Guests at your typical $1,250-a-plate Manhattan fund-raiser usually face no quandary more urgent than “red or white?”
通常，在那种门票1250美元的曼哈顿筹款宴会上，来宾需要即刻拿的主意，往往不过是喝“红酒还是白酒”这样的问题。But when representatives of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo step onstage Tuesday to receive an award for “freedom of expression courage” at PEN American Center’s literary gala, the roughly 800 guests will face a more complicated choice: standing ovation, walkout or something in between?
但周二参加美国笔会中心(PEN American Center)“文学之夜”的约八百名与会者，面对法国讽刺刊物《查理周报》(Charlie Hebdo)的代表被授予“言论自由勇气奖”(freedom of expression courage)时，需要拿的主意则更为复杂：是起身鼓掌、抽身离席、还是模棱两可？
During the past week, the news that six prominent writers, including Peter Carey, Michael Ondaatje and Francine Prose, had pulled out as gala table hosts to protest what they saw as the magazine’s cultural intolerance and Islamophobia has set off an unusually intense war of words in the heart of the American literary establishment.
过去一周里，包括彼得·凯里(Peter Carey)、迈克尔·翁达杰(Michael Ondaatje)、弗朗辛·普罗斯(Francine Prose)在内的六位知名作家表示，不会作为主持人出席颁奖活动，以表达自己对《查理周报》的文化狭隘和反伊斯兰倾向的不满。消息传出之后，立刻在美国文学圈的核心人物中挑起了一场激烈异常的口水战。
The controversy has ricocheted across social media and op-ed pages worldwide, as partisans have traded impassioned arguments and sometimes ad hominem insults. By the weekend, more than 200 of PEN’s roughly 4,000 members — including Junot Díaz, Joyce Carol Oates, Lorrie Moore and Michael Cunningham — had signed a letter saying that the award crossed a line between “staunchly supporting expression that violates the acceptable, and enthusiastically rewarding such expression.”
意见各方激烈论战，有时甚至对对手进行人身攻击。这场论战也很快蔓延至各个社交网络和世界各地报刊的评论版。截至上周末，在约四千名笔会成员中，已有包括胡诺特·迪亚斯(Junot Díaz)、乔伊斯·卡罗尔·欧茨(Joyce Carol Oates)、洛丽·摩尔(Lorrie Moore)以及迈克尔·坎宁安(Michael Cunningham)在内的逾两百人签署了联名信，表示颁发此奖是越界之举，“坚定支持过分言论和积极鼓励过分言论”之间是有区别的。The debate is emotional and complex. But the battle lines are generally drawn between those who believe that PEN’s core mission includes celebrating Charlie Hebdo’s courageous perseverance after the Jan. 7 attack on its office by Muslim extremists that left 12 people dead and those who believe that the magazine’s cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad promote bigotry and reinforce the second-class status of a Muslim underclass in France.
虽然争论混乱且缺乏理性，但观点大致可分为两派。一方认为《查理周报》在1月7日总部受到穆斯林极端分子袭击，12人遇袭身亡之后，对其表现出的勇敢执着给予嘉奖是美国笔会的核心使命；另一方认为该刊物有关先知默罕默德(Prophet Muhammad)的漫画让偏见升级，导致本就处于社会下层的法国穆斯林更难摆脱二等公民的现状。There has also been debate about the debate, with some seeing an example of fractious freedom of expression in action while others see a spectacle that has generated more heat than light.
人们对这场论战本身也是争论不断。有人视之为引发分歧的“言论自由”被付诸实践；另一些人看到的更多是“争”而不是“论”。“With this boycott the Charlie Hebdo debate has come to embody all the limitations, and now the futility, of the freedom of expression argument vis-à-vis Muslims in particular and minorities in general,” Nesrine Malik, a Sudanese-born, London-based commentator, wrote in The Guardian.
“这场对《查理周报》获奖的抵制行动引发的论战充分体现了言论自由理论对社会少数群体、尤其是穆斯林的局限性，甚至现在看来言论自由理论对这些群体是没有价值的。”出生于苏丹、现居伦敦的评论员内斯林·马利克(Nesrine Malik)在《卫报》(The Guardian)上写道。“We are trapped between people who see a knowing establishment prejudice against Muslims (and other ethnic or racial minorities) everywhere, and those who refuse to believe it exists,” she wrote.
“一些人知道，对于穆斯林（或其他少数种族）无处不在、心照不宣的歧视由来已久；另外的一些人则拒绝相信这种歧视的存在。他们把我们夹在了中间，”她写道。The controversy revives a debate that flared up in January over whether some of Charlie Hebdo’s cartoons were racist. It is drawing in new partisans, and may take on greater urgency after the shootings on Sunday in Texas, where two gunmen, one of whom the F.B.I. had previously investigated for links to Islamic terrorism, attacked a conference organized by an anti-Islam group that included a Muhammad cartoon contest.
此次论战重燃了今年一月对于《查理周报》漫画是否种族歧视的讨论。周日的德克萨斯州枪击案后，这一讨论也许更显重要，吸引更多人关注。周日，两名持枪者袭击了一个反伊斯兰组织的集会，集会活动包括了一个默罕默德漫画比赛。其中一名袭击者因涉嫌与伊斯兰恐怖组织相关，曾受到联邦调查局(FBI)调查。To some, the bigoted nature of Charlie Hebdo’s cartoons is clear. “It’s a racist publication,” Ms. Prose, a former president of PEN, told The Nation last week. “Let’s not beat about the bush.”
对于部分人来说，《查理周报》的狭隘和偏执显而易见。“它就是份种族歧视刊物，”笔会的前主席普罗斯女士上周对美国《国家》杂志(The Nation)说，“这点我们不用拐弯抹角。”The writer Luc Sante, who also signed the letter of protest, said that while the work of Georges Wolinski, one of the cartoonists killed in the attack, “was humane and large-spirited,” some of Charlie Hedbo’s contributors trafficked in “sophomoric troll humor.”
作家卢克·桑特(Luc Sante)也签署了联名抗议信。虽然他评价遇袭身亡的漫画家之一乔治·沃林斯基(Georges Wolinski)的作品“充满人性、非常大度”，但认为部分《查理周报》供稿人传播的却是“不成熟的挑衅式幽默”。“The fact alone that black and Arab people are offended by the way they were depicted — leaving religion to the side — should have made PEN think before celebrating Charlie Hebdo,” Mr. Sante said in an email.
“即便撇开宗教不谈，许多黑人和阿拉伯人对那些描绘自己的漫画感到愤怒，仅仅因为这一点，笔会就应该在赞颂《查理周报》前仔细斟酌。”桑特先生在电子邮件中写道。Defenders of the award counter that such arguments overlook the full scope and context of Charlie Hebdo’s cartoons. They point to websites like Understanding Charlie Hebdo Cartoons, which offers detailed analysis of some of the magazine’s ruder images, or to a study published in Le Monde in February stating that, contrary to the notion that the publication focused obsessively on Islam, fewer than 2 percent of the magazine’s covers between 2005 and 2015 primarily mocked Islam.
该奖的辩护者反驳称，那样的观点未能全面地看待《查理周报》漫画的语境。他们指出像“了解查理周报漫画”这样的网站提供了对于该杂志部分较为粗糙的图片的详细分析， 或是一项二月份发表在法国《世界报》(Le Monde)上的研究。该研究显示，和《查理周报》过分专注于穆斯林的观念正好相反的是，在2005年至2015年之间不到百分之二的杂志封面主要嘲笑了穆斯林。The conversation about Charlie Hebdo in France has indeed been different from those in the United States. There, the magazine is widely seen as a leftist, anti-establishment irritant and champion of the underdog, carrying on a long French tradition of scabrous satire. The former President Nicolas Sarkozy was a particularly despised target, and the magazine has been unsparing in its evisceration of the right-wing, anti-immigrant National Front.
在法国，当人们谈论到《查理周报》时，态度的确明显与在美国不同。在那里，它被普遍看成是一份左翼、反建制的刺激刊物，为弱者代言，传承着法国悠久的粗俗式讽刺传统。前总统尼古拉·萨科奇(Nicolas Sarkozy) 就是常被其鄙视的目标。而且，该刊物还一直不遗余力地对反移民的右翼政党国民阵线(National Front) 大加挖苦。In an interview last week with the French magazine Les Inrocks, Rénald Luzier, the cartoonist who works under the name Luz and drew the cover image of Mohammed for the first issue after the attacks, said Charlie Hebdo’s creed was not hatred but “a joyful atheism.”
在上周，雷纳德·鲁西尔(Rénald Luzier)接受了法国杂志《Les Inroks》的采访。这位以鲁兹(Luz)为笔名并在袭击后的那期刊物中画了穆罕默德的封面画像的漫画家，当时声称《查理周报》的信条不是仇恨，而是“令人欢喜的无神论.”Still, as the shock of the attacks has begun to fade, the French debate has broadened, and some prominent intellectuals have questioned what lies beneath the “I Am Charlie” slogan.
尽管如此，随着袭击带来的震惊开始减退，法国进行了更广泛的辩论，一些重要的知识分子开始质疑“我是查理”标语下掩藏的真实面孔。In an interview about his new book, “Who Is Charlie?,” to be released in France on Thursday, the center-left historian and demographer Emmanuel Todd described the Jan. 11 demonstrations that brought millions to the streets of Paris and other French cities in support of the magazine as “a sham.” The march, he argued, purported to unite all of France but in fact brought together an urban, historically atheist elite and a rural, Roman Catholic, traditionally anti-republican demographic, but not the Muslim underclass.
在一次对他的即将于周四在法国发行的新书《谁是查理》的采访中，左翼历史学家和人口学家艾曼纽·托德(Emmanuel Todd)把1月11日那场声援《查理周报》的游行描述成“一场骗局”。那场示威活动聚集了巴黎和其他法国城市的数百万人。他说，他们声称要团结全法国，但其实只团结了都市中那些传统上秉持无神论的精英和乡村的那些传统上反共和的罗马天主教徒，而不包括底层社会的穆斯林。“For the first time in my life, I wasn’t proud to be French,” Mr. Todd said in a cover interview this week with the magazine L’Obs. “When four million people come together to say that caricaturing the religion of others is an absolute right — and even a duty! — and when these others are the weakest members of society, one is perfectly free to say that we’re fine, we’re in the right, that this is a great country. But that is not the case.”
“我有生第一次不以我是法国人而骄傲，”托德在本周的一次《新观察家》(L’Obs)的封面采访中说。“当四百万人聚到一起说以漫画讽刺其他人的宗教是绝对的权力，甚至是责任，并且当这些其他人是社会最弱势群体时，一个人可以自由地说我们挺好，我们没错，这是一个伟大的国家。但事实并非如此。The real threat to France, he said, isn’t Muslims but “this crazy new religion I call ‘radical secularism.’ ”
对法国的真正威胁，他说，不是穆斯林们，而是“这个我称为‘极端世俗主义’的新宗教。”Some of the writers protesting the PEN award say that acknowledgment of this aspect of the French context has been missing from the American conversation.
一些抗议笔会授奖的作家声称，在美国的相关讨论中，对法国这方面情况的承认无迹可寻。The novelist Rachel Kushner, one of the six hosts who withdrew, said that the award could be intended to honor free speech, but actually reinforced a cultural and legal order that limits the free expression of religious beliefs — for example, by banning head scarves in schools.
小说家蕾切尔·库什纳(Rachel Kushner)是撤出晚会的六位主持人之一，她说该奖本来是用来奖励言论自由的，但事实上却强化了一个限制宗教信仰自由表达的文化和法律秩序——比如说，禁止在学校戴面纱。The defense of Charlie Hebdo “is always on secularist grounds,” Ms. Kushner said in an email. “But some in France — the very same marginalized sector of society who see themselves as targeted by some of Hebdo’s covers — are targeted by laws that enforce secularism.”
对《查理周报》的维护“总是以世俗主义为基础的”，库什纳女士在一封邮件中说。“但是在法国的一些人——那些被社会边缘化的人，觉得自己成了《查理周报》封面的打击对象的人——成为了执行世俗主义的法律的打击对象。”