《超越单偶制的世界》书评
When I co-authored the book on polyamory that carries my name, it caught fire—mostly, I think, because it was at the right place at the right time. It was published as polyamory reached a kind of historical inflection point. I’m still quite proud of that book, though I no longer recommend it as strongly, as my former partner and co-author has made changes without my approval.
我跟人合著了一本多边恋的（polyamory）书籍，上面署了我的名字，这本书迅速走红了——最主要的原因，在我看来，是它出现在的时间和地点刚好合适。那本书出版时，多边恋正好到达了某种历史性的转折点。我至今仍然为那本书感到相当自豪，不过我已不再像从前那样强烈推荐它，因为我的前伴侣兼合著者在未经我同意的情况下对书稿做了修改。
But every book is a product of its time. The world now is not the world of a decade ago, and the book I co-authored—a deeply personal book written from the perspective of a very specific kind of polyamory at a specific moment in time—is no longer my #1 recommendation for folks who want to learn about consensually non-monogamous relationships.
但每一本书都是时代的产物。如今的世界已经不同于十年前，而我合著的那本书——一本高度个人化、从某一种非常特定的多边恋实践出发、写于特定历史时刻的作品——对于那些想要了解合意非单偶制（consensual non-monogamy）关系的人，我的首要推荐不再是它了。
A World Beyond Monogamy is the first genuinely journalistic book ever to be published on consensual non-monogamy. It’s also the first book of its kind with a global focus. It’s groundbreaking because it moves beyond the North American middle-class experience of polyamory that makes up the vast majority of poly books out there, including the one I co-authored.
《超越单偶制的世界》是第一本真正以新闻报道的方式来叙述合意非单偶制的著作，同时也是此类书籍中第一本具有全球视角的作品。它之所以具有突破性，在于它超越了北美中产阶级的多边恋经验——而市面上绝大多数多边恋书籍，包括我合著的那一本，基本都局限于这一经验框架之内。
For decades, white middle-class North Americans have enforced a kind of cultural hegemony over the world of organized ethical non-monogamy, largely because polyamory as a movement, and a codified way of doing relationships, emerged first in North America. At least outside of gay male spaces, which for many years have had their own particular flavor of non-monogamy, non-monogamous ideology—and certainly writing about non-monogamy—has tended toward a very white, very North American flavor, with everything that implies.
几十年来，北美白人中产阶级在有组织的“伦理非单偶制”（ethical non-monogamy）世界中施加了一种文化霸权，这在很大程度上是因为多边恋作为一场运动，以及一种被明确编码（形成了一套共同规范和话语体系——译者注）的关系实践方式，最早是在北美出现的。至少在男同性恋社群之外——男同社群多年来一直有其自身独特的非单偶制形态——非单偶制的意识形态，尤其是关于非单偶制的书写，往往呈现出一种非常“白人”、非常“北美”的风格。不仅是书写出来的部分，那些暗示出来的信息也是如此。
But as polyamory as a set of ideas about relationships has grown and spread, it has, in the past decades, started shaking off the North American hegemony, though naturally, like Britain in the closing days of its colonial empire, a lot of Americans haven’t kept up with the new reality.
然而，随着多边恋（作为一整套关于关系的观念）的不断发展和传播，在过去的几十年里，它已经开始逐渐摆脱北美霸权。只是很自然地，正如大英帝国殖民体系行将就木之际的英国一样，许多美国人并未跟上这一新的现实。
So let’s talk about Jonathan’s book.
所以，让我们来谈谈 Jonathan 的这本书。
Jonathan spent a tremendous amount of time interviewing people all over the world for this book, which for the sake of brevity I will hereafter refer to as AWBM. This broad scope paints a picture of consensual non-monogamy as a far more varied and diverse thing than most other books on the subject.
为了这本书，Jonathan 花费了大量时间在世界各地采访不同的人。为了行文简洁，以下我将这本书简称为 AWBM。如此广泛的取材范围，呈现出一种远比大多数同类书籍更加多样、更加丰富的合意非单偶制图景。
AWBM is not a how-to. It doesn’t try to evangelize polyamory. If that’s what you’re looking for, this might not be the right book for you (though fear not, there are plenty of other books like that to choose from, including the one with my name on it).
AWBM 并不是一本操作指南（how-to）。它并不试图布道或推广多边恋。如果你寻找的是这样的书，那么这本可能并不适合你（不过不必担心，这类书有很多可选，包括那本署了我名字的）。
If, on the other hand, you’re looking for a book that does a very deep dive into the world as it is, not as people want it to be, this is exactly the right book for you. Between its pages, you’ll find interviews with people from Sydney to Singapore, from India to Brazil, London to Seattle—all conducted by an experienced journalist with a long, solid, boots-on-the-ground career.
但如果你想要的是一本对现实世界进行极其深入剖析的书——不是人们希望它成为的样子，而是它真实存在的样子——那么这本书对你来说就恰到好处。在书页之间，你会读到来自悉尼、到新加坡、从印度到巴西、从伦敦到西雅图的声音；所有这些采访，都由一位拥有长期、扎实、一线经验的资深记者完成。
When you step outside the bubble and talk to people from a widely diverse range of backgrounds, it turns out that relationships are complicated, and non-monogamy is much, much larger than the North American scene it sprung from. Who knew?
当你走出自己的信息泡泡，与背景高度多元的人交谈时，就会发现，关系本身是复杂的，而非单偶制也远远比它最初所源出的北美场景要庞大得多。谁能想到呢？
So what makes this book so good that an author would recommend it over his own book? Two words: Journalistic rigor.
那么，是什么让这本书好到连一位作者都愿意推荐它、而不是推荐自己的书？两个词：新闻学的严谨性（journalistic rigor）。
Jonathan brings years of journalistic experience to the table for this book (he’s written and broadcast, among others, for the BBC, The Guardian, Reuters, Newsweek and The Daily Telegraph).
Jonathan 将自己多年积累的新闻从业经验完整地带入了这本书（他曾为 BBC、《卫报》、路透社、《新闻周刊》以及《每日电讯报》等媒体撰稿或播报）。
I mean, I could say how the British humor—err, humour—and wit carry the book (and they do), how the writing informs the interviews (which it does), and how the book is one of the largest written thus far on the subject but flows so easily it doesn’t feel nearly as long as it is (which is true), but really, the secret sauce is years of professional experience. Jonathan is good at handing the microphone to the people he’s interviewing, centering their voices and their experiences rather than trying to slot their stories into his own narrative. This isn’t Jonathan Kent building a personal brand out of his research on non-monogamy, it’s Jonathan Kent getting out of the way of letting people share their lived experiences.
当然，我也可以说英式幽默（humor）——呃，是humour（英式拼写）——和机智是如何支撑起整本书的（确实如此），说文字如何反过来滋养了采访内容（也是事实），以及这本书在同类主题中篇幅极为庞大，却读来流畅轻松，几乎让人感觉不到它的长度（同样属实）。但真正的“秘制配方”在于他多年的职业经验。Jonathan 擅长把麦克风交到受访者手中，让他们的声音与经验成为中心，而不是试图把他们的故事硬塞进他自己的叙事框架中。这并不是 Jonathan Kent 借非单偶制研究来打造个人品牌，而是 Jonathan Kent 主动退后一步，让人们讲述他们真实的生活经验。
He also talks to academics and researchers who have studied consensual non-monogamy in an academic setting.
他还采访了在学术语境中研究合意非单偶制的学者与研究人员。
This book covers a lot of ground. It is without question the most comprehensive book ever written on consensual non-monogamy. I mean, check out the table of contents:
这本书覆盖的范围极其广*泛。毫无疑问，它是迄今为止关于合意非单偶制最为全面的一本著作。你只要看看它的目录就知道了：
Let’s back up a step. In the book with my name on it, we refer to polyamory and swinging and such as ‘ethical non-monogamy.’ Jonathan uses ‘consensual non-monogamy,’ because ‘ethical’ is such a slippery word—one person’s ethics is another person’s “the Good Book says you will all burn in hellfire!”
我们先退一步来看。在那本署有我名字的书中，我们将多边恋、换偶等称为“伦理非单偶制”（ethical non-monogamy）。Jonathan 则使用“合意非单偶制”（consensual non-monogamy），因为“伦理”或者说“道德”（ethical）这个词也太灵活了——一个人的认为符合道德的事情，可能正是另一个人口中那种“《圣书》（the Good Book，常指《圣经》）说你们都会在地狱之火中燃烧”的伦理！
Consent informs the entire book, from the foreword to the end. Chapter three, which is entirely about consent, sets out the focus of the book in detail. Everything he writes starts with, and ends with, consent. A lot of folks tend to think of consensual non-monogamy in tightly constrained ways; Jonathan shows that the idea of consensual non-monogamy applies to a more diverse range of non-monogamous perspectives than many folks might think.
“同意”（consent）贯穿了整本书，从前言到结尾。第三章完全聚焦于同意，并详细阐明了本书的核心关注点。他所写的一切，都始于同意，也终于同意。许多人往往以非常受限的方式来理解合意非单偶制；而 Jonathan 则展示了这一概念实际上适用于比大多数人所想象的更加多样化的非单偶制视角。
If you’re looking for a book on consensual non-monogamy in all its forms, this is the one I recommend. (And hey, Christmas is coming; it’s a perfect gift for the non-monogamous folks on your list!)
如果你在寻找一本涵盖合意非单偶制所有形态的书，这就是我所推荐的那一本。（而且，圣诞节快到了；它会是一份送给你清单中那些非单偶制朋友的完美礼物！）
In the spirit of full disclosure, links to this book on my site are affiliate links, of course. If you use my link, I make an Amazon affiliate commission. I also did the layout for the eBook, though I was not paid for it.
出于完全披露的原则（full disclosure，媒体伦理用语），我网站上指向这本书的链接当然是联盟链接（affiliate links）。如果你使用我的链接购买，我会获得一笔亚马逊联盟佣金。【PolyCN 注：此处说的是上面的亚马逊购买链接。本站原文引用未作修改】我还为这本电子书做了版式设计，尽管这部分工作并未获得报酬。