| Abstract: | This paper examines how memory is used as a representational paradigm and transgressive aesthetic strategy in three fictional histories (Ge Fei's Marginality , Su Tong's 'Nineteen Thirty-four Escape' and Qiao Liang's 'The Mourning-flag') to rewrite Chinese historical past. The paper argues that contemporary preoccupation with memory and history in literary writings should be seen in a broader sociohistorical context as both reflecting and contributing to the posthistorical experience of contemporary China. The Chinese posthistorical experience is defined here as a profound crisis of Chinese Marxist historicism effected by the rupture between the Marxist philosophy of history and contemporary Chinese reality of uneven development towards modernization. The current obsession with memory and past should also be viewed as part of the rise of historical investigation of the dispossessed social groups such as ethnic groups, women, and social minorities. |
