| This thesis employs a framework of literary testimony to examine the Chinese Scar Literature on the Cultural Revolution and political campaigns preceding it during the Mao era (1949–1976). This literature testifies to the wounds and scars left by a traumatic period of recent Chinese history. Though Scar Literature experienced its high tide between 1977–1984, my thesis will argue that it has been ongoing since that time. I examine the texts of Scar Literature in the framework of testimony, as theorized by Shoshana Felman and Dori Laub in their influential study Testimony: Crisis of Witnessing in Literature, Psychoanalysis, and History (1992), where the concept is closely connected to issues of history, memory, and witnessing. My own analysis surveys genres of autobiography, documentary fiction, and fiction, all of which, despite their different relationship to “truth claims,” attempt to find a mode of access to traumatic events. The autobiographical works chosen as examples are by Nien Cheng, Yue Daiyun, and Chen Kaige; the works of documentary fiction by Zhang Kangkang, Zhang Xianliang, and Chen Ruoxi; and the fictional works by Liu Sola and again Zhang Xianliang. In my analysis, the binary of works written and published inside and outside the People's Republic of China will constitute the most important point of comparison. The two groups of writers write differently because of their varied material conditions of production and reception. My comparison focuses on such issues as censorship, self-censorship, and targeted audience. Today, texts of Scar Literature continue to appear in different parts of the world as well as in China. |
