In the previous chapter, I borrowed the concepts of “acting out” and “working through” proposed by LaCapra to examine the characters’ experiences with trauma in Green Island. In this current section, I continue to draw on LaCapra to explore how the two main characters Fang and Wei in Detention “acted out” and “worked through”
their traumatic experiences.
From my perspective, the first section of Detention: “Nightmare” vividly portrays Fang’s process of “acting out” the trauma. This section begins with Fang’s awakening in a dim deserted classroom. Fang soon found that Wei and herself were trapped inside the Greenwood High School campus. What’s worse, they were chased by a female ghost without facial features and an enormous zombie-like figure. In the ominous haunted space, the distinctions between the real/unreal and the past/present were not clear. When Wei asked Fang whether she remembered what happened before she fell asleep, Fang stated that she did not remember anything but had a feeling that she had dreamt about this before (00:12:23-13:15). As the plot developed, audience would find that Fang was trapped in a circle and already compulsively re-enacted the past countless times. She would continue reliving the past if she avoided the
harrowing memories and had no courage to confront what she had done. In LaCapra’s words, Fang would “act out” her traumatic experience if she was incapable of
distinguishing then from now and re-examining the past with “a critical distance.”
In Detention, Hsu presented not only how Fang acted out the trauma but also how she worked through. Piecing together mnemonic fragments, Fang recalled that she was the informant who betrayed friends and caused the destruction of the reading club. Fang realized that she avoided remembering what she had done because of an overwhelming sense of guilt and regret. In a scene toward the end of the film, Fang was captured by the zombie-like figure. Instructor Bai asked her, “isn’t it easier to leave all the pain in the past and forget?” Fang firmly answered, “No, I don’t want to forget. I won’t forget anymore” (01:24:29-25:05). At that moment, the zombie-like figure’s mirror face cracked and it collapsed. In my view, Fang’s remembering and admission of her mistakes could be regarded as the starting point for working through the trauma because that meant she was no longer mired in the past and was able to come to terms with her traumatic experience and to review the past from a critical distance.
At the end of the film, Fang helped Wei get out of the campus and told him to live and remember the past. She believed that there was hope as long as someone was alive to tell the history. Rescuing Wei enabled Fang to atone for her mistakes and, more importantly, to look towards futural possibilities. Ultimately, Wei became the survivor who was capable of giving voice to the past. By creating a survivor of the dark history like Wei in the film, Detention fostered a future-oriented view of trauma.
To conclude, through Detention, Hsu provides audience with an alternative way to reexamine historical traumas. In the film, Hsu adopts a symbolic way to retell Taiwan’s White Terror history. Besides, by shaping Fang as a victim-victimizer, I
contend that Hsu reconceptualizes the idea of justice beyond the victim/victimizer opposition. Last but not least, Detention presents the two main characters’ process of
“acting out” and “working through” the trauma, which opens up possibilities for the future and foregrounds the future-orientation of historical traumas.
Chapter Four: Conclusion
Rethinking Transitional Justice and Democracy in Taiwan
In this concluding chapter, I hope to connect my research to a few current events happening in Taiwan, which are related to the issues of transitional justice and the development of Taiwan’s democracy. But before moving to these issues, I would briefly comment on the concept of transitional justice.
Transitional justice is a rather new and burgeoning field of study in recent years.
According to the International Center of Transitional Justice (ICTJ), transitional justice “refers to the ways countries emerging from periods of conflict and repression address large-scale or systematic human rights violations so numerous and so serious that the normal justice system will not be able to provide an adequate response” (par.
1). In the case of Taiwan, transitional justice mainly reckons with two major injustices before Taiwan’s democratization: the 228 Massacre and White Terror. The Legislative Yuan passed the Act on Promoting Transitional Justice (促進轉型正義條例) on 5 December 2017 and the Transitional Justice Commission (TJC) was established on 31 May 2018. TJC aims to investigate the delinquencies conducted by the Nationalist government during the post-WWII and White Terror period, declassify documents, vindicate wrongful political convictions, remove symbols of authoritarian regimes, rebuild social trust, and facilitate social reconciliation. Although Taiwan has started to confront past atrocities, more attention is needed to the measures and process of executing transitional justice. As Anja Mihr stated in her essay that “transitional justice measures can foster or hamper successful transition or reconciliation
processes” (1). In Mihr’s view, the transitional justice process can be divided into two categories: the inclusive one and the exclusive one (3). The inclusive transitional
justice process includes “all parties or members that were involved in the previous conflict or dictatorship, may they be victims, bystanders or perpetrators, regardless of their political or social status, religious or ethnic background” (3). On the contrary, the exclusive transitional justice process usually “selects victims and perpetrators, that is to say those whom the current government portrays as victimizers of the previous regime and thus enemies of the current political justice” (3). Mihr considers that the exclusive transitional justice process can strengthen a regime yet can also make it
“become autocratic or dictatorial” at the same time (3). From my perspective, the current practice of transitional justice in Taiwan leans more to the exclusive transitional justice process. To avoid becoming authoritarian while pursuing
democracy and transitional justice, it is necessary for us to adopt an inclusive plan and keep the door open for discussions and dialogues with those who have different stances.
On 13 June 2020, the National Taiwan University Student Association (NTUSA) made a proposal in the university assembly, which was about establishing a task force to promote transitional justice at NTU. The task force aimed to reinvestigate the historical events,30 remove authoritarian symbols, promote campus space transition, and reconstruct the school history. However, the NTU authority rejected the proposal with lopsided votes: 109 votes against and 24 in favor. Jyun-cing Tu (凃峻清), then the director of NTUSA , expressed deep regret that the task force was associated with political struggles and that the NTU authority put the proposal to a vote without sufficient and comprehensive discussions. Chung-ming Kuan (管中閔), the president of NTU, emphasized that the school authority supported the academic
30 The targeted historical events include Chen Wen-cheng Incident (陳文成事件), The April Sixth Incident (四六事件), The NTU Department of Philosophy Incident (台大哲學系事件), and persecutions on Yin Hai-kuang (殷海光).
research on the school history and the result did not mean that the school authority opposed the truth-finding and the correction of school history.31 What it means and what could be the impact of establishing a task force on campus to promote
transitional justice deserve more observations. But from this case of NTU, we can detect that transitional justice remains a politically sensitive issue and is easily subjected to political manipulation.
While I was in the process of completing this thesis, on 31 December 2019 legislators in Taiwan passed the Anti-Infiltration Act (反滲透法) which was later promulgated on 15 January 2020. This ordinance aroused heated debates. Enacting such an ordinance may curb the PRC’s influences on the politics in Taiwan and mitigate the collective anxiety of being infiltrated. Yet it remains uncertain to what extent the enforcement of the Anti-Infiltration Act might undermine Taiwan’s
democracy. What we could see is that the increasing fear of Chinese spies on the one hand and the anxiety over the rise of the so-called “Green Terror” on the other hand remind us that our society has not yet been released from the shadow of the White Terror.
In another case, in November 2020, Taiwan National Communications
Commission (NCC) disallowed the application of Chung Tien Television (中天電視 台) to renew the broadcast license of CTi News (中天新聞). NCC’s decision de facto shut down the news channel. According to the news report by Keoni Everington, the NCC chairman Yaw-shyang Chen (陳耀祥) stated that “after a full discussion and evaluation by the commissioners, the license renewal was rejected because of the TV station’s serious record of violations and failure to implement an internal control
31 For details, please see the video clip on YouTube uploaded by CTS NEWS (華視新聞).
mechanism” (par. 3). On the one hand, NCC’s adjudication might mean to assure the quality of news and media professionalism because CTi News was reported several times for spreading disinformation and biased reporting. On the other hand, NCC’s decision was questionable because it does not seem to impose the same standard on all news channels and violate the freedom of speech and press.
In this thesis, I have incorporated Green Island and Detention into my discussion and explored how the two texts provide readers and audience with alternative ways to confront historical traumas and re-conceptualize the idea of justice. I choose the two texts because I, as an English major, hope to reexamine the historical trauma from a literary perspective. Moreover, I consider that literary texts provide complex tales that capture everyday life and the complicated affective interactions between
individuals—materials which might be neglected in archival researches and document studies. I would like to make it clear that the aim of this thesis project is not as much to question the value of existing historical, legal, and literary studies on the 228 Incident and White Terror as to add to existing scholarship more dimensions and perspectives. Particularly, what I intend to do is to bring to light the insufficiency of the binary opposition between the Nationalist government and Taiwanese people, to adopt a more nuanced and sophisticated way to reexamine the 228 Incident and White Terror.
Due to the limited space of this thesis, however, there are still issues that I am not able to reckon with but hope to address in future studies. One thing is that, when discussing the victim/victimizer opposition in Green Island, I did not have the opportunity to incorporate into my discussion several minor but thought-provoking characters, such as the highly controversial young boy soldiers and the retired KMT general. They could be viewed as the perpetrators or accomplices of an authoritarian
regime. However, they could also be regarded as forced perpetrators because they just followed orders and obeyed commands. The other thing is that, given the complexities of the concept of transitional justice, many important issues and concerns are not covered in this thesis. Still, I hope that my studies of Green Island and Detention can serve as a good starting point for me to explore more texts or cases on transitional justice in the future. To sum up, by working on this thesis, I not only hope to arouse public interest in the studies on Ryan’s Green Island and Hsu’s Detention, but also intend to inspire readers—especially the young generations—to reexamine their connection with historical traumas and to reconsider the meaning of justice and democracy in the present Taiwan.
Finally, I include my interview with the writer and White Terror victim Lieh Chen (陳列) into this thesis as an appendix. Taking place at the Green Island White Terror Memorial Park, Green Island, Taiwan, on Jul. 11, 2020, this interview probed particularly Lieh Chen’s experience as a political prisoner and artist-in-residence at the National Human Rights Museum. My thesis was written from a young
generation’s perspective. The trans-generational conversation featured in this interview is expected to enrich this thesis with a precious point of view from the elderly generation.
Works Cited
Althusser, Louis. “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses (Notes towards an Investigation).” Lenin and Philosophy and other Essays. Translated by Ben Brewster, Monthly Review Press, 1971, pp. 127-86.
BIOS monthly. “The Inevitability of Imperfection: An Exclusive Interview with Han-chiang Hsu.” BIOS monthly, 11 Apr. 2019,
https://www.biosmonthly.com/article/10137. Accessed 19 Dec. 2020.
Caruth, Cathy. Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Narrative, and History. Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996.
Chen, Yi-chen. “Trans-Generational Quests for Subjectivity: Resistance and Complicity in Shawna Yang Ryan’s Green Island.” Master Thesis, National Taiwan University, 2019.
Cheung, Han. “Movie Review: Detention.” Taipei Times, 26 Sep. 2019,
http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/feat/archives/2019/09/26/2003722923.
Accessed 19 Dec. 2020.
Everington, Keoni. “Taiwan NCC Rejects License Renewal for Pro-China CTi News.” Taiwan News, 18 Nov. 2020,
https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/4056473. Accessed 22 Dec.
2020.
Gamexpress. “The Firsthand Exclusive Interview with Detention Director Han-chiang Hsu.” YouTube, uploaded by Gamexpress, 18 Sep. 2019,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uB9UHqmbumU. Accessed 26 Nov.
2020.
Hioe, Brian. “Interview: Shawna Yang Ryan.” New Bloom Magazine, 20 Jun. 2016,
https://newbloommag.net/2016/06/20/interview-shawna-yang-ryan/.
Accessed 19 Dec. 2020.
---. “Review: Detention.” New Bloom Magazine, 9 Oct. 2019,
https://newbloommag.net/2019/10/09/detention-film-review/. Accessed 19 Dec. 2020.
Hsu, Han-chiang. Detention. 1 Production Film Co., 2019.
---. “Hsu’s thoughts on Detention.” Facebook, 19 Jun. 2019, 6:06 p.m.,
https://www.facebook.com/afkjohn/posts/10162026417970327. Accessed 26 Nov. 2020.
Hwang, Jau-yuan. “Transitional Justice in Postwar Taiwan.” Routledge Handbook of Contemporary Taiwan. Routledge, 2016, pp. 169-83.
International Center of Transitional Justice. “What is Transitional Justice?” ICTJ, https://www.ictj.org/about/transitional-justice. Accessed 21 Dec. 2020.
Kao, Anthony. “Review: In Taiwanese Horror Movie “Detention,” Authoritarianism Is the Real Monster.” Cinema Escapist, 2 Dec. 2019,
https://www.cinemaescapist.com/2019/12/review-detention-taiwan-movie/. Accessed 19 Dec. 2020.
LaCapra, Dominick. Writing History, Writing Trauma. vol. Parallax, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001.
Lee, Daphne K. “2019 Golden Horse Awards ‘Detention’: A Clichéd Salute to Freedom.” The News Lens, 21 Nov. 2019,
https://international.thenewslens.com/feature/2019-tghff/127773.
Accessed 19 Dec. 2020.
Mihr, Anja. “An Introduction to Transitional Justice.” An Introduction to Transitional Justice, Routledge, 2017, pp. 1-27.
Ni, Pi-hua. “Taiwanese Diaspora and Taiwanese American Identity: Julie Wu’s The Third Son as a Cornerstone of Taiwanese American Literature.” Ethnicity and Gender Debates: Cross-Readings of American Literature and
Culture in the New Millennium, Peter Lang GmbH, Internationaler Verlag der Wissenschaften, 2020, pp. 159-74.
Ryan, Shawna Yang. Green Island, Random House, 2016.
Tatlow, Didi Kirsten. “Q. and A.: Shawna Yang Ryan on the 1947 Incident That Shaped Taiwan’s Identity.” The New York Times, 22 Jan. 2016,
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/23/world/asia/taiwan-shawna-yang-ryan-green-island.html. Accessed 19 Dec. 2020.
Ter, Dana. “In Search of Authenticity.” Taipei Times, 22 Nov. 2016,
http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/feat/archives/2016/11/22/2003659748.
Accessed 19 Dec. 2020.
Thim, Michal. “Taiwan’s Modern Political History through the Lens of Ordinary Lives.” Orbis (Philadelphia), vol. 60, no. 4, 2016, pp. 639-44.
Ting, Wei-chung. “Countering Historical Amnesia: Shawna Yang Ryan’s Green Island.” Master Thesis, National Taiwan Normal University, 2020.
Wang, Yi-huei. “Writing beyond History: Literature as Form in Green Island, Shawna Yang Ryan (2016).” East Asian Journal of Popular Culture, 3:2, 2017, pp. 249-54.
Yoneyama, Lisa. Cold War Ruins: Transpacific Critique of American Justice and Japanese War Crimes. Duke University Press, 2016.
---. “Traveling Memories, Contagious Justice: Americanization of Japanese War Crimes at the End of the Post-Cold War.” Journal of Asian American Studies 6, no.1, 2003, pp. 57-93.
中央社。〈染政治味！國片《返校》遭指評論自導自演、連結大選操作。監製李
烈提告網友〉。風傳媒。2019 年 10 月 15 日，
https://www.storm.mg/article/1831384，2020 年 11 月 26 日讀取。
台視新聞。〈尹立批返校上映高雄冷靜市府:宣傳沒少〉。YouTube。2019 年 9 月
22 日，https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qP7d2sbCgDs，2020 年 11
月26 日讀取。
吳乃德。〈導言〉。《記憶與遺忘的鬥爭：臺灣轉型正義階段報告》。衛城出版，
2015。17-23。
吳兆熊。〈自由開講:「返校」背後真實的血淚故事〉。自由時報。2019 年 10 月
23 日，https://talk.ltn.com.tw/article/breakingnews/2955145，2020 年 11 月 30 日讀取。
李筱峰。《解讀二二八》。玉山社，1998。
林雨蒼。〈如果「張老師」生在現代：從《返校》看民主防衛機制的是與非〉。
思想坦克。2019 年 10 月 5 日，https://www.voicettank.org/single-post/2019/10/05/100501，2020 年 11 月 30 日讀取。
郭松棻。〈月印〉。《奔跑的母親》。麥田出版，2002。13-112。
唐毓麗。〈政治小說〉。《臺灣大百科全書》。2009，
http://nrch.culture.tw/twpedia.aspx?id=2320，2020 年 12 月 19 日讀 取。
翁煌德。〈專訪/《返校》導演徐漢強：勇敢地去面對在地歷史與電影，讓「IP
改編」不只是表面功夫〉。娛樂重擊。2019 年 9 月 19 日，
https://punchline.asia/archives/54536，2020 年 11 月 26 日讀取。
翁稷安。〈必要的平庸：讀楊小娜《綠島》〉。關鍵評論網。2017 年，
https://www.thenewslens.com/feature/228-70years/62180，2020 年 12 月 19 日讀取。
陳芳明。〈未亡人的未亡史—《綠島》讀後〉。《晚秋夜讀》。印刻出版，2017。
148-51。
陳映真。〈山路〉。《鈴鐺花》。洪範出版，2001。51-91。
陳翠蓮。《重構二二八 :戰後美中體制、中國統治模式與臺灣》。衛城出版，
2017。
陳儀深。《天猶未光：二二八事件的真相、紀念與究責》。前衛出版，2017。
黃奕瀠。〈一個台裔美國作家眼裏的二二八—《綠島》作者楊小娜其人其 書〉。端傳媒。2016 年，
https://theinitium.com/article/20160804-taiwan-228/，2020 年 12 月 19 日讀取。
彭紹宇。〈《返校》：只有在自由的土壤，才能拍出那些不自由的故事〉。太報。
2019 年 9 月 22 日，
https://www.taisounds.com/w/TaiSounds/society_19092214041312628，
2020 年 12 月 19 日讀取。
彭瑞金。《台灣新文學運動 40 年》。自立晚報出版，1991。
華視新聞。〈校園轉型正義小組台大校務會議投票否決〉。YouTube。2020 年 6
月13 日，https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qq1xyu_8qxQ，2020 年 12 月 22 日讀取。
鄭明娳。〈當代台灣文藝政策的發展、影響與檢討〉。《當代台灣政治文學論》。
鄭明娳。〈當代台灣文藝政策的發展、影響與檢討〉。《當代台灣政治文學論》。