Identity And Forgetting:the Collective Memory And The Change Of Symbol In People's Liberation Monument

This paper takes People' sLiberation Monument which is a memory site in Chongqing,as the research object.The Japanese armed forces pushed back our rear area and bombed all the thing including the civilian,then Wang Jinwei betrayed the country and surrender to Japan.Under this background,the KMT came up with the idea call The Fortress of Spirit,in order to mobilize people's spirit.Then a wooden structure building had been built in Du You street Square,named “The Fortress of Spirit”.The activities like assemblies,speeches and raising flag are all been held here.After the victory of the war of resistance against Japanese,tomemorize the end of the war which bring people suffering,the KMT rebuilt it in armored concrete structure then named it “The Victory Monument of the War of Resistance against Japan”,and unveiled on the National Day.After the war of liberation,the south-west revolutionary army conquered Chongqing,this political symbol had been renamed The People' s Liberation Monument as the first gift of the National Day.We will discuss the process of the KMT government' s memory,the process of the new China' s forgetting and the memory trace which appear among the media.Collective memory is built by society,this paper will base on this opinion.Follow the curve of the memory and forgetting,we could discover the relationship between them.Memory and forgetting is one of the tool of the power,both of them has their unique principle and strategy.Different memory site has different destiny,some of them will never became a national memory because of the time and the situation even it came out form the national disaster and the trauma of war.Some of memory sites had been ignored and forgotten at the first,then begun to be revealed again because of political reasons.Some of them extended from a point to a nation,like a flame burn the huge steppe.Generally speaking,suffering emotion is easier to awaken national emotion,compare with victory emotion.This paper will base on the methods of depth interviewing and documents analysis,to explain the text of liberation monument collective memory and the people of different time.This paper will take the monument out separately as a research item.Research finding,collective memory is one of tools to create social identity,but the meaning of memory site has already been formed before it built.The memory site is for creating collective memory,and the collective memory is for the sense of identity which can gather national emotions to achieve the final goal of leading community and group.On the contrary,opponents need to destroy these emo-tions and sense of identity,to destroy the memory site or change it to another meaning so that they can make use of it.But memories and forgetting can not completely been controlled by the authority power,they have their own regulation,there is a thing be called “The trace of memory ”exist while the memory break,it inherit few of memory content,to make it remain in the local language.Compare with other memory site,monument has strong artistry and collective emotion,has more complex symbol meaning,in other word,monument can lead out collective imagination and sense of identity by art.The complexity of the political symbol will effect the way of the collective memory comes out,at the same,will also effect if it can well inherit after the political power is alternated.Five years later after Vietnam war,the American society just stared taking to build a monument.Sixty years later after would war two,the Jew monument just be built in Germany.The name call the monument of the victory of war,is only appeared after 21 st century,get through enough time,this monument has three meaning,this peculiarity is the point to discover and discuss in this paper.What's more,more and more authority power come inside to necessarily make it for forgetting,ignore and rebuild meaning,What is the impact of this symbol memory.Beside,a memory to cover other memory,this process will be effected by what kind of factor?The regulations of the non-contemporaneity during the process of memory and forgetting,is a topic which can continue to go deep into.