Trauma and Memory: The case of the Great Famine in the People's Republic of China (1959-1961) (original) (raw)
Related papers
Why Nanjing 1937? The Forgetting and Remembering of a Cultural Trauma
China's modern history (1839-) does not lack devastating and traumatic episodes for memorialisation. The nearly two centuries in question are filled with revolution, famine, drought, war, and civil unrest. Why and how then, did 1937's Nanjing massacre rise to the very top of a contemporary Chinese calendar of traumatic remembrance? Applying the theories of sociologist Jeffrey C. Alexander, this article will argue that the Chinese Communist Party first actively suppressed, then deliberately chose to reconstruct the events at Nanjing as a national level traumaan intentional wound on the collective Chinese psyche to foster nationalism and loyalty during a time of crisis. The key to this traumatic construction has been representation.
2021
Under the current Xi administration, China has marked the 13 th of December as the national public Memorial Day for the Nanjing massacres victims. The reaffirmation of this historical trauma under Xi continues the official narrative of national humiliation to rejuvenation established in the 1990s’ patriotic education. Simultaneously, there has been widespread state-promoted campaign of “positivity”, with frequent announcements that China has entered “a new era”. This article traces the representations of the Nanjing Massacre in different “contact zones” to reveal how certain negative emotions associated with the trauma are deliberately activated to serve the instrumental purposes in China’s contemporary governance. It shows the party-state’s time-tested strategy of encouraging the public to internalize the positive feelings of living in a great new era through comparison with past misery. It also demonstrates the extension of the party-state’s disciplinary power to the public’s affe...
The Rape of Nanjing: Forgetting and Remembering in Communist China
This essay considers the deeply political forgetting and remembering of 1937's Nanjing Massacre. It first considers the circumstances surrounding the political forgetting , then the deliberate remembering using the Nanjing Massacre Memorial Museum as a backdrop to the inculcation of a national trauma.
The Post-Maoist Politics of Memory
Zhang/A Companion to Modern Chinese Literature, 2015
Designations used by companies to distinguish their products are often claimed as trademarks. All brand names and product names used in this book are trade names, service marks, trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners. The publisher is not associated with any product or vendor mentioned in this book. Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty: While the publisher and author have used their best efforts in preparing this book, they make no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this book and specifically disclaim any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. It is sold on the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering professional services and neither the publisher nor the author shall be liable for damages arising herefrom. If professional advice or other expert assistance is required, the services of a competent professional should be sought. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A companion to modern Chinese literature / edited by Yingjin Zhang. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-118-45162-5 (cloth) 1. Chinese literature-20th century-History and criticism. 2. Chinese literature-21st century-History and criticism. I. Zhang, Yingjin, editor. PL2303.C616 2016 895.109′005-dc23 2015014604 A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Remembering the Chinese Past: The Remote and the Recent
Yujie Zhu (2020) Remembering the Chinese Past: The Remote and the Recent. In Nakajima, T. and Takayama H eds. Recent Past and Remote Past. 25-42. University of Tokyo Press , 2020
Since the early twentieth century, heritage, museums and memorials have played active roles in constructing and reinterpreting the social memories of nation-states and sub-groups within the national population. In this paper, I examine how modern China remembers its remote and recent past through official heritage/memory devices. What follows is a discussion of the differences and similarities between the ways of remembering and forgetting the recent and remote past. How does the recent past become the remote? How do such changes reflect the ongoing social-political context of modern China? I argue that both of the remote and the recent serve the current political regime to show the idea of progress, development and the sense of continuity. However, while the remote past can sometimes be rewritten or romanticised with a relatively high degree of public consensus, the interpretation of the recent past is not always an easy task. The formation of official memory does not simply concern remembering: certain pieces of evidence of the past need to be erased or re-narrated - a phenomenon of collective amnesia – to facilitate the building of the homogenised, progressive national culture. During this process of creating a unified version of Chinese official memory, certain groups’ past has been highlighted, while others, such as minorities including women and victims, have been forgotten.
T he relationship between individual and social in the perception of traumatic events has been a problem of stable concern of ethnographers and social anthropologists. 1 Th is complicated relationship between the biological and cultural nature of Famine and Mass Violence experience provoked suspicions about the possibility of explanation of the research phenomena in question. Th e critique went to basic assumption of biomedical approaches to nutritional and violence crises and provoked new questions about emotional, institutional and social aspects of research investigation. Th e situation of distancing from others stemming from a diff erent cultural status can change the optics of perception considerably and result in completely diff erent adaptation strategies. Internal and external perception of a given community as partly alien to the dominant ethnic group develops more determined survival strategies (including greater solidarity, support received from befriended communities, and eff orts to receive special treatment from the state) at the time of traumatic disturbances. Viewing complex and often chaotic socialist modernization processes (repressions, expropriations, fi ghting reaction, etc.) in clear terms of an ethnocultural confl ict off ers a possibility to focus on the defense of the material, symbolic and cultural capital of a given community.