“Embodying” War Memory: Suffering, Torture and Death in The Slaughter of the Thousand Loyal Ones

• In Event: The Feeling Body: Social Functions of Texts in Mediating Historical and Cultural Memories

Abstract

The memory of the 1402 Usurpation (jingnan) was actively alive in the late Ming society, as evinced by the many private or unofficial histories, novels and plays that narrate and/or dramatize this particular historical event. But none of them highlights the pain and violence inflicted on the human body as much as the early Qing Suzhou chuanqi play, The Slaughter of the Thousand Loyal Ones (Qian zhong lu). While the depiction of violence in this play is often viewed as implicit criticism of the atrocities committed by the Manchu troops during the Ming-Qing transition in the lower Yangtze area, this paper aims to shift the focus to physical and sensory expressions as sites of war memory. Verbal confrontation and lyrical self-expression through songs, and the corporeal body starved, tortured, disfigured or slain are all sensory media that register the war experiences of several loyalists, who enact loyalty in diverse ways under varied circumstances. For the audience immersed in the stirring emotion generated on stage, this re-enactment of war experience can be at the same time about the 1402 Usurpation, the Ming-Qing transition or any other situation of suffering and warfare. By examining the affective and tenacious power of dramatic sight and sound to retain or re-shape historical memory, this paper argues that it is the “embodied” sentiments under war condition rather than the anti-Qing political stance that better explains the popularity of this work throughout the Qing dynasty down to the present day.

Author

• Chiung-yun Evelyn Liu, Academia Sinica