本文以莫言小說《蛙》為例，探討有關生育的傳統文化記憶在現代啟蒙運動中如何被邊緣化，又如何支持了農民對計劃生育過程中國家採取的暴力手段的抵抗，以及最終在新自由主義經濟發展時期如何以類似宗教信仰的物化形式被重新啟動。文章認為，計劃生育不只是一個社會政治實踐，更是一個文化實踐。這一實踐折射出了整個二十世紀現代啟蒙運動、民族─國家重建、社會主義實踐，以及市場化過程中科學理性、信仰以及暴力之間複雜的內在關聯。當國家以現代性觀念將計劃生育这一暴力政策合法化時，農民則借助了基於「天理」等傳統觀念的久被壓抑的文化記憶對其進行抵抗。

Taking Mo Yan’s 莫言 novel Frog 蛙 as a principal example, this article explores the ways in which the traditional cultural memory of birth is marginalized, the ways in which such memory endorses the farmers’ resistance to state violence in birth control, and the ways in which it is revitalized in a quasi-religious form in the era of the market economy. It argues that birth control is not only a sociopolitical practice, but also a cultural practice. Such a practice embodies the sophisticated innate connections among reason, belief, and violence in the Chinese Enlightenment Movement, nation-state building, socialist practice, and the market economy. When the state legitimizes its violent birth control practices though these modern discourses, the farmers invoke their repressed cultural memory rooted in traditional beliefs to endorse their resistance.