Trauma, Guilt, and Shame in Ba Jin's Random Thoughts

Abstract

Trauma, Guilt, and Shame in Ba Jin's Random Thoughts Min Yang (bio) Random Thoughts (Suixiang lu) is the last major literary work that Ba Jin (1904–2005), one of the greatest modern Chinese writers and cultural icons, completed after the Cultural Revolution (1966–76). It is also one of a few literary works to report the trauma of the Cultural Revolution that had troubled his generation of intellectuals. Ba Jin called his generation Children of the May Fourth Movement, or the May Fourth generation, in that they were enlightened by humanism, democracy, and science advocated during the May Fourth Movement from the mid-1910s to the 1920s (2009, 63). They emerged as predominant writers and cultural icons in the 1930s and 1940s, were recruited as sympathizers with or believers in socialism after the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) established its power in 1949, but were attacked in political movements during Mao's period between 1949 and 1976. During the Cultural Revolution, most of this generation became immediate targets of mass violence. Labeled as "cow ghosts, snake demons," they were dehumanized, humiliated, and tortured. The trauma they experienced beyond physical injuries inflicted deep wounds in their souls. This article takes Random Thoughts, a collection of 150 essays, as an example to study how the May Fourth generation who survived the Cultural Revolution recognized and coped with the trauma of the Cultural Revolution. I study subtlety and ramifications of narratives in the essays. I demonstrate that these essays, rather than consistently taking one particular narrative form, such as memoir, confession, or autobiography (Lin 1993, 172; Martine 1992, 227; Zhang 2015, 36; Chen 1996, 86), present peculiar fragmentations that feature inconsistency, dissonance, ambiguity, and repetition. I argue that these fragmented narratives suggest a deeply traumatized Ba Jin who endeavored, albeit painfully, to reconstruct his integrity, identity, and humanity, all of which were shattered during the Cultural Revolution. I also advance that this reconstruction transpires in a protracted and yet dynamic process in which Ba Jin coped with his post-traumatic guilt, which he initially denied, gradually explored, and eventually confronted in his protracted contemplation. [End Page 155] Ba Jin: From Anarchism to Communism Ba Jin (the pen name of Li Feigan) was born into an aristocratic family in Chengdu, which was strictly controlled by autocratic rulers and Confucianist values. In 1920, inspired by Emma Goldman (Russian anarchist, 1869–1940), the fifteen-year-old Ba Jin became an enthusiastic anarchist. He studied in Paris between 1927 and 1929, and during this period he completed his first novel, Destruction. Destruction provides a self-portrait of Ba Jin through a fervent anarchist protagonist who seeks his freedom by challenging the entire reality of the world (Song 2017, 333). In 1931, Ba Jin published his most celebrated novel, Family, which depicts contradictions between the young generation, who were enlightened by the May Fourth Movement, and the old generation, who repressed the young generation by patriarchal and feudal values. The novel expresses Ba Jin's rebellious and absolute refusal to compromise with feudalism, which shaped many urban young people's political attitudes in the 1930s (Rapp 2015, 3). Family and Ba Jin's numerous other literary works made him one of the most popular Chinese writers in the 1930s and 1940s, second only to Lu Xun (Kaldis 2016, 412). Given that Chinese anarchists originally were tied to the Nationalist Party (the opponent of the CCP before 1949) (Dirlik 1989, 420–21), Ba Jin's identity as an anarchist put him into an unsettled position requiring self-reformation and self-denunciation during Mao's period. Ba Jin launched a series of anti-anarchist activities in the 1950s. He aggressively revised his previous novels by removing the parts that embodied anarchism, and he wrote many essays and stories to extol communist war heroes and other new people of the socialist society. After his youth as an anarchist, Ba Jin made his peace with the CCP (Larson and Kraus 1989, 156). However, this peace did not last long. Ba Jin's self-denunciation and self-reformation did not spare him from verbal and physical attacks during the Cultural Revolution. The Red Guards (teenagers who were mobilized to conduct the massive violence...