阿什克罗夫特教授的首场讲座主要是后殖民研究的基本概念，包后殖民主义、帝国主义、殖民主义、种族、民族、土著居民、杂糅、融合、阻力和转型。帝国主义是从殖民地获得经济、战略和政治上优势的政策，而古典帝国主义即是骚扰非洲。种族是在后殖民研究的重要问题，它是通过生物学和基因组的不同对人类进行分类的，它也标志着精神和道德行为。种族是指一个群体拥有独特的文化和民族特色。不同于种族，民族特色通常是一个积极的集体身份的自我认知标志。土著人民，延续殖民主义的标志“出生在一个地方或地区”。杂糅“是一种建立在殖民接触带的新形式”。然后阿什克罗夫特教授对其他相关概念进行了简要介绍。

阿什克罗夫特教授的第二场讲座是关于种族和表征的。“表征”是赋予思想观念以具体形式的过程。换句话说，人们如何描绘某物取决于他们怎样看待它。阿什克罗夫特教授引用了福柯关于话语的定义，“在一定范围内话语在同一时间既约束也促成写作、口语和思维”。“表征”是意识形态的，产生于话语内，是一个强大殖民统治模式。占主导地位阶层的话语决定人们如何看待世界，所以帝国统治定义了空间和时间（制图和历史）。白人对“他者”的表征是“低劣”、 “野蛮”、或“未驯化”，这对于殖民统治地位一直很关键。“种族”是人类生存最分裂的类别之一，但是在人类基因组计划并没有“种族”基因的标记。“种族”位于话语中，它是一种语言的功能。同时是“种族”标志着欧洲的“他者”和人类的等级制度，有利建立政治统治。然后教授阿什克罗夫特简要介绍了社会达尔文主义：适者生存、殖民主义和“种族歧视改善”。在讲座结的尾声，阿什克罗夫特教授还介绍了种族、白度及民族和后殖民写作。

从阿什克罗夫特教授的第三场讲座可知，东方主义既是一门学科，又是一种思考方式，更是一个处理东方问题的机制。无论从哪个角度讨论，这一概念都强调了一种国际文化关系，在这种关系中，西方人以其特殊的方式解读东方人，认为他们野蛮、女气、充满异域风情。萨义德，尽管具有矛盾身份，试图用该书扭转这一方式，行使其学者具有的权力，即讲述真相。

最后一场讲座关于离散文学，离散的定义非常复杂。离散者是侨居海外的少数民族群体，他们被最初的中心驱逐到边缘环境；他们保持着关于自己最初家乡的“记忆、梦想和神话”；他们相信他们不会或不完全地被东道国接受；他们将祖先的家乡作为自己最后的归宿；他们全力维护或重建他们的故乡；他们内部团结一致且与故乡紧密相连。离散的群体面临着来自性别、种族、阶级、宗教、语言、代沟以及主流文化的问题。而离散族群中的女性生活更加艰难，她们承受着来自物质流放和精神流放的双重不安，既要工作，又要照顾家庭，还要承受父权的压迫。对于离散者最大的问题还是来自文化身份和主体性，这两项都面临着挑战和妥协。

阿什克罗夫特教授的四场讲座受到了观众们的热烈欢迎。在阿什克罗夫特教授做完演讲后，观众们都积极提问，而且问题有趣而机智，如关于杂糅的影响、占领与殖民的不同、跨国婚姻的杂糅等方面。阿什克罗夫特教授的回答亦是智慧而幽默。

第二次讲座之前，英国beat365官方网站入口院长傅利教授向阿什克罗夫特教授颁发了由王树国校长签发的顾问教授证书，并赠送他一件精美礼品。阿什克罗夫特教授发表感言称他很荣幸能够成为哈工大的顾问教授，并感谢英国beat365官方网站入口和刘克东教授邀请他来哈工大做讲座。阿什克罗夫特教授系列讲座圆满结束，周日下午飞离哈尔滨，返回澳大利亚。

Professor Bill Ashcroft’s Serial Lectures at HIT

Professor Bill Ashcroft arrived at Harbin Institute of Technology (HIT) on June 3, 2012, and gave four lectures on post-colonial studies: key concepts, race and representation, orientalism, and diaspora in Room 3036 of Jixie Building.

Professor Ashcroft’s first lecture is mainly about the key concepts of post-colonial studies including postcolonial, imperialism, colonialism, race, ethnicity, indigenous peoples, hybridity, transculturation, resistance and transformation. In The Empire Writes Back published in 1989, postcolonial studies have been related to the analysis, by cultural critics, of the various social, political and cultural effects of colonization. Imperialism is the policy of acquiring colonies for economic, strategic and political advantage, and the classical imperialism is the scrambling of Africa. Race, which is an important issue in postcolonial studies, and it is the classification of human beings into physically, biologically and genetically distinct groups and it signifies mental and moral behaviour. Ethnicity refers to a group that is socially distinguished or set apart, by others and/or by itself on the basis of cultural or national characteristics. Unlike race, ethnicity is usually deployed as a positive self-perception signifying the collective identity. Indigenous peoples are those ‘born in a place or region’, sign of the continuation of colonialism. Hybridity refers to the creation of new transcultural forms in the colonial contact zone. Then transculturation is briefly introduced. As there is colonialism, there are resistance and transformation.

Professor Ashcroft’s second lecture is about race and representation. Representation is the process of giving concrete form to ideological concepts. In other words, how people represent something depends on how they think about it. Professor Ashcroftquotes Michel Foucault’s definition of discourse that“a discourse is whatever constrains and at the same time what enables writing, speaking and thinking within certain limits”.Representation is ideological occurring within a discourse, and it is a powerful mode of colonial dominance. The discourse of the dominant determines how the world is seen, so the imperial dominance defines the perceptions of space and time (cartography and history). The representation of other races as inferior, ‘barbaric’, or ‘uncivilized’ has been critical to colonial dominance. ‘Race’ is one of the most divisive categories of human existence, but no gene for ‘race’ has been identified in the Human Genome Project.Race is located in discourse, and it is a function of language. It is race that signifies the European ‘Other’, the hierarchy of human types enabling political dominance. Then Professor Ashcroft briefly introduces Social Darwinism: the survival of the fittest, and the Colonialism and ‘racial improvement’. At the end of the lecture, Professor Ashcroft also introduces ethnicity, whiteness, race and Post-colonial Writing.

In Prof. Bill Ashcroft’s third lecture, it can be known that orientalsim refers to an academic discipline, a style of thought and a corporate institution for dealing with the Orient. From whichever perspective, the concept is used to indicate the global cultural relations, in which Europeans have their “special” way to know the Orient as the barbaric, feminine, and exotic. Said, despite with his paradox identity as a British Palestinist, aims to reverse the gaze of the Europeans and conduct his function of being an intellectual, to speak truth to power.

The last lecture is about Diaspora and Displacement. The definition of diaspora is very complicated. Diasporas are expatriate minority communities that are dispersed from an original "center" to at least two "peripheral" places; that maintain a "memory, vision, or myth about their original homeland"; that "believe they are not-and perhaps cannot be-fully accepted by their host country"; that see the ancestral home as a place of eventual return, when the time is right; that are committed to the maintenance or restoration of this homeland; and whose consciousness and solidarity as a group are "importantly defined" by this continuing relationship with the homeland. The diasporic community meets many problems about gender, race, class, religion, language, generation, and relationship with the majority culture. Life for women in diasporic situations can be doubly painful-struggling with the material and spiritual insecurities of exile, with the demands of family and work, and with the claims of old and new patriarchies. The most serious problem of the diasporas is that they also have to suffer the challenge and shifting of their cultural identity or subjectivity

Professor Ashcroft’s all four lectures are welcomed and appreciated by the audiences. After Professor Ashcroft’s presentations, the audiences, both students and teachers, actively ask him questions about his studies. The questions are interesting and smart, such as the social influence in hybridity, the differences between occupation and colonization, the hybridity in cross-country marriages, and so on. Professors Ashcroft’s answers are also brilliant and humorous. Even though Professor Ashcroft’s series of lectures successfully comes to an end, the Foreign Language School of HIT will try its best to host more brilliant and wonderful lectures. Please pay attention to the relevant notice from the Foreign Language School of HIT, it will not disappoint you.

Before the second lecture, Professor Ashcroft, Dean FU awarded him the consultancy professorship, which was signed by President Wang Shuguo. Professor Ashcroft feels honored to be here at HIT and thanked Professor Kedong LIU and the School of Foreign Languages for inviting him.

Professor Ashcroft is an erudite critic and theorist of post-colonial studies, co-author of The Empire Writes Back which is the first major systematical and theoretical account of post-colonial texts and culture in this field and has been quoted more thirty thousand times. He has been the author and co-author of sixteen books, including four second editions, variously translated into five languages, and over 160 chapters and articles. He is on the editorial boards of ten international journals, and he has been awarded a five year Australia Professorial Fellowship beginning in 2011 to work on a project entitled "Future Thinking: Utopianism in Post-colonial Literatures." Most recently he spent three years from 2005-2008 as Chair Professor of English at the University of Hong Kong. Now he teaches at the University of New South Wales which is a partner with HIT. This is his second visit to HIT. In January 2011, he attended The International Conference on 20^th Century Literature in English from Cross-Cultural Perspectives co-hosted by the HIT School of Foreign Languages and the A&HCI journal Foreign Literature Studies.

By Catherine Junmin LIU and Roy Kedong LIU

（文/刘君敏、刘克东；图/代新枚）