The Symptoms of Perpetrator Trauma: Rethinking the Portrayal of Red Guards in Scar Literature

Abstract

This article studies the psychology of the Red Guards portrayed as protagonists in Scar Literature. I argue that a psychological paradox of confrontation and denial of the committed violence experienced by some Red Guards derives from the interplay between trauma and ideology. Further mapping the representation of the Red Guards in the broader sociopolitical context in China, this interplay indicates an ongoing dynamic process in which traumatic symptoms have been consistently forming, reforming, and transforming in their vacillations between personal libido and society, between conscious and unconscious, and between compulsively revisiting traumatic memory and denying this repetition.