The portrayal of historical atrocity in fiction, film, and popular
culture can reveal much about the function of individual memory and the
shifting status of national identity. In the context of Chinese culture,
films such as Hou Hsiao-hsien's City of Sadness and Lou Ye's Summer
Palace and novels such as Ye Zhaoyan's Nanjing 1937: A Love Story and
Wang Xiaobo's The Golden Age collectively reimagine past horrors and
give rise to new historical narratives.
Michael Berry takes an innovative look at the representation of six
specific historical traumas in modern Chinese history: the Musha
Incident (1930); the Rape of Nanjing (1937-38); the February 28 Incident
(1947); the Cultural Revolution (1966-76); Tiananmen Square (1989); and
the Handover of Hong Kong (1997). He identifies two primary modes of
restaging historical violence: centripetal trauma, or violence
inflicted from the outside that inspires a reexamination of the Chinese
nation, and centrifugal trauma, which, originating from within,
inspires traumatic narratives that are projected out onto a
transnational vision of global dreams and, sometimes, nightmares.
These modes allow Berry to connect portrayals of mass violence to ideas
of modernity and the nation. He also illuminates the relationship
between historical atrocity on a national scale and the pain experienced
by the individual; the function of film and literature as historical
testimony; the intersection between politics and art, history and
memory; and the particular advantages of modern media, which have found
new means of narrating the burden of historical violence.
As Chinese artists began to probe previously taboo aspects of their
nation's history in the final decades of the twentieth century, they
created texts that prefigured, echoed, or subverted social, political,
and cultural trends. A History of Pain acknowledges the far-reaching
influence of this art and addresses its profound role in shaping the
public imagination and conception-as well as misconception-of modern
Chinese history.
