Wounds in time: the aesthetic afterlives of the Cultural Revolution

My dissertation, “Wounds in Time: the Aesthetic Afterlives of the Cultural Revolution,” departs from the traditional historicist approach to the Cultural Revolution, contributing instead an investigation of the Cultural Revolution through its aesthetic afterlives. This study crosses disciplines and seeks to grasp the traumatic traces embedded within works of literature, art, and cinema that deal with the Cultural Revolution consciously or unconsciously, in lucidity or encryption. My analysis of the Cultural Revolution as a traumatic wound endeavors to bring the concealed political crimes, disavowed pains and absent feelings into historical consciousness. Figures central to this study include writers Han Shaogong, Yu Hua, and Hong Ying, artist Zhang Xiaogang, as well as filmmakers Jia Zhangke and Jiang Wen. Drawing on classical theory of trauma by Freud as well as works by subsequent theorists such as Nicholas Abraham and Maria Torok, Cathy Caruth and Dominick LaCapra, I maintain that the Cultural Revolution is not a fixed temporal entity but a phantom that stretches beyond history, finding contemporary cultural avenues of expression, and rematerializing to demand recognition and reparation. Further, by means of bringing trauma theory into a new historical/cultural context, this study translates/revises trauma theory beyond its Eurocentric provenance.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

E Asian Languages & Cultures

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2011

Author dc:creator

• Huang, Yiju

Contributors dc:contributor

• Xu, Gary G.
• Goodman, David G.
• Huntington, Rania
• Rothberg, Michael

• trauma
• trauma theory
• Cultural Revolution
• China
• literature
• Chinese literature
• Chinese modern literature
• art
• Chinese art
• Chinese modern art
• film
• Chinese film
• cinema
• Chinese cinema
• Zhang Xiaogang
• Hong Ying
• Han Shaogong
• Jiang Wen
• Ann Hui
• Ba Jin

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 2011 Yiju Huang

Language dc:language

en

Handle dc:identifier

http://hdl.handle.net/2142/26247

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/26247