Representing Atrocity in Taiwan: The 2/28 Incident and White Terror in Fiction and Film

Sylvia Li-Chun Lin

Representing Atrocity in Taiwan: The 2/28 Incident and White Terror in Fiction and Film
Format
Hardback
Publisher
Columbia University Press
Country
United States
Published
30 November 2007
Pages
256
ISBN
9780231143608

Representing Atrocity in Taiwan: The 2/28 Incident and White Terror in Fiction and Film

Sylvia Li-Chun Lin

In 1945, Taiwan was placed under the administrative control of the Republic of China, and after two years, accusations of corruption and a failing economy sparked a local protest that was brutally quashed by the Kuomintang government. The February Twenty-Eighth (or 2/28) Incident led to four decades of martial law that became known as the White Terror. During this period, talk of 2/28 was forbidden and all dissent violently suppressed, but since the lifting of martial law in 1987, this long-buried history has been revisited through commemoration and narrative, cinema and remembrance.Drawing on a wealth of secondary theoretical material as well as her own original research, Sylvia Li-chun Lin conducts a close analysis of the political, narrative, and ideological structures involved in the fictional and cinematic representations of the 2/28 Incident and White Terror. She assesses the role of individual and collective memory and institutionalized forgetting, while underscoring the dangers of re-creating a historical past and the risks of trivialization. She also compares her findings with scholarly works on the Holocaust and the aftermath of the atomic bombings of Japan, questioning the politics of forming public and personal memories and the political teleology of closure. This is the first book to be published in English on the 2/28 Incident and White Terror and offers a valuable matrix of comparison for studying the portrayal of atrocity in a specific locale.

This item is not currently in-stock. It can be ordered online and is expected to ship in approx 2 weeks

Our stock data is updated periodically, and availability may change throughout the day for in-demand items. Please call the relevant shop for the most current stock information. Prices are subject to change without notice.

Sign in or become a Readings Member to add this title to a wishlist.