Absent Presence: The Absent Father and Postmemory in Tash Aw's The Harmony Silk Factory
學年 106
學期 1
出版（發表）日期 2017-12-01
作品名稱 Absent Presence: The Absent Father and Postmemory in Tash Aw's The Harmony Silk Factory
作品名稱（其他語言）
著者 Ting-hui Hsiung
單位
出版者
著錄名稱、卷期、頁數 文山評論：文學與文化 11(1), p.33-56
摘要 Tash Aw's The Harmony Silk Factory (2005) is a novel of war memories, dealing with the Japanese Occupation of Malaya and its aftermath. Longlisted for the Man Booker prize, this novel comprises three inconsistent narratives about the mysterious past of Johnny Lim, an ex-Malayan communist and later a Chinese tycoon in Kampar, Malaysia. The article suggests that the characterization of Johnny as a Malayan Communist and absent father can be read as an allegory of the repressed memory of the Malayan communists, who cooperated with the British to resist the Japanese invasion but ended up being ＂betrayed＂ by the British government and later by the Malaysian government. Belonging to the ＂postmemory＂ generation, Johnny's son Jasper learns about the Japanese Occupation through archival resources. His accusation against Johnny demonstrates how the historical event is only partially remembered by the one who was not there. This essay also points out that while on the one hand Harmony underscores the discrepancy between history and memory, and shows us how a postgeneration writer imagines and characterizes the Malayan Chinese of the 1940s, on the other hand the novel makes clear the risks Aw faces in attempting to revisit the now-absent past of his homeland. Writing about wartime Malaya outside Malaysia is, for this diasporic Malaysian Anglophone novelist, all about the politics of ＂post＂ness in the senses of both postcolonialism and postmemory.
關鍵字 Japanese Occupation of Malaya;Tash Aw;The Harmony Silk Factory;absent father;Malayan Communist;postmemory
語言 en_US
ISSN 2077-1282
期刊性質 國內
收錄於 THCI Core
產學合作
通訊作者
審稿制度 否
國別 TWN
公開徵稿
出版型式 ,電子版,紙本
相關連結

機構典藏連結 ( http://tkuir.lib.tku.edu.tw:8080/dspace/handle/987654321/115822 )

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