UC San Diego UC San Diego Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title The geopolitics of memory production in China, Hong Kong, and Anglo-America : reading memoirs of the Chinese Cultural Revolution from 1980 to 2006 Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0k26n30b Author Peng, Chunhui Publication Date 2009 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN DIEGO The Geopolitics of Memory Production in China, Hong Kong, and Anglo-America: Reading Memoirs of the Chinese Cultural Revolution from 1980 to 2006 A Dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in Literature by Chunhui Peng Committee in charge: Professor Yingjin Zhang, Chair Professor John Blanco Professor Paul Pickowicz Professor Wai-lim Yip Professor Lisa Yoneyama 2009 Copyright Chunhui Peng, 2009 All rights reserved. The dissertation of Chunhui Peng is approved, and it is acceptable in quality and form for publication on microfilm and electronically: _____________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________ Chair University of California, San Diego 2009 iii DEDICATION This dissertation is dedicated to my family members in Chengdu, Haikou and Dallas for their love and encouragement. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Signature Page …....................................................................................................... iii Dedication ..................................................................................................................iv Table of Contents ........................................................................................................v Acknowledgements .....................................................................................................vi Vita ………………….............................................................................................. viii Abstract ….. ................................................................................................................ix Chapter One: Introduction …………...........................................................................1 Chapter Two: Myths and Imagined Communities: Remembering the Cultural Revolution in Mainland China .....................................................................21 Chapter Three: Of Memory and History: Writing the Cultural Revolution in the Diaspora…………........................................................................................66 Chapter Four: Significaiton, Subjectivity, and Authorship: Memoirs Published in Hong Kong ………….........................................................………………121 Chapter Five: Conclusion …………........................................................................173 Bibliography………….............................................................................................177 v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS My profoundest gratitude goes to my advisor Professor Yingjin Zhang for his intellectual guidance and unwavering support throughout my studies at UCSD. Professor Jody Blanco, Paul Pickowicz, Wai-lim Yip, and Lisa Yoneyama have been especially supportive of my work and have provided me with invaluable suggestions for revising the dissertation. I would like to acknowledge the friendship and support from the following individuals: Lili Anderson, Chunlin Li, Jin Liu, Hao liu, Gabriela McEvoy, Jane Morley, Liyan Qin, Edwige Tamalet Talbayev, Ling Xiao, and James Wicks. Professor Lisa Ahnert, Olga L-V Colbert, Marie-Luise Gaettens, and Jutta Van Selm at Southern Methodist University have shown interest in my dissertation and found time to provide encouragement along the way. The fellowship and travel grants I received from the Department of Literature, UCSD Center for the Humanities, Institute for International, Comparative and Area Studies at UCSD, and UC Pacific Rim Research Program allowed me to do library research in several university libraries and to devote myself to the preparation of the dissertation. vi I presented part of Chapter Three at the UC Santa Cruz Transnationalism, Feminism and Justice Dissertation Workshop in 2008. I thank the workshop organizers and participants for their insightful remarks and suggestions. I wish to thank Nora Sun for purchasing books for me from Hong Kong and Phyllis Dickstein for reading my drafts. On the personal side, I am deeply grateful to my parents, my sister, my brother, my brother-in-law, my nephew, my husband, and my son, who have always believed in me and supported my intellectual pursuits. vii VITA 2003 M.A. in English, Peking University (China) 2004-2006 Teaching Assistant, Chinese Studies, University of California, San Diego 2006-2007 Adjunct Lecturer, Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures, Southern Methodist University 2007 UC Pacific Rim Mini Travel Grant 2007 UCSD IICAS Research Travel Grant 2007 UCSD Center for the Humanities Graduate Student Award 2008 UCSD Department of Literature, Dissertation Fellowship (One Quarter) 2009 Ph.D. in Literature, University of California, San Diego viii ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION The Geopolitics of Memory Production in China, Hong Kong, and Anglo-America: Reading Memoirs of the Chinese Cultural Revolution from 1980 to 2006 by Chunhui Peng Doctor of Philosophy in Literature University of California, San Diego, 2009 Professor Yingjin Zhang, Chair My dissertation embraces a comparative framework and is concerned with memories of the Cultural Revolution in mainland China, Hong Kong, and Anglo- America from 1980 to 2006 by victims, second-generation survivors, and party- denounced perpetrators. In terms of analytic methodology, my project stresses the discursive nature of memory and highlights the transnational creation of Cultural Revolution memory. It considers how the Cultural Revolution is remembered under the party’s surveillance, how the official history is contested by sensitive figures in Hong Kong, and how overseas Chinese produce bestsellers and turn personal and family memory into a national history in the Diaspora. I challenge readers’ fetish of ix alternative narratives and criticize some reductive readings of these memory performances. The critical issues examined in my dissertation include text and context, memory and history, narrative and genre, subjectivity and signification, authorship and impunity, and power and desire. By examining various geocultural cases, I illuminate the challenges in remembering this political event and the urgency for historically and discursively analyzing memoirs of the Cultural Revolution. x Chapter One Introduction Since the late 1970s, the ten-year Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) has been written and rewritten in contemporary Chinese literature, Diaspora writings, transnational Chinese films, and intellectual debates. Previous scholarship in this field has been scarce, and critics have confined their genre choices to fiction, poetry, feature film, and contemporary painting, neglecting other equally important memory performances, such as memoir and autobiography. Such a genre bias is unsatisfactory for three reasons. First, as few former victims have the skills to write fiction, publish poetry or direct films, the above-mentioned critical practices leave out a large number of works. Second, when it comes to this particular subject matter, memoir and autobiography differ significantly from fiction in the ways they organize and convey traumatic experiences. For example, while fiction writers name perpetrators freely, few people are willing to do so in memoirs. Third, as a result of their increasing popularity, memoirs and autobiographies on the Cultural Revolution have contributed directly to the discursive construction of historical memory and have been repeatedly appropriated to formulate identities inside and outside China. To sum up, a study on genres such as memoir and autobiography will expand the research objects and bring new perspectives to the study on memory of the Cultural 1 2 Revolution. My dissertation focuses on memories of the Cultural Revolution in autobiographies and memoirs and highlights their production, circulation, and appropriation across national boundaries. I will study narrative strategies in selected works to explore the interactions between text and context, memory and history, narrative and genre, subjectivity and signification, authorship and impunity, and power and desire. A review of theoretical discussions of memory, history, the nation-state, and representation below will help me formulate my dissertation project. After the review, I will propose a place-specific framework for my exploration of Cultural Revolution memory. Configurations of the Past: Identity Politics and the Nation-State As remembering always involves producing a past to suit the needs of the present, critics are particularly wary of the nation-state’s manipulation and appropriation of memory. In his 1959 article, “What Does Come to Terms with the Past Mean?” Theodore Adorno indicates a dangerous trend in postwar Germany to “come to terms with the past,” in order to “turn the page [of Germany’s past] and, if possible, wipe it from memory” (115). Underlying the strategy of repressing and reformulating the past is the fear that memory of the past atrocity “could harm Germany’s reputation abroad” (117).