非常令我感動而且振聾發聵的文章。取自http://www.u.arizona.edu/~jacovijl/Rich-Claiming%20an%20Education.doc。中文版是《島嶼邊緣》http://intermargins.net/intermargins/IsleMargin/science/8.htm，孫瑞穗譯，成令方校對。我把中文和英文放在一起了。關於學習與自身和女性主義的關係，令人充滿動力。
“Claiming an Education”
by Adrienne Rich
Speech delivered at the convocation of Douglass College, 1977.
For this convocation, I planned to separate my remarks into two parts: some thoughts
about you, the women students here, and some thoughts about us who teach in a women's college.
為了這次集會，我打算將我的講稿分成兩個部分：一部分是關於妳們在座女學生的某些想法，另一部分則是關於在女校教書的我們的一些思考。But ultimately those two parts are indivisible. 但是基本上這兩部分 是不可分割的。 If university education means anything beyond the processing of human beings into expected roles, through credit hours, tests, and grades (and I believe that in a women's college especially it might mean much more), it implies an ethical and intellectual contract between teacher and student.如果大學教育意味著不只是經由學分鐘點、考試與成績〈而且我相信，特別是在女校可能意味著更大的重要性〉來使人成為被期待角色的過程的話，那麼，師生之間必然隱含著一種倫理以及知識的契約。 This contract must remain intuitive, dynamic, unwritten; but we must turn to it again and again if learning is to be reclaimed from the depersonalizing and cheapening pressures of the present-day academic scene.這種契約必須可以停留在直覺的、機動的、以及未書寫的狀態中；如果一定要從當今學院舞台中那去人性化與廉價的壓力中爭取到學習權力的話，我們就必須一再回頭談及這師生之間的契約。
The first thing I want to say to you who are students, is that you cannot afford to think of being here to receive an education: you will do much better to think of being here to claim one. 我想告訴妳們學生的第一件事情乃是，妳們負擔不起坐在這兒認為妳們是來接受(receive)教育的；如果妳認為自己在要求(claim)教育權的話，妳將會做的更好。One of the dictionary definitions of the verb "to claim" is: to take as the rightful owner; to assert in the face of possible contradiction. 要求(to claim)這個動詞在字典中的一個意思是：視作權利的擁有者；面對可能的矛盾仍堅持主張。"To receive" is to come into possession of: to act as receptacle or container for; to accept as authoritative or true. 去接受(to receive)便是意謂去擁有些什麼；作為一儲藏室或容器；把它當權威或真理去接受。The difference is that between acting and being acted-upon, and for women it can literally mean the difference between life and death.這種在主動(acting)與被動(be-acted-upon)之間的差異，對女人而言，可能正意謂著生與死的差異。
One of the devastating weaknesses of university learning, of the store of knowledge and opinion that has been handed down through academic training,大學教育作為一通過學院訓練來傳授知識與意見的儲藏室，其最致命的缺點便是： has been its almost total erasure of women's experience and thought from the curriculum, and its exclusion of women as members of the academic community. 將女人的經驗與思想幾乎完全從課程中抹殺，並且排除女人作為學院社群的一份子。Today, with increasing numbers of women students in nearly every branch of higher learning, we still see very few women in the upper levels of faculty and administration in most institutions. 今天，雖然在每一所高等教育機構中女學生人數越來越多，但在大部分機構的專職與行政高階層中仍很少看到女性。Douglass College itself is a women's college in a university administered overwhelmingly men, who in turn are answerable to the state legislature, again composed predominantly of men.道格拉斯學院本身雖為女子學院，然而仍然全面地被男人管理，而這些男人是向州議會 ─也是由男人全面控制─負責的。 But the most, significant fact for you is that what you learn here, the very texts you read, the lectures you hear, the way your studies are divided into categories and fragmented one from the other但對妳而言最重要的是你在這兒所學的，妳所讀的書，妳所聽的課，妳所學習的方法皆被分割成各種範疇，彼此之間片段零碎化 -- all this reflects, to a very large degree, neither objective reality, nor an accurate picture of the past, nor a group of rigorously tested observations about human behavior. 以上種種所反應的有很大程度既非客觀的事實，也不是對過去事實正確的描述，更不是一組被有力檢證過的關於人類行為的觀察。What you can learn here (and I mean not only at Douglass but any college in any university) is how men have perceived and organized their experience, their history, their ideas of social relationships, good and evil, sickness and health, etc. 在這兒，妳所能學到的〈我說的不只是道格拉斯學院，而是所有大學的學院〉是男人如何識查或組織他們的經驗、他們的歷史、他們所認知的社會關係、善與惡、疾病與健康…等等。When you read or hear about "great issues," "major texts," "the mainstream of Western thought," you are hearing about what men, above all white men, in their male subjectivity, have decided is important. 當妳讀到或聽到有關「偉大的議題」、「重要的文本」以及「西方主流思想」時，妳聆聽到的是男人，尤其是白種男人，以他們男人為主體所認為重要的東西。
Black and other minority peoples have for some time recognized that their racial and ethnic experience was not accounted for in the studies broadly labeled human: and that even the sciences can be racist.黑人與少數民族好一段時期就已知道，他們自己的種族與作為少數民族的經驗在一般被標示為人文的研究中並未被考慮進去；甚至於科學也可能是種族歧視的。 For many reasons, it has been more difficult for women to comprehend our exclusion, and to realize that even the sciences can be sexist. 有許多的原因讓我們女人更難瞭解我們為何被排除在外，以及認識到甚至科學也可能有性別歧視。For one thing, it is only within the last hundred years that higher education has grudgingly been opened up to women at all, even to white, middle-class women. 其中一個原因是直到最近一百年，高等教育才勉強的對女人開放，然而卻也只限於白種、中產階級的女人。And many of us have found ourselves poring eagerly over books with title like: 我們之中已有許多人發現，我們自己努力熟讀的一些書有如下的標題，例如：The Descent of Man: Man and His Symbols: Irrational Man: The Phenomenon of Man: 「人類〈男人〉的由來」「人〈男人〉及其象徵」「非理性的人〈男人〉」「人類〈男人〉的現象」The Future of Man: Man and the Machine: From Man to Man: May Man Prevail?「人類〈男人〉的未來」「人〈男人〉與機器」「從人〈男人〉到人〈男人〉」「人類〈男人〉可能占優勢嗎？」: Man, Science and Society: or One Dimensional Man 「人〈男人〉、科學與社會」或者「單面向的人〈男人〉」--books pretending to describe a "human" reality that does not include over one-half the human species.這些書都佯裝要去描述一個「人類」的真實，但這真實卻不包括半數的人種。
Less than a decade ago, with the rebirth of a feminist movement in this country, women students and teachers in a number of universities began to demand and set up women's studies courses不到十年前，隨著第二波女性主義運動在本國度的再生，很多大學中的女學生與女老師開始要求設立婦女研究的課程 -- to claim a women-directed education. And, despite the inevitable accusations of "unscholarly," "group therapy," "faddism," etc.,要求一個以女人為主導的教育。雖然有許多不可避免的像「不夠學術」、「集體治療」、「趕流行」等等的非難， despite backlash and budget cuts, 以及保守勢力反撲與預算被刪減的問題，woman's studies are still growing, offering to more and more women a new intellectual grasp on their lives, new understanding of our history, a fresh vision of the human experience,但婦女研究卻依然發展，並在知識上提供越來越多的女人一個新的對她們自己生命的掌握能力，對我們自己的歷史的新瞭解，一種人類經驗的新視野， and also a critical basis for evaluating what they hear and read in other courses, and in the society at large.並且也提供了一個批判性的基礎以作為她們去評估在其他課程或一般社會中所聽到以及所看到的。
But my talk is not really about women's studies, much as I believe in their scholarly, scientific, and human necessity.但是我的演說並不完全是關於婦女研究，雖然我們相信她們的學術性、科學性以及人文必要性。 While I think that any Douglass student has everything to gain by investigating and enrolling in women's studies courses,當我想到任何一位道格拉斯的學生只要經由調查或加入婦女研究就能有所收穫時， I want to suggest that there is a more essential experience that you owe yourselves, one which courses in women's studies can greatly enrich, 我想建議的是一種更必要的妳虧欠自己的經驗。這種經驗在婦女研究課程中可能被加強，but which finally depends on you in all your interactions with yourself and your world. 然而最後仍然要看你是不是能在所有你跟自己以及妳跟世界之間的互動中得到。This is the experience of taking responsibility toward yourselves. 這是一種妳對自己負責任的經驗。Our upbringing as women has so often told us that this should come second to our relationships and responsibilities to other people. We have been offered ethical models of the self-denying wife and mother;作為一個女人，我們的成長經驗不斷地告訴我們：對自己負責在其次，重要的是我們與他人的關係以及要先對他人負責。我們被賦予的倫理典範是自我否定的妻子與母親； intellectual models of the brilliant but slapdash dilettante who never commits herself to anything the whole way, 而知識典範則是一種頭腦聰明卻輕率不求甚解，從來不願承擔任何事情的傻大姐，or the intelligent woman who denies her intelligence in order to seem more "feminine," or who sits in passive silence even when she disagrees inwardly with everything that is being said around her.或者是經常否定自己的聰明智慧只為了看起來更「女性化」一點兒的女知識份子，甚或是那種當心裡對週遭所說的一切都不同意時，只能被動而沉默的坐在那兒的女人。
Responsibility to yourself means refusing to let others do your thinking, talking, and naming for you; 對妳自己負責意謂著拒絕讓別人為妳思考、說話以及為妳命名； it means learning to respect and use your own brains and instincts; 它意謂著要學習去尊重以及善用你自己的頭腦與直覺， hence, grappling with hard work.因此，也要能緊抓住困難的工作。 It means that you do not treat your body as a commodity with which to purchase superficial intimacy or economic security;意思是說妳不能把自己的身體視為追求表面親密關係或經濟保障的商品； for our bodies to be treated as objects, our minds are in mortal danger.因為我們的身體與心靈在生活中視不可分割的，然而當我們讓我們的身體被當作物品般的對待時，我們的心靈便有致命的危險。 It means insisting that those to whom you give your friendship and love are able to respect your mind.而它也意謂著要堅持妳給予友誼以及妳所愛的人必定是能夠尊重妳的心靈的人。It means being able to say, with Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre:借凱洛蒂‧布朗弟(Charlotte Bronte's)在《簡愛》中的話，可以這麼說： "I have an inward treasure born with me, which can keep me alive if all the extraneous delights should be withheld or offered only at a price I cannot afford to give." 「我的內心擁有與生俱來的寶貝，當我無法獲得所有外來的快樂，或者當快樂是以我付不出的代價提供時，它使我得以繼續生存。」
Responsibility to yourself means that you don't fall for shallow and easy solutions—對妳自己負責意謂著妳不流於膚淺尋求簡單的答案─predigested books and ideas, weekend encounters guaranteed to change your life, 接受不須動腦筋的書籍與觀念，以為週末集會的討論就能保證改變妳的生活，taking "gut" courses instead of ones you know will challenge you, bluffing at school and life instead of doing solid work, 只選擇簡單沒有什麼內容而不選有挑戰性的課程，在學校與生活中騙吃騙喝卻不做紮實的工作，marrying early as an escape from real decisions, getting pregnant as an evasion of already existing problems.提早結婚迴避真正的決定，快快懷孕做為一種逃避面對現存問題的藉口。 It means that you refuse to sell your talents and aspirations short, simply to avoid conflict and confrontation. 對自己負責意謂著妳拒絕只為了避免衝突與矛盾而廉價販賣你的才能與抱負，And this, in turn, means resisting the forces in society which say that women should be nice, play safe, 那也意謂著要抵抗大社會的壓力，如：女人應該要很溫馴、乖乖的，have low professional expectations, drown in love and forget about work, live through others, 比較沒有專業的企圖心，喜歡耽溺於愛情而忘卻工作，依賴別人過日子，and stay in the places assigned to us. 並且應該安份地待在被指定的地方。It means that we insist on a life of meaningful work, insist that work be as meaningful as love and friendship in our lives. 對自己負責任表示我們堅持過一種有義義的工作的生活，堅持著工作就和我們生活中的愛與友情一樣地富有意義。It means, therefore, the courage to be "different"; not to be continuously available to others when we need time for ourselves and our work; 因此，對自己負責意思是說要有勇氣成為「不一樣的人」；而不是當我們需要時間來為我們自己或我們的工作努力時，卻仍要繼續把時間讓別人使用；to be able to demand of others--parents, friends, roommates, teachers, lovers, husbands, children—要能夠去要求別人─如：父母、朋友、室友、老師、愛人、丈夫、小孩─that they respect our sense of purpose and our integrity as persons.告訴他們 應該尊重我們的目的感以及作為一個人的完整性。Women everywhere are finding the courage to do this, more and more, and we are finding that courage both in our study of women in the past who possessed it, 世界各處的女人找到了這麼做的勇氣，而且越來越多，我們在我們研究的女人中找到這種勇氣。and in each other as we look to other women for comradeship, community, and challenge. 也在當我們向其它女人尋求同志愛、社群感以及挑戰時的彼此之間找到。The difference between a life lived actively, and a life of passive drifting and dispersal of energies, is an immense difference.主動積極地生活與被動地隨波逐流消耗能量地生活有相當大的差異。Once we begin to feel committed to our lives, responsible to ourselves, we can never again be satisfied with the old, passive way.一旦我們開始感覺願意承擔自己的生活，對自己負責，我們便不再對過去陳舊而被動的生活方式感到滿意了。
Now comes the second part of the contract. 現在來談契約的第二部分。I believe that in a women's college you have the right to expect your faculty to take you seriously. 我相信在女子學院中妳大有權利要求妳的專業教授們對妳認真。The education of women has been a matter of debate for centuries, and old, negative attitudes about women's role, women's ability to think and take leadership, are still rife both in and outside the university.幾個世紀以來，女人受教育早已是辯論的主題了，然而，關於女人的角色以及女人思考與領導能力的主題持老就而否定的態度，至今仍盛行於大學校園內外。 Many male professors (and I don't mean only at Douglass) still feel that teaching in a women's college is a second-rate career. 許多男教授〈我並不僅僅指再道格拉斯〉仍認為在女學校教書是一種次等的職業。Many tend to eroticize their women students—to treat them as sexual objects--他們很多人將女學生情色化─將她們視為性對象─instead of demanding the best of their minds.而不要求她們在智識上做最好的表現(At Yale a legal suit [Alexander v. Yale] has been brought against the university by a group of women students demanding a stated policy against sexual advances toward female students by male professors.)〈在耶魯，有一樁法律訴訟案名是Alexander v. Yale此乃由一群女學生要求校方制定校規阻止男教授對女學生的性騷擾〉 Many teachers, both men and women, trained in the male-centered tradition,許多在男性中心的傳統中被訓練出來的老師，不分男女，are still handing the ideas and texts of that tradition on to students without teaching them to criticize its antiwoman attitudes, it's omission of women as part of the species. 至今仍然將傳統的觀念與文本傳授給學生，卻不教她們批判其中反女人以及刪除女人作為人類族群之一的態度。 Too often, all of us fail to teach the most important thing,常常，我們都沒教最重要的事： which is that clear thinking, active discussion, and excellent writing are all necessary for intellectual freedom, and that these require hard work. 即清晰的思考，積極的討論以及優秀的寫作能力等對知識的自由而言皆是必要的條件，而且都需要努力下苦功才行。Sometimes, perhaps in discouragement with a culture which is both antiintellectual and antiwoman, 有時候也許我們會在同時既反知識又反女人的文化中感到挫敗，we may resign ourselves to low expectations for our students before we have given them half a chance to become more thoughtful, expressive human beings.在給她們一絲機會成為更深思熟慮、更有能力表達自己的人之前，我們可能會氣餒以致於對學生期望較低。 We need to take to heart the words of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, a poet, a thinking woman, and a feminist,我們必須將依莉莎白‧巴瑞特‧布朗寧(Elizabeth Barrett Browning)的話牢記在心，她是一位詩人，一位會思考的婦女同時也是女性主義者。who wrote in 1845 of her impatience with studies which cultivate a "passive recipiency" in the mind, 曾在一八四五年寫下她對學習培養內心「被動接受」的不耐煩，and asserted that "women want to be made to think actively: their apprehension is quicker than that of men, but their defect lies for the most part in the logical faculty and in the higher mental activities." 她堅稱「女人都希望被引導主動思考：她們理解過程比男人快，但她們的弱點大部分在邏輯能力及抽象思考活動上。」 Note that she implies a defect which can be remedied by intellectual training; not an inborn lack ability.在此段引言裡她暗示了，這些缺點可以被知識的訓練所彌補：絕非天生能力的缺乏。
I have said that the contract on the student's part involves that you demand to be taken seriously so that you can also go on taking yourself seriously. 我已經說過了，在契約中的學生部分牽涉到妳必須要求被認真對待，如此你也才能繼續認真對待自己。This means seeking out criticism, recognizing that the most affirming thing anyone can do for you is demand that you push yourself further, show you the range of what you can do.這意謂著學會批判，並且認識到任何人能為妳做最肯定的事便是要求妳自己往前跨步，表現出妳盡全力所能達到的程度。 It means rejecting attitudes of "take-it-easy," "why-be-so-serious," "why-worry-you'll-probably-get-married-anyway.也意謂著「慢慢來！」「幹嘛那麼認真！」「別擔心，反ˊ正妳遲早會結婚的！」的態度。" It means assuming your share of responsibility for what happens in the classroom,意思是你要承擔分享所有在教室發生事情的責任， because that affects the quality of your daily life here.因為在這兒它將影響妳日常生活的品質。 It means that the student sees herself engaged with her teachers in active, ongoing struggle for a real education. 也就是女學生與她的老師共同努力為一個真正〈屬於她們自己〉的教育奮鬥。But for her to do this, her teachers must be committed to belief that women's minds and experience are intrinsically valuable and indispensable to any civilization worthy the name: 但是當她這麼做時，她的老師必須要堅信女人的智慧與經驗本質上是可貴的，並且對任何一名符其實的文明而言是不可或缺的。that there is no more exhilarating and intellectually fertile place in the academic world today than a women's college –if both students and teachers in large enough numbers are trying to fulfill this contract. 因而，在現今學院中，再沒有比在女子學院中更具豐沃的智慧，更令人欣喜了─如果有足夠多的學生與老師致力實踐這個契約的話。The contract is really a pledge of mutual seriousness about women, about language, ideas, method, and values.這個契約的確是彼此認真對待以及語言、觀念、方法、價值的擔保。 It is our shared commitment toward a world in which the inborn potentialities of so many women's minds will not longer be wasted, raveled-away, paralyzed, or denied.它是我們共同分享的承諾，為了邁向一個不再浪費、扭曲、癱瘓或否定多少女人內心與生俱來的潛能世界。
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