「地理學的想像」

「學院裡，觀念的周轉時間也加速了。不久以前，一生出版兩本書以上，就被認為野心太大。現在，領袖群倫的學界人士必須每兩年出版一本書，證明自己還活著。學院裡生產力和產出的界定越來越嚴格，學術成就也越來越緊以這些項目來衡量。 ... 觀念生產的加速，平行於資本主義整體的加速周轉時間的一般性推力。但是書籍和期刊的更大產量，有賴於新知識的生產，而這意味著更激烈地互相競爭，以尋找新觀念，並且對於這些觀念的所有權更感興趣。只有當亞當•史密斯的看不見的手，在其他市場無法發揮的一切效果都在學院裡實現了，這種瘋狂的活動才能夠凝聚成為某些具有共識，而且基礎穩固的『真理』。實際上，觀念、理論、模型、主題辯論，是一種本月流行色彩式的時尚，它們加劇了快速周轉、加速和瞬息萬變的狀況。去年是實證主義和馬克思主義，今年是結構歷程論(structurationism)，下一年是實在論，後年則是建構主義、後現代主義或其他甚麼東西。跟緊班尼頓(Benetton)色彩變化的步調，比追隨當前學院世界裡短暫觀念的迴轉，要容易多了。」

-----David Harvey，〈時空之間─關於地理學想像的省思〉，頁71-72

*此篇講稿原發表於1990年，由王志宏翻譯，收錄在《空間的文化形式與社會理論讀本》。這段文字實在一針見血，雖由社會地理學出發，卻是用當今所有知識生產，學術界的朋友想必心有戚戚焉。原文抄錄如下:

"Not so long ago, to publish more than two books in a lifetime was thought to be over-ambitious. Nowadays, it seems, leading academics have to publish a book every two years if they are to prove they are still alive. Definitions of productivity and output in academia have become much more strictly applied and career advancement is more and more measured simply in such terms. ... Speed-up in the production of ideas parallels a general push to accelerate turnover time within capitalism as a whole. But greater output of books and journals must rest on the production of new knowledge, and that implies the much fiercer competitive search for new ideas, a much greater proprietary interest in them. Such frenetic activity can converge upon some consensual and well-established 'truth' only if Adam Smith's hidden hand has all those effects in academia that it plainly does not have in other markets. In practice, the competitive marketing of ideas, theories, models, topic thrusts, generates color-of-the-month fashions which exacerbate rather than ameliorate conditions of rapid turnover, speed-up and ephemerality. Last year it was postitivism and Marxism, this year structuralism, next year realism and the year after that constructivism, postmodernism, or whatever. It is easier to keep pace with the changes in Benetton's colors than to follow the gyrations of ephemeral ideas now being turned over within the academic world."

-----David Harvey. "Between Space and Time: Reflections on the Geographical Imagination", p. 431.