how things have changed by examining the focus on individualism in western societies, and the “markets of misery”, which leave many feeling isolated and left behind among all the consumerism and commodification.

這種集體主義思維曾經比現在流行得多。西格爾通過考察西方社會對個人主義的關注，考察“苦難市場”（在消費主義和商品化甚囂塵上的世界，很多人感覺孤立和被拋在後面），提醒我們世界發生了多麼巨大的變化。

Meanwhile, efforts to measure and promote “wellbeing” — something that David Cameron’s coalition government made British government policy — are focused on inward-facing “mindfulness” and other practices that put the onus on the individual in private spaces. She also laments the loss of street fairs, feasting and dancing, although one might dispute this: there are many organisations fostering community bonds through local events.

與此同時，衡量和提升“幸福感”的努力（曾被戴維?卡梅倫(David Cameron)領導的聯合政府列爲英國政府政策）關注的是內向的“正念”以及其他一些做法，它們都把責任重擔壓在私人空間內的個人肩上。她還哀嘆街頭集市、筵席和舞蹈的風俗不再，儘管有人可能對此表示異議：如今有很多組織通過當地活動來打造社區紐帶。

Segal extends her exploration of joy to cover love and desire as well as the long history of utopian movements and all their attendant disappointments. On the latter, she takes an optimistic, pragmatic view. Modern utopian theorists, for example, are not offering us a magic prescription for the future. Instead, she says, they are concerned with rather fuzzier ideas: “The collective longing for ‘the improvement of the human condition’ as well as the opening up of spaces ‘for public debate and democratic decision’.”

西格爾擴大了她對快樂的探索範疇，使其涵蓋愛和渴望，以及烏托邦運動的悠久歷史以及隨之而來的失望。對於後者，她採取了樂觀而務實的觀點。例如，現代烏托邦理論家並沒有向我們提供神奇的未來處方。她表示，相反，他們關心的是更爲朦朧的理念：“對‘改善人類狀況’、對開闢‘公共辯論和民主決策’空間的集體渴望。”

Radical Happiness is an engaging, enlightening read for anyone who wants to ponder the links between personal dissatisfaction and political disengagement — and possible remedies. The idea of collective happiness as the root of much satisfaction is simple, but deceptively hard to write about, let alone achieve. Segal succeeds in inspiring on many levels, and while she is writing from the political left, and from a feminist point of view, her sources range far beyond her personal history and feminist and Marxist theorists to include citations and references to many writers and thinkers on utopias and on the nature of democracy.

對於那些想探尋個人不滿與政治上脫離接觸之間的關聯（以及可能的補救辦法）的人來說，《激進的快樂》既引人入勝，又發人深思。集體快樂是很大一部分滿足感的根源，這一觀念雖然簡單，但是極難用文字描寫，更不用說達到這一境界了。西格爾成功地在很多層面起到啓迪作用，而儘管她是從政治左翼以及女權主義的視角來書寫此書，但她旁徵博引，遠遠超越了個人經歷、女權主義者以及馬克思主義理論者的範疇，納入並參考了很多作家和思想家在烏托邦和民主性質方面的著述。

We can all benefit from thinking about, and achieving, collective joy through joining with like-minded fellow humans, whether we are organising a charity jumble sale or marching for women’s rights.

無論是組織慈善義賣、還是參加維護婦女權益的遊行，我們都可以受益於攜手志同道合的人，思考並實現集體快樂。

Ultimately our political dreams, Segal acknowledges, “can end in disappointment, but are likely nevertheless, to make us feel more alive, and hence happier, along the way, at least when they help to connect us to, and express concern for those around us”. This is an uplifting thought, whatever one’s political persuasion.

西格爾承認，最終我們的政治夢想“可能以失望告終，但儘管如此，至少在幫助我們與周圍之人心心相印、對他們表達關心的過程中，這些夢想有望讓我們感到更有生氣，因而更快樂”。無論我們的政治傾向是什麼，這都是令人振奮的想法。