Year: 2007
Type: article
Abstract: I present the results of two local studies of the transmission of great state violence, one in the People's Republic of China, the other in ROC Taiwan, in both of which the word 'Communism' has had effects on the ways the experience of the violence is transmitted.In both cases, the experience of violence was accompanied by shame and dishonour.Also in both cases, the very political change that has enabled more open transmission has also been accompanied by great economic changes.Together these have created a generation gap, with the consequence that the young are not much interested in the history of past suffering.The two cases raise interesting questions and issues of the ways in which the recalling and transmission of personal experience are affected by printed and other forms of public transmission, including schooling, when the experience is part of something given great political significance.I conclude with a reflection on the distance between the ways people in both cases have found to commemorate, even without naming, the acts and experiences of state violence and more official public transmission and consider whether the archive of records, including our own oral histories, may or may not lead to new historical directions and stories.I am concerned with the formation of the records, narrations, and transmission of a recent shared experience and their entry into a politics of history in two cases, one from mainland China, the other from Taiwan.They offer intriguing points of similarity, as well as expected contrasts.1 More generally, the dynamic that interests me comes from two kinds of experience -of memory and of learning.On the one hand recalling something experienced, recalling it to oneself or for interpersonal transmission, can produce not just an interpretation but also possibly an alternative or more conflicted sense of what is transmitted much more simply in public memory.On the other hand recalling even personal experiences is strongly affected by what is learned 1 I first presented a version of this text during the international symposium on 'History and Memory' organised by the Macau Ricci Institute in December 2005 in Macao.I am most grateful to the Macau Ricci Institute for inviting me.A slightly different version of it was published as a chapter of the Macau Ricci Institute Studies, Vol. 5, in September 2007.The research was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council of the UK as part of the project on 'Transmission of Grievous Loss'.I am lastingly grateful to the ESRC.
Authors: Stephan Feuchtwang, Fang‐Long Shih
Language: English
Subfield: History
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W1499877686