Here, I again attempt to stage an analysis that attempts to ‘explore the impossible’ (see Preface for my introduction of the term). This embrace of the impossible opens ways to see diasporic links, and assemble these links within one’s montage
of haunted histories (see Walkerdine 2013; Davoine and Gaudillière 2004; Cho 2008). Thus, the ‘impossibility’ of this experiment, indeed, further interrogates the questions of memory and history that I have asked throughout this chapter as well as in Chapter 4. I do this by staging the possibilities of transgenerational
transmission not just between family members, but also across two individuals that represent different eras, times, and geographical space. I should reflexively note that I am more heavily citing Chan’s (2001)’s own interviews here for the specific purposes of this ‘experiment’. My rationale to do so is reflexively autoethnographic in terms of my ‘own’ subjective experience in this case. Since researching ‘migrant figures’, I have found Chan’s research foundational in helping me better understand the legacy of Confucian traditions across ethnic Chinese diasporas past and present, and the significant connections between an ethic of ‘achievement’ across diasporas and this very millennia-‐old philosophy of human relationship. Significantly, this was especially insightful for me, since Chan’s descriptions, historical analysis and thoughts were devoid of ‘moral lessons’ that so often fill any pedagogical narratives of haunted histories passed down to our postgeneration by our well-‐meaning elders (see Chapter 3).
Nonetheless, this experiment will focus on one of my subject-‐peers (see also Chapter 3). Here, I explore transgenerational traumatic memory across time, proximity and space, which will raise some interesting questions. But what will this experiment yield? What new possibilities and insights into the workings of the hungry transgenerational ghost across generations might arise from this
experiment in exploring the seemingly impossible?
As an example of analysis, I consider the disclosures of Chan's (1994) interview (originally in Chinese and translated for his text) with his respondent recalling his youth in the 1920's and 1930's (when he migrated to Singapore), and also my own subject-‐peer, Trevor (born in 1980), who I have already spoken about in Chapter 3. In Chan's work (1994), he presents another example that describes how shame becomes a motivation to succeed:
Because of me, my father spent a lot of money. He was so afraid that I would be conscripted. That was why he wanted me to leave and come to Nanyang. He had to sell our only buffalo and two portions of our farmland to get the money for my passage (besides the costs of paying another male child to stand in for me in military conscription). It was my father's blood
and sweat which supported my passage here. I thought to myself at that time: I must be ambitious and become worthy. (p. 140)
This response from Chan's interviews bring to mind my own interviews. In particular, Trevor's words echo in my mind, as he answered my question, ‘What kind of circumstances were your parents raised?’.
Dad was raised in wealthier environment. But obviously had to get out of war-‐torn places.
But mom raised in average wealth environment…not really low, but average…so that's why I really admire their success…the way they are able to raise me and my sister and obviously living in a better more than average situation…That is an old adage saying…’got to work hard to get dividends…no free lunch.’ ‘Pay your dues…so hopefully when I'm someone's husband or father, I want to provide same stewardship…so not just shifting through jobs or searching through meals.
Trevor's disclosure has clear ties to being raised in an environment that has enforced success through being ‘self-‐made’ to a large extent. As discussed at length, such attitudes likely have connections to the narrative of survival that exists across almost all of the parents' and grandparents’ generation. The notion of ‘pay your dues’ implies value attributed to the skills learned for the parents to 'survive’ and become self-‐made, that they insist on passing onwards. In addition to the usual gaps, the transgenerational ghost can further simmer behind the
‘expectations one places upon oneself’, in a desire to fulfil the pressure of ‘paying your dues', so strongly enforced from the powerful influence of the family
patriarch. On a textual surface level of analysis, it's obvious that the geographical contexts, generational removes, socioeconomic status, and life stories are different, as are the life situations between the two individuals. Chan's respondent recalls his story at the onset of departing for another land. While Trevor, at the time of our conversation had just returned from overseas work and moved back to his birth home in Canada. There is recognition of ‘war’ in both, in fears of conscription and Trevor's recognition of war-‐torn places. The war traumas refer to a larger contextual historical narrative and memory of the widespread chaos across China, even though the specific historical antecedents may differ. However, what may be shared across mental representations and reflective of the possible development of a chosen trauma across space, time and generations, is this collective
I argue that it is this collective, shared traumatization of an era filled with poverty and war that has become so intertwined with what they would describe as the core identity self-‐representations of the individual within the collective.
Furthermore, it is interesting how both excerpts are re-‐told to the respective interviewer, and the respective stories have been remembered in a specific way. From this, the feeling that drives both of these disclosures is evident: shame. Therefore, I argue, shame persists as a powerful feeling that persists from the unconscious transmission of mental representations (Volkan 1987) that are produced from the personal, familial, and cultural milieux of Confucian
heritage/tradition; a tradition that insists upon an ethic of 'hard work', 'ambition' and aspirational success. This production of shame feelings was evident in
Chapter 3, when I analyzed the perpetuating discourses within my subject-‐peers' remembered stories. Here, across the seeming impossibility of time and space, shame resonates here as well between Trevor and Chan's respondent. The internalized self-‐image of becoming ‘worthy’ with Chan's subject can align with Trevor's own self-‐image that has internalized the importance of ‘pay your dues...so hopefully when I'm someone's husband or father, I want to provide same
stewardship...so not just shifting through jobs or searching through meals’. The desire to prove oneself and become worthwhile arises from the desire for success. And shame is both a motivation and consequence of failing one's ambitions, and potentially betraying parental sacrifice. However, it is interesting that the
pressures of the migrant weighing on Chan's respondent seem strikingly resonant in Trevor.
I find it interesting how Confucianism has become such a pervasive
ideology, such that, I argue, its legacy extends through nearly all ethnic Chinese. If we accept Volkan et al.’s (2002) understanding, then it makes sense how the intergenerational transmission of Confucian values persists and can source its origins from an originary ‘chosen’ trauma (or series of chosen traumas) that first occurred centuries ago.155 Therefore, what this argument suggests then, is how
155While a bold assertion, according to Volkan's theory of ‘chosen trauma’, the connection of centuries-‐old ‘chosen trauma’ that are still relevant to modern times is neither irrelevant nor impossible. He cites various examples from a Serbian chosen trauma in the Battle of Kosovo (which has beginnings in 1390 AD), through the trauma of how some Christian large groups find their chosen trauma back in 1453 unconsciously, from the fall of Constantinople to the Turks in 1453. Thus, from this understanding, it's possible that theories about the pervasiveness of Confucianism
the intergenerational transmission of trauma can persist through family units and diasporas that have continued to ‘internalize’ and (un)consciously ‘choose’ their collective identifications via Confucianist teachings, especially filial piety (xiao). The weight of these expectations of one’s known ancestral lineage rest on the shoulders of the youngest male meant to carry responsibility. Thus, I argue, that for both Trevor and Chan's respondent, the intergenerational affective
transmission of trauma is intensified and entangled with the unconscious distributions that come with the legacy of Confucianism in the ethnic Chinese collective (un)consciousness.
Of course, with the transmission of affective trauma, temporal time and space become quite complex. On one hand, Trevor's shame and filial desires can find a kindred spirit in similar shame and filial desires from Chan's respondent, even though these two subjects are two generations apart, making temporality and geographical space insignificant. On the other hand, in today's calendar, Chan's respondent likely 'belongs' in the same generation as Trevor's grandparents would, and would be his senior. And though their families are not related, Chapter 3 has shown how feelings such as (fear of) shame experienced by grandparents can pass to their grandchildren (my subject-‐peers) through mental
representations of Confucian myth, expectations and familial legacies. Still, there is also the collectivity of the ethnic Chinese (diasporic) collective unconscious regardless of blood relation, that shares not only historical trauma from the scars of war and survival, but also the embodiment of Confucianism within the way of life. In this way, Trevor and Chan's respondent carry a far more potent
relationality through the recovery of social links to each other and to the unknown myths perpetuated through history (Davoine and Gaudillière 2004).
Ghosts, therefore, persist between the gaps of these visible representations, remaining invisible and unidentifiable until one begins juxtaposing fragments of mediated memory (e.g. memories of Trevor and Chan’s respondent) as I have ‘performed’ here. In other words, while some of the broken social links begin to
across nearly all ethnic Chinese globally (and other ethnic groups too, such as Korea or Japan) could range from Confucian origins during the Warring States period, the first unification of China in the Qin dynasty or the trauma of the fall of the Tang Dynasty and the rise of the Song dynasty when Confucianism resurged in influence. These are interesting arguments, but do not fit the primary purpose of my thesis, so must be left for another discussion.
re-‐form and recover through this performative writing of imagining, diasporic vision and act of montage, there are still many ‘unknowns’ and historical gaps within the mentions of historical trauma. Specifically, these issues concern the persistence of the Confucian legacy and the resulting, recurrent possession of the migrant figure between two individuals from very different periods of time, life experiences, and families. That is, I argue that these issues continue to raise what I want to term as ‘undecipherable questions’ that persist and possess me/us from one’s very position of ‘not knowing’ and sensing that there is an inexplicable ‘something’ that needs to be seen or asked, but is nonetheless confined to silence. This recalls parallels to what Walkerdine and Jimenez (2012: 156) has discussed as the ‘unthought known’. These experiences, I argue, continue to reveal the presence of ghosts and hauntings that are nonetheless invisible, unrepresentable and unseen. Only through continuing with a diasporic vision within one’s active composition of a (diasporic) montage (that juxtaposes im/material memory), therefore, can hauntings be seen. As I have discussed in Chapters 3 and 4, there is an invisible mutual complicity to each other’s subjective, affective hauntings. When such ghosts at the sites of trauma are finally rendered visible (e.g. when broken links are gradually recovered), then renewed connections across time and space become possible.
Therefore, in this experiment, exploring the seemingly impossible, time, space, and proximity were less significant than the unconscious forces at work and across generations and time through migrant and diasporic memory. Significantly, transmissions of affects were pervasive, due to large group traumas of war and Confucian expectations to bring glory to parents, and its associated pressures of wealth, success and the shameful consequences of failure. While this experiment raises more questions, it also opens up new possibilities and creative, unexpected directions through which to explore the workings and nature of transgenerational haunting across generations and new ways to see via diasporic vision. To this end, I turn the discussion to an analysis of three visual works that further stretch the range of possibility, time, and space, in discussions of memory, history, myth, fantasy, affect, collective trauma and the unconscious, and the haunting presence of transgenerational ghosts.
5.6 Visual Artworks and Generations
Watson (1994) asserts:
Shared memory and history tend not only to represent but also to transmit the past in characteristically different ways...[In] situations where alternative understandings of the past are tantamount to treason, shared memory expressed in oral and visual forms provides a particularly adaptive medium for expressing disagreement, dissent, opposition, and resistance. (p. 9)
I conclude this chapter with a brief discussion of one artwork and two art installations. The aesthetic is an important mediation of memory in diasporic vision and is helpful within my attempt to compose a montage of hauntings.
First is a painting by a Chinese-‐artist, Chen Yifei who at the age of 34, migrated to America in 1980 from post-‐Mao China. He painted this work, ‘Looking at History from My Space’ below in 1979 (see Figure 5.1). Here, Chen paints a realistic figure of himself and an empty chair in contrast to a backdrop portraying sketches of various historical events between 1910's and 1920's in China. (Recall in 1910's and 1920's, China underwent chaos regarding the end of Qing
imperialism in 1911, further submission to foreign powers, and the May 4 student and intellectual protests which included (failed) attempts to remove Chinese traditions, and thought to foreshadow the dawn of Communism.)
Figure 5.1: Chen Yifei: Looking at History from My Space
In the eyes of an artist who would belong to my parents' generation, this piece explores multiple gazes (e.g. Venn 2009: 21) amidst its ambiguity. On one hand, there is the obvious gaze of the self-‐portrait with the artist-‐in-‐the painting,
reflecting on the collage (perhaps a mental collage) of significant turning points in Chinese history. The empty chair also appears firstly as an invitation, perhaps to