Nathan M.L. To (Trauma, Memory, Diaspora) 1 The Intergenerational Transmission of Trauma Through Distributed, Mediated Visions of Memory in 2nd Generation Canadian Chinese Experience Nathan M.L To Goldsmiths, University of London A Thesis Submitted for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy to the Department of Media and Communications 2014 Nathan M.L. To (Trauma, Memory, Diaspora) 2 Declaration I hereby declare that the work presented herein is entirely my own. Where information has been derived from other sources, I confirm that this has been indicated in the thesis. Signed: ……………………………………… Nathan M.L. To, 2014 Nathan M.L. To (Trauma, Memory, Diaspora) 3 Acknowledgements My deepest, heartfelt thanks go to Lisa Blackman, my fantastic supervisor. I cannot have asked for a better supervisor and mentor throughout this whole endeavour. Professor Blackman’s incredible kindness, patience, guidance and intellectual challenges to me have taken me to new worlds of thinking I never knew existed. Lisa Blackman’s guidance has not only made me into a better scholar, but also a better person. Special thanks also to Professor Chris Berry and Pasi Valiaho for some timely and helpful tips at different points along the way. I also want to say thanks to my dim sum PhD people: Asad Asaduzzaman, Yu-kei Tse, and Pin-Chuan Chen, for understanding the joy and chaos and splitting the bill. Extra thanks to Pin-Chuan for all those deep and challenging conversations at City Noodle, Raymont Hall, more dim sum, and other exciting food adventures. An extra shoutout and thanks also to fellow Canadian friend, Karen Tam, for inviting me to my very first London dim sum 4 years ago; and many thanks for also introducing me to some amazing art and installations earlier on that have since then inspired important parts of my thesis and sparked my artistic interests to new places and spaces. Thanks also to all my Vancouver friends who have been gracious enough to help me with this research and also supported me along the way. Extra thanks to Jonathan Ng for reading through my thesis while juggling a wife, two babies and a bathtub. Go Canucks Go! Many thanks also to my family back in Canada: My super brother Daniel, my dear sister-in-law, Michelle, and my amazing little niece, Maddie. And my love and deep thanks to my wonderful, beautiful, love of my life, Ciel Liu. Ciel has been my biggest supporter during my moments of greatest insanity, which, included hallucinations of unicorns and goats. Your patience, thoughtfulness and unwavering support has been incredible. I specially dedicate this work to my sensational, loving parents—my beloved, incredible, father, Chi-Tat, and my beloved, magnificent, late mother, Lilian To, whom I deeply miss. Without my parents’ model of love, sacrifice, and patience, none of this would be possible. Nathan M.L. To (Trauma, Memory, Diaspora) 4 ABSTRACT The sheer affective force of trauma from a 20th century Chinese history filled with the scars of war, chaos, poverty, famine, and disaster, transmits across ethnic Chinese Canadian diasporas through (un)conscious silences and remembrances. Diasporic visions of memory that embody these traumatic histories can become entangled through affective, discursive, and hegemonic forces that include: a) transgenerational hauntings through the transmission of affective intensities across social links, familial bodies and collective diasporas b) the tension of ‘blurring’ boundaries between history, testimony and fantasy c) official memory productions across media d) and the hegemony of nation-state power concerning which ‘historical ‘wounds’ are chosen or silenced for public consumption and transnational distribution. My research questions include: How does the transmission of trauma affectively pass from one generation to the next? What ‘methods of seeing’ can diasporic ethnic Chinese employ to crystallize invisible histories and lost traumas? How can Chinese Canadians engage problematic, mediated visions of the past and develop a reflexivity that both ‘sees’ haunted histories and critically defies the power problematics within memory production? For Chinese-Canadians, those compelled to seek out the histories of our migrant parents/grandparents are left with fragmented, silenced memories. Narratives of an era filled with trauma are expressed as ‘moral lessons’ and/or ‘Confucian’ virtues. Access to histories for postgeneration Chinese-Canadians, therefore, is dependent on a diasporic vision that assemblages multiple ways of ‘seeing’ the gaps in trauma through mediated memory, including: the memories of elder generations, memoirs, moving images, and artworks and multimedia installations. My research intentionally subverts traditional research methods that incorporate critical approaches that juxtapose mediations of memory, defying the problematics of power and memory production. Through a critically reflexive autoethnographic approach, I perform a ‘staging’ of the 2nd generation Canadian Chinese experience by composing a diasporic montage of data and im/material hauntings. Nathan M.L. To (Trauma, Memory, Diaspora) 5 TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF FIGURES 7 PREFACE 8 CHAPTER 1 : LITERATURE REVIEW 19 1.1 Introduction 19 1.2 Hauntings, Diasporic Unconscious and the Korean Diaspora 21 1.3 Diaspora: Entanglements of Ethnicity, Identity and Power 25 1.4 Challenging Traditions of Trauma and Transmission 33 1.5 Trauma, Memory, History, and Transmission 41 1.6 Mediated Visions of Hauntings: Potentials and Problematics 47 1.7 Conclusion 54 CHAPTER 2: AUTOETHNOGRAPHY, METHODOLOGY, AND EPISTEMOLOGICAL APPROACHES 57 2.1 Introduction: New Ways of Seeing 57 2.2 ‘Reflection: The Field’ 59 2.3 Performative Writing, Empathic Vision, Critical Autoethnography 60 2.4 Seeing Hauntings: Diasporic Visions of Mediated Memory 65 2.5 Starting Points: Subject Peers and Conversational Interviews 67 2.6 Methodological Approaches to History, Memory, and Migration 78 2.7 Additional Research Designs: Aesthetics, Film, Performance 84 2.8 Analyzing Ghosts and Montage 90 2.9 Conclusion 92 CHAPTER 3: VOICES OF THE NEXT GENERATION: INFORMAL CONVERSATIONAL INTERVIEWS 94 3.1 Introduction: Starting with Fragments of Mediated Memory 94 3.2 ‘Reflections A’ 95 3.3 Cultural Identity/Identifications: The ‘Chinese-Canadian’ Construct 96 3.4 ‘Reflections B’ 100 3.5 Narratives of Survival: War, Survival, Poverty 100 3.6 Escape and Exile 105 3.7 ‘Remembrance: Hauntings’ 109 3.8 Migration Narratives From Prior Generations 110 3.9 Moral Stories and Value Lessons 117 3.10 Confucian Values 120 3.11 Idioms 126 3.12 ‘Remembrance: Juxtapositions’ 128 3.13 Conclusion 129 Nathan M.L. To (Trauma, Memory, Diaspora) 6 CHAPTER 4: HAUNTED HISTORIES, MEMORY, AND FANTASY 131 4.1 Introduction: Performing History and Memory 131 4.2 Tensions Between Memory and History 132 4.3. Historical Overview: Scars of Survival 136 4.4 ‘Reflections’ 141 4.5 Haunted Fragments: Testimonies and Memory Productions 141 4.6 Anti-Japanese Resistance War (1937-1945) 144 4.7 ‘Reflections: Asleep’ 152 4.8 Cultural Revolution, Hong Kong, Living Conditions 152 4.9 Oral Fragments and the Question of Authenticity 160 4.10 Affect and the Unconscious Through Memory and History 166 4.11 A Case Experiment in the Transmission of Affect 171 4.12 Conclusion 176 CHAPTER 5: TRACING MIGRANT HAUNTINGS 178 5.1 Introduction: Figure of the Migrant 178 5.2 Migrant as Carrier of Confucian Legacies 180 5.3 Migrant as Carrier of Collective Change 188 5.4 Analysis: Migrants and Affective Hauntings 190 5.5 Connections Across Time and Space 191 5.6 Visual Artworks 197 5.7 Conclusion 203 CHAPTER 6: AESTHETIC VISIONS 205 6.1 Introduction: New Diasporic Visions 205 6.2 Nanking Case Study: Performing Visions Through Bodies 208 6.3 Post-Hoc: Performing Reflexivity and Productions of Memory 217 6.4 New Visions of Haunting 230 6.5 Conclusion 239 CHAPTER 7: CONCLUSIONS 240 7.1 Summary: Intergenerational Haunting of the Chinese Diaspora 240 7.2 Developing a ‘Way of Seeing’: The Diasporic Montage 245 7.3 Future Directions: Costume Dramas and Lost Histories 253 7.4 Final Remarks 259 BIBLIOGRAPHY 262 FILMOGRAPHY 276 APPENDIX A: Sample Heuristic Guide 277 APPENDIX B: Sample Transcript Conversation 278 Nathan M.L. To (Trauma, Memory, Diaspora) 7 APPENDIX C: Post-Participation Final Consent/Release Form 285 APPENDIX D: Research Summary for Subject-Peers 287 LIST OF FIGURES: Figure 5.1 Chen Yifei: Looking at History from My Space 197 Figure 5.2 Opium Den 199 Figure 5.3 Gold Mountain 202 Figure 6.1 ‘Fathomless’ (Performance photo) 213 Figure 6.2 First Spring 232 Figure 6.3 Fifth Night 234 Figure 6.4 Ten Thousand Waves: Single Screen Multiple Images 237 Figure 6.5 Ten Thousand Waves: Multiple Monitor Installation 239 Figure 7.1 Public Shaming Session during Cultural Revolution 256 Figure 7.2 ‘Hands’ 257 Nathan M.L. To (Trauma, Memory, Diaspora) 8 PREFACE Haunted Sights One of the most poignant impacts on my road to even starting this project occurred on the bus in a snowy Canadian winter in 2008. I remember running into a Chinese elder well into his 80th year, who is, coincidentally, a next door neighbour of mine (though I had never really spoken to him much prior besides the usual pleasantries). The conversation began with small talk and soon it evolved to a recollection of his pained experiences growing up in Mainland China. I listened with indignation in my heart to stories of a government-instituted local genocide that occurred in small pockets of the country, obviously kept hush-hush by the government-run Chinese media. In addition, my elder disclosed personal stories of his family being betrayed by his own relatives; his subsequent life was one of poverty and horrid living conditions. Eventually, he was fortunate enough to move to another town with other supportive relatives before beginning a new life. Though I had for many years attended many Asian studies university classes, learned much about the history and atrocities that took place in Asia, travelled around China, and even watched many documentaries describing similar scenarios to the stories my elder disclosed to me, I was, nonetheless, deeply affected by his tales.