Shadows Beneath the Sun: Ethical Memory, Critical Humanism, and WWII Chongqing in Luo Weizhang’s Novel
Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: Luo Weizhang’s novel Under the Sun centers on a fictionalized writer who reconstructs the life of protagonist Huang Xiaoyang through encounters with his literary remains and the memories of those who knew him personally. Set against the backdrop of the WWII Japanese bombings of Chongqing, the novel challenges dominant historical narratives by using the genre of historiographic metafiction and employing narrative strategies of counter-memory and postmemory. This paper reads Under the Sun as a literary performance of ethical remembrance: one that interrogates conventional notions of subjectivity, the fragile responsibility of narrating trauma, and the psychological toll of bearing witness across generations. Drawing on the framework of critical humanism, with its emphasis on relationality and ethical openness to the other, I argue that Luo’s novel reveals both the moral necessity and the psychic cost of engaging with histories of violence. In reframing the Chongqing bombings—long marginalized in global WWII memory—Under the Sun demonstrates how Chinese literature can expand the geography of remembrance and contribute to transnational debates on trauma, justice, and historical responsibility.
Source: Humanities
DOI: 10.3390/h14100185
Author: Qian Liu
Institution: Sichuan University of Science and Engineering
Language: English
Subfield: Philosophy
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $1,689
OpenAlex ID: W4414426196