38. Scar Literature and the Memory of Trauma

Abstract “Scar Literature,” a literary movement in twentieth-century Chinese literature, encompasses a series of works written after the Cultural Revolution. The scar metaphor was taken from the title of a short story, “The Scar,” and characterized a series of works with common features. The outlines of “Scar Literature” are blurred, mixed and intertwined with other literary trends and movements. But while Chinese and foreign literary criticism claim that it was short-lived, its influences are visible in several works by contemporary authors. Based on the idea that literary works are prone to being analyzed as a form of persuasive discourse, this paper identifies typical rhetorical procedures of this literary trend and its influences in certain emblematic works: the recurrence of topoi (figures such as “rehabilitation,” peculiar to the Cultural Revolution); inductive reasoning (the construction of a historiographic reasoning via the exemplum); recourse to pathos; and the metaphorical figure of the scar bearing the value of the plotline. This analysis applies concepts of New Rhetoric and discourse linguistics, in particular, concepts developed by Olbrecht-Tyteca and Perelman, Amossy’s approach about pathos and the role of emotions and “figurality” in argumentation, and Plantin’s linguistic theory of the emotions.

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Chinese scar literature on the Cultural Revolution as testimony

10.22215/etd/2001-04983 ◽

2001 ◽

Author(s):

Zhigang Huang

Keyword(s):

Cultural Revolution ◽

Scar Literature ◽

The Cultural Revolution

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Love Letters from Golok

10.7312/columbia/9780231180528.001.0001 ◽

2017 ◽

Cited By ~ 5

Author(s):

Holly Gayley

Keyword(s):

Cultural Revolution ◽

Field Research ◽

Folk Song ◽

Cultural Preservation ◽

Cultural Trauma ◽

Literary Genres ◽

Eastern Tibet ◽

Love Letters ◽

To Come ◽

Scar Literature

Love Letters from Golok chronicles the courtship between two Buddhist tantric masters, Tare Lhamo (1938–2002) and Namtrul Rinpoche (1944–2011), and their passion for reinvigorating Buddhism in eastern Tibet during the post-Mao era. In fifty-six letters exchanged from 1978 to 1980, Tare Lhamo and Namtrul Rinpoche envisioned a shared destiny to "heal the damage" done to Buddhism during the years leading up to and including the Cultural Revolution. Holly Gayley retrieves the personal and prophetic dimensions of their courtship and its consummation in a twenty-year religious career that informs issues of gender and agency in Buddhism, cultural preservation among Tibetan communities, and alternative histories for minorities in China. The correspondence between Tare Lhamo and Namtrul Rinpoche is the first collection of "love letters" to come to light in Tibetan literature. Blending tantric imagery with poetic and folk song styles, their letters have a fresh vernacular tone comparable to the love songs of the Sixth Dalai Lama, but with an eastern Tibetan flavor. Gayley reads these letters against hagiographic writings about the couple, supplemented by field research, to illuminate representational strategies that serve to narrate cultural trauma in a redemptive key, quite unlike Chinese scar literature or the testimonials of exile Tibetans. With special attention to Tare Lhamo's role as a tantric heroine and her hagiographic fusion with Namtrul Rinpoche, Gayley vividly shows how Buddhist masters have adapted Tibetan literary genres to share private intimacies and address contemporary social concerns.

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