Memoryscapes of Collective Suffering: Memorializing Natural Catastrophes in Contemporary China

集体苦难的记忆景观：纪念当代中国的自然灾害

• 批准号: 404534127
• 负责人: Dr. Rui Kunze
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: Lehrstuhl für Sinologie
• 依托单位国家: 德国
• 项目类别: Research Grants
• 财政年份: 2018
• 资助国家: 德国
• 起止时间: 2017-12-31 至 2022-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gepris.dfg.de/gepris/projekt/404534127?language=en
• 关键词: Memoryscapes; Collective; Suffering; Memorializing; Natural

The 2010s have witnessed increasing interactions between the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and China’s cultural industries in regulating the storytelling of the past and shaping public feelings. The coexisting master narratives of modernization and revolution are reproduced at the nexus of personalized experiences of the participatory consumer and the dominant historical discourses of patriotism and progress. How, then, can the CCP negotiate the “dark memories” of catastrophes into its success story? Existing research on "dark memories" has focused on political violence and social turbulences in twentieth-century China. Taking as the point of departure the relevance of controlling nature and solving ecological problems to CCP’s political legitimacy, this project investigates how natural catastrophes and their consequent human suffering have been named and narrated in the dynamic and diachronic process of memory-making under changing political, social, and technological conditions. Combining the methods of historical discourse analysis with media and literary studies, the project examines tourist sites as spaces of memorialization and addresses this central research question: What are the social and political dynamics and contingencies in the memorialization of natural catastrophes by China’s contemporary tourism? With the following two case studies, we foreground the "naturalness" of the catastrophic event as a constructed and contested issue: 1) Nature-based tourism at the historical site of the Huayuankou dike breach in June 1938, which led to the Yellow River flood (1938-1947); 2) Dark tourism memorializing the earthquakes in Tangshan (1976) and Wenchuan (2008), with erections and demolitions of memorials and monuments in both public and private settings. Confronting the idea of a monolithic and petrified "official historiography" of natural catastrophes, we delve into the interplay among different memory-making actors, changing landscapes of tourist sites, commemorative media, and public affects to investigate the continuous making of the memoryscapes of collective suffering. This project will make a critical contribution to our understanding of the social and political implications in the memorialization of natural catastrophes. It will enrich the fields of memory studies and affect theory with the case studies from contemporary China. More broadly, it joins the emerging interdisciplinary field of disaster studies, which approaches natural catastrophes as formative of history, whose social, political, and affective repercussions may last for generations.

2010年代见证了中国共产党和中国文化产业在规范过去的故事讲述和塑造公众情感方面越来越多的互动。现代化和革命的共存的主叙事在参与性消费者的个性化体验与爱国主义和进步的主导历史话语的联系中被再现。那么，中共如何才能将灾难的“黑暗记忆”融入其成功故事？现有的关于“黑暗记忆”的研究主要集中在20世纪中国的政治暴力和社会暴力。本项目以控制自然和解决生态问题与中国共产党政治合法性的相关性为出发点，考察在不断变化的政治、社会和技术条件下，自然灾害及其造成的人类痛苦是如何在动态和历时的记忆过程中被命名和叙述的。该项目将历史话语分析与媒体和文学研究相结合，将旅游景点作为纪念空间进行研究，并解决了这个中心研究问题：中国当代旅游业纪念自然灾害的社会和政治动力和偶然性是什么？通过以下两个案例研究，我们将灾难性事件的“自然性”作为一个建构的和有争议的问题：1）在1938年6月导致黄河洪水的花园口堤坝决口历史遗址的自然旅游（1938-1947年）; 2）纪念唐山（1976年）和汶川（2008年）地震的黑色旅游，在公共和私人环境中建造和拆除纪念馆和纪念碑。面对一个单一的和僵化的“官方史学”的自然灾害的想法，我们深入到不同的记忆制作演员之间的相互作用，不断变化的旅游景点，纪念媒体和公众影响的景观，调查集体痛苦的记忆景观的连续制作。该项目将为我们理解纪念自然灾害的社会和政治影响作出重要贡献。本研究将丰富记忆研究和情感理论的研究领域。更广泛地说，它加入了灾害研究的新兴跨学科领域，将自然灾害视为历史的形成，其社会，政治和情感影响可能持续几代人。