Finding place in Northeast and Southeast Asia: Collective memory construction of the marginalized,disenfranchised,and dislocated

Abstract

This introductory article presents the frame and impetus for our special issue on collective memory construction of the marginalized, disenfranchised, and dislocated in Northeast and Southeast Asia. The objective of this article is to showcase this collection as in dialogue and to draw out some of the common themes, including speaking from the margins, the gatekeepers of public memory, the geopolitics of commemoration, and the ongoing negotiation in domestic and international spaces for control of the historical narrative.

Northeast and Southeast Asia is a region ripe for exploration of the role of memory in a non-Western context. It is a region of post-colonial and post-conflict societies that have struggled with and addressed myriad issues related to transitional justice, memorialization, commemoration, and reconciliation both within borders and across them. It contains examples of both historical justice achieved and memory “wars” ongoing, mnemonic practices that are unique to their local context and those that are translatable to other countries or regions. Yet, despite the richness of this region for an excavation of these issues, the field of memory studies has yet to fully integrate Asian perspectives. With its insights and lessons, Asian studies can inform and transform the field of memory studies, including through new empirical, theoretical, and methodological approaches. Meanwhile, memory studies provides a transnational and transcultural lens to explore and intellectually expand the field of Asian studies.

Memory studies as a multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary field has developed over the past 30 years or so, engendering widespread interest across disciplines and an explosion of scholarship, originally centered in Europe but increasingly global. Over the last 5–10 years, scholars have attempted to streamline and define the field more purposefully so that scholars are engaging with a shared set of concepts, theories, and canonical texts. ¹ Doing so enhances dialogue and helps to delineate the discipline of memory studies. Yet it must be accomplished with an explicit acknowledgment of how region-specific scholarship and scholars from across the world interpret the field in culturally and historically informed ways. Embracing diverseness rather than papering over differences and distinctions is paramount.

Following the work of Michael Kammen, Sierp (2021: 3) talks about four factors influencing the development of memory studies: the Holocaust and the advent of its postmemory generation, the end of the Cold War and the spread of democracy, decolonization, and technological changes leading to new forms of media. In Northeast and Southeast Asia, the third wave of democratization, the end of the Cold War, and the 50th anniversary of the end of the Pacific theater of World War II, in particular, led to expanding opportunities for public memory reflection and (re)configuration. ² Heritage tourism gained prominence, ³ including so-called “dark tourism.” ⁴ The practice of new public memory construction by state and non-state actors was followed by scholarly explorations of these initiatives. Historians also took agency in these endeavors as they unearthed documents in colonial and wartime archives, some newly declassified, and pursued oral histories that actively contributed to public memory. ⁵ Depending on the national contexts, different debates took center stage. For example, South Korea contemplated Japanese colonization; China addressed the century of humiliation; Taiwan considered the martial law period. Historical justice emerged as a major theme that spanned these various foci, intimately intertwined with conceptions of identity, particularly national and group identities, but also the positioning of the individual within those identities.

Instead of concentrating on one national context, one historical period, or one debate, as much of the existing literature has done, this special issue draws a thread across the region. The issue’s authors span diverse fields and intellectual traditions. The issue is distinct in its breadth, across disciplines, national borders, and topics of study. Yet it simultaneously draws our attention to common threads throughout the field of memory studies in Northeast and Southeast Asia, despite such diversity. In this special issue, we focus on the theme of “finding place” by centering the voices of the traditionally marginalized, disenfranchised, or dislocated. By doing so, we showcase evolutions in the field of memory studies ⁶ but also in the realities of the political and social environments in Northeast and Southeast Asia. All the cases draw upon shared traumas or dislocations and demonstrate how those within marginalized, disenfranchised, or dislocated communities negotiate their place in collective memory in the context of the society, the state, or the international system. And it does so in a way that brings Northeast and Southeast Asia front and center in memory studies by both entering into dialogue with the field and questioning its ability to do so. In this special issue, the influence of memory studies’ analytical frameworks created in the Anglo-European context ⁷ is apparent. But contributions to this issue also problematize Anglo-European-centric models, illustrating a gap and the room for further theoretical work when it comes to Asian cases. It is purposefully broad in scope in order to accomplish these goals.

In this special issue, we open with Tran’s concept of “mnemonic splintering” “to acknowledge the value in holding multiple narratives about the past all at once,” and to highlight how scholarship in colonized societies and among forcibly displaced migrants noted the complexities of entangled transnational memories long before it had formally entered the field of memory studies. Illustrating how memory changes through an individual’s physical life journey as a refugee and migrant, Jiang goes beyond traditional interpretations of novelist Nieh Hualing’s Mulberry and Peach to foreground a feminist and diasporic reading of the novel that emphasizes female agency through hypersexuality and even so-called mental illness in the aftermath of a personal traumatic history. Wei similarly identifies the distinctive female gaze on memory by bringing in the voices of the wives of the writers condemned and jailed through Mao Zedong’s political campaigns in the 1950s. Vu examines how the Chinese Communist Party sought to control public memory in those early days of its rule through burial and funerary practices, and how it continues to do so today. Kunze inquires into how the Nationalist mainlanders who retreated to Taiwan after the civil war with the Communists sought to find place in their new home and the role that cultural heritage tourism plays in the continuing process of nation building. Wang and Kim look at the “difficult heritage” of colonial leprosaria in Taiwan, South Korea, and Malaysia, and how leprosaria museums negotiate their place in the context of post-colonial political and social realities. Finally, we end with a return to entangled memories with Huang’s investigation of morality competitions between Japan and China about the roles their peoples played in saving Jews fleeing the Holocaust, with a focus on the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s (UNESCO) Memory of the World register.

Many of the special issue’s authors engage in some way with the idea of viewing, writing, or contributing from the margins, and how through taking agency of one’s own memory one may escape or embrace those margins. Jiang discusses how the temporal and geographical distancing that displacement forced, provided space for Nieh’s growth as a writer free of the confines of dominant mnemonic infrastructures, allowing her to really explore the margins in which she exists as a migrant. Wang and Kim delve into how leprosaria, which still serve as homes for former leprosy patients, welcome the museum visitor into the margins: the places and experiences of leprosy-affected individuals where the public memory of such is sorely lacking. Tran captures how memories of refugees and migrants continue to exist outside of official discourses in the home country, as well as how those groups seek to integrate them into the host country, such as with days of commemoration or memorialization. Kunze explores efforts at creating a “we” through shared memories that seek to connect all peoples in a multi-cultural Taiwan, bringing everyone in from the margins to a common understanding of the nation.

Yet the overarching question remains: whose memories will become part of collective memory? Wei addresses whether there exists a hierarchy of memory, where some memories are considered more valid to become part of public memory than others. All the articles look at varied gatekeepers of memory. Whether it is the museum curators for Kunze, and Wang and Kim; the Chinese or Vietnamese state, for Vu or Tran, respectively; or UNESCO’s Memory of the World register for Huang. Or perhaps even a patriarchal structure as Jiang states and to which Wei alludes.

These gatekeepers are influenced by the political and social realities of the modern day. All of the memory projects describe how collective memory is created through the lens of current concerns and needs. Vu explores how the Chinese government uses burial and funerary practices to extol some and marginalize others, in order to create a strong state. Wang and Kim propose that one main factor in explaining the difference across leprosy museum exhibits is how the post-colonial government and nation seek to engage with the former colonizer and the colonial past. Kunze not only sees the national project of ethnic reconciliation taking center stage, but also the roles that political goals (e.g. getting elected) and commercialism (making money in the tourist industry) play. Furthermore, the gatekeepers may be the historians or filmmakers who disseminate these stories to the wider public. Wei argues that the identity of these individuals matters; a female historian or filmmaker might recognize different stories or ask different questions. The consumer of the product similarly applies their own lens, based on their own memories and life experiences, as Jiang illustrates in her exploration of the varied interpretations of Nieh’s work.

Geopolitical difficulties and memory wars in Asia make commemoration even more complex and political. Domestic decisions about and practices of collective memory have international reverberations. Sometimes groups may work together, as Wang and Kim demonstrate with the case of leprosaria in South Korea and Taiwan. But other times they compete, as Huang details in the case of Japan and China in seeking to gain recognition for the role of their nationals in the saving of European Jews. Tran draws our attention to the power dynamics at play, both within borders and across them.

For all the cases, there is ongoing negotiation either within the domestic space or with the international community. Huang includes both these levels in the story of Japan’s not-yet-resubmitted entry to the Memory of the World register for documents related to Chiune Sugihara’s “Visas for Life.” Wang and Kim highlight the difficult balancing act when there are “unsettled interpretations.” How one remembers the past is a continuous, dynamic project at the individual, group, national, and international levels.