of “a new ethics.” Because the survivor is the subject which speaks for the
Muselmann, who cannot speak or act for himself anymore, it is the survivor that
would initiate the new ethics, and the survivor thus becomes the ethical subject. As the narrators of Nanjing Requiem and War Trash, Anling and Yu Yuan are significant survivors and ethical subjects speaking for the other POWs and the victims ofNanking Massacre. However, being ethical subjects encounters an inevitable conflict between the ethical subject’s independence of action and choice and their
responsibility for the Other. In Nanjing Requiem, as a representative of “all the Nanjing women brutalized by the Japanese army,” Anling attends the hearing of Tokyo Trials, to speak for those Chinese victims who cannot speak for themselves.
However, as an ethical subject speaking for the Muselmann, Anling cannot meet Haowen’s Japanese wife and son, or it “would have amounted to inviting disaster”
(298). When Anling poses herself as an ethical subject for Chinese war victims, she also chooses a stance against the Japanese, including her daughter-in-law and
grandson. When the speaking subject turns into an ethical subject, it would undergo a process of desubjectification, which would restrict the subject’s independence of action and choice so as to demand the ethical subject to fulfill its responsibility for the Other.
Speaking historical truth for the Other is about the ethics of the Other, and a realization of truth commission. In other words, truth commission can be fulfilled in the ethical relation between the survivor and the Muselmann. Based on Agamben’s concept, the discussion here about truth commission is for presenting true history, but how about the truth commission in literature? Can Nanjing Requiem and War Trash be
a kind of truth commission in the form of historical fictions? Moreover, what is Ha Jin’s role in this ethical relation? Is Ha Jin also an ethical subject?
Besides the narrators in the two novels, Ha Jin is also an ethical subject who speaks for the Other. Ha Jin writes the two novels to expose injustice and
commemorate the miserable story of war victims, but he is not a survivor like Anling and Yu Yuan, who had been through Nanking Massacre and Korean War each.
Therefore, from Agamben’s perspective, Ha Jin is not the survivor who can provide his testimony for presenting the historical truth on behalf of the Muselmanns so as to promote transitional justice. However, as a writer of literature, Ha Jin’s primary concern in composing literature might not be presenting historical truth. The crucial part of truth commission and transitional justice in Ha Jin’s literary works is not presenting the historical truth through literature, but arousing the readers’ attention and concern for the Other, i.e., those who have been neglected by the public and perished into the hidden part of history. In Terry Hong’s interview, Ha Jin explicates that
History is not my major concern. My objective is to make a story more believable, more interesting, more nuanced. A story needs to be grounded, which is why I look for historical moments. But I only use history as context. The final purpose is to go beyond history to literature. (See Terry Hong)
Ha Jin’s goal “to make a story more believable, more interesting” can arouse the readers’ attention and interest in understanding these war victims’ story, which could be Ha Jin’s ethical concern applied into his rewriting history into literature.
In “The Spokesman and the Tribe” in The Writer as Migrant (2008), Ha Jin proclaims that the social role of a writer is to “take a moral stand and speak against
oppression, prejudice, and injustice,” and a writer should “be aware of the limits of his art as social struggle” (29). He observes that in contemporary history, there are many “blank spaces unmarked by literature: genocide, wars, political upheavals, and manmade catastrophes” (29). For example, during the Anti-Rightest Movement in China in the late 1950s, “millions of people suffered persecution, tens of thousands of intellectuals were sent to the hinterland and perished there, yet not a single piece of literature with lasting value emerged from historical calamity” (29-30). Ha Jin worries that in the political movements, “the victims were the best educated in Chinese
society, and some of them are still alive but too old to produce any significant work,”
and “without a lasting literary work, their sufferings and losses will fade considerably in the collective memory” (30). The statement shows Ha Jin’s determination to be the
“proxy” of those who cannot voice for themselves. However, knowing the limit of his career as a writer of literature, Ha Jin does not commit himself to excavating and presenting historical truth, but to “create a genuine piece of literature that preserved the oppressed memory” based on “immediate social needs” (30). For Ha Jin, “to preserve is the key function of literature to combat historical amnesia,” which must
“be predicated on the autonomy and integrity of literary works inviolable by time”
(30). Therefore, Ha Jin is an ethical subject who speaks for those who cannot speak, and preserves their memory through composing literature; moreover, he also figures out the significance of the stories to the contemporary readers, which is written on the prefaces of the two novels. In the preface of Nanjing Anhunqu, Ha Jin thinks that the Chinese are forgetful, so many significant historic events have been neglected and unknown by the public (2). The good deeds of Vinnie Vautrin and other non-Chinese figures are hardly understood by the Chinese. Therefore, Ha Jin attempts to write
Nanjing Requiem to promote the benevolence of those non-Chinese volunteers during
the miserable wartime. In the preface of Zhanfeipin, Ha Jin mentions that in his childhood, he saw the repatriated soldiers stigmatized as the dreg of the society (7).
They were sent to work in remote farms and their children also suffered on their accounts (7). However, in the U.S., Ha Jin was confused that the returning captives from the battlefield receive the honor as war heroes, a very different treatment from that of the Chinese captives (7). The contrast between the attitudes to repatriated soldiers in China and in the U.S. stimulates Ha Jin to rewrite the story of Korean War from the perspective of the Chinese captives, which provides a counter-narrative to the official ones. Nanjing Requiem and War Trash represent Ha Jin’s offering of transitional justice for these non-Chinese figures and the Communist POWs because Ha Jin not only preserve and present their story to the public but also restore their reputation in the history.
Although the truth commission in Ha Jin’s works is not presenting the historical truth, Ha Jin doesn’t deny or omit the significance of historical truth in his works;
instead, he regards it as the foundation of writing a good story. Before writing Nanjing
Requiem, Ha Jin had consulted different kinds of historical documents, including the
dairies of Vinnie Vautrin and John Rabe, because he insisted on basing his story on the basis of historical truth (“Literature in War” 17). Ha Jin’s another writing strategy is characterization of Anling as a fictional narrator in Nanjing Requiem, because he thinks that this story should be told by a Chinese war victim (“Literature in War”19).Ha Jin believes that he has a responsible attitude (“fuzeren de taidu”) in presenting this story (“Literature in War”19). Ha Jin indicates that many disasters in the Chinese history have not been fully recorded and expressed because of political causes, and that makes the history unclear (“Literature in War” 20). When Ha Jin was inquired about the motivation of writing Nanjing Requiem, his reply was very simple: to tell
the story clearly (“Literature in War” 20). Ha Jin’s purpose of composing the stories based on historical truth is to make the story more convincing to the readers, and his designating the survivors as the narrators is to show his ethical concern for those silent war victims.
Determining to speak for the people unable to speak, Ha Jin has to make great efforts in his writing and endure frustration to complete his works. As Agamben explicates, the subject who speaks for the Other undergoes a process of
desubjectification, surrendering a part of its subjectivity to speak on behalf of the Other. Ha Jin had also undergone this process of desubjectification before finishing
Nanjing Requiem. In the preface of Nanjing Anhunqu, Ha Jin mentions that he had
been frustrated for many times by the tough challenge of rewriting history intoliterature (2). Writing Nanjing Requiem became his obsession (“xinbing”) to speak for these war victims, and one night he even dreamed that his wife gave birth to a baby girl who had the same face of Minnie Vautrin (2-3). Ha Jin regards this dream as a revelation (“qishi”) for him to finish the novel, and thus writing this novel becomes Ha Jin’s commitment to commemorate the story of these war victims (3). Therefore, writing Nanjing Requiem is Ha Jin’s pursuit of the ethics of the Other.
Ha Jin emphasizes that a writer should endure any negative emotion, such as fear and sorrow, which may impede the writing (“Literature in War” 21). He quotes a sentence from W. B. Yeats’s poem, “Lapis Lazuli”: “Do not break up their line to weep” to elucidate his attitude toward writers’ responsibility for the society
(“Literature in War” 21). This sentence describes the actors’ challenge of performing a sorrowful play on the stage: even though bearing overwhelming grief in the heart, a competent and responsible actor should continue his/her role playing, preventing messing up the play due to his/her emotion (“Literature in War” 21). Similarly, in Ha
Jin’s opinion, while writing such a novel of sorrowful stories, a responsible writer should endure overwhelming pain and grief to finish his/her writing (“Literature in War” 21). This “enduring overwhelming pain and sorrow” is the process of
desubjectification that a writer undergoes, which forms the writer’s ethical relation to the Other. Ha Jin’s obsession and revelation are the syndromes of his
desubjectification, which severely frustrates him, but eventually propells him to fulfill his commitment to finishing his novels.
Conclusion
It is the voices and reports of the survivors that allow us all, even younger generations, to answer the question of why it is so necessary and important to remember the horrors of National Socialism both now and in the future – and why this must not end in commemorative speeches, but continue on into the future.
—Angela Merkel15
Ha Jin composes his two historical novels, Nanjing Requiem and War Trash, to excavate the story in hidden history of Nanking Massacre and Korean War and to redress the injustice against the war victims. In traditional historical narratives, Nanking Massacre was an incident in which about 300,000 Chinese civilians were killed by the Japanese troops, and in Korean War, over a million Chinese soldiers were sent to fight against American imperialism, but many of them were captured by the American troops. Contrast to the traditional historical aspect, Ha Jin’s narratives offer alternative perspectives for readers to inspect and understand these historic incidents. Moreover, Foucault, Schmitt and Agamben’s ideas about biopolitics shed a light on the theoretical perspectives to contemplate on the interrelation between the law and the life, the country and its citizen, and the Self and the Other in reading
Nanjing Requiem and War Trash.
Agamben’s concept of bare life explicates how the sovereign deprives the people of their civil rights and human rights, turning them into an existence between human and inhuman. In Nanjing Requiem, the most miserable figures of bare life are not
15 Excerpt from the English translation of the speech by German Federal Chancellor Angela Merkel at the commemorative ceremony for the 70th anniversary of the liberation of the Dachau concentration camp on 3 May 2015. See <
http://www.comiteinternationaldachau.com/en/11-english-news/314-those who suffer from the atrocities by Japanese troops, but http://www.comiteinternationaldachau.com/en/11-english-news/314-those persecuted by the Nationalist and Communist Chinese governments which apply an arbitrary ideology of loyalty and betrayal to persecute the Chinese who attempt to cooperate with their enemy to rescue more lives, and to blacken these non-Chinese who provide support and help for protecting Chinese civilians. In War Trash, the most severe harm against the Communist soldiers is caused by neither the brutalities from pro-Nationalist officers nor the American authorities, but by the Communist government which demands loyalty by sacrificing their lives. Ha Jin designates these characters of bare life exploited in the miserable situation to satirize the blind patriotic loyalty, to beckon readers to further deliberate about the appropriate obligations between nations and their citizens, and to question the ambiguous boundary between loyalty and betrayal.
In the two novels, the human rights of the Chinese civilians and POWs are severely violated, and the humanitarian aids from the non-Chinese encounter different plights during the war. In the two novels, the Chinese characters abandoned by
Chinese governments are the stateless, who, in the exclusive inclusion of the
sovereign’s dominance, are at the risk of losing their human rights. From Agamben’s perspective, human rights are not the universally recognized value of humanity, but the discourses produced and by national sovereigns. National sovereigns can
manipulate the discourse of human rights to attain their political interests, which can explain why, in War Trash, these Chinese POWs’ human rights can be easily deprived, and why the American authorities are able to make the Communist soldiers as their bargain chips. However, the Communist soldiers are not always submissive in the politics of human rights, and they can take the advantage of the issue about human rights to negotiate with the American authorities.
The plights of humanitarian services offered by the non-Chinese characters in the
novels primarily come from their incapability or refusal of remaining neutrality during the war. In Nanjing Requiem, the plights of humanitarian aids of non-Chinese characters happen in the three dilemmas: the dilemma between keeping their legal responsibility for remaining neutral and keeping their commitment to rescuing the people in an immediate threat, the dilemma between giving up some refugees for protecting more, and the dilemma between cooperating with municipality to prevent the civilians from the enemy’s atrocities and remaining loyal to China. The human right crisis and the plights of humanitarian aids in the two novels reflect the
powerlessness of human beings and the limitation of moral choice under the military threat, legal system and arbitrary political ideologies of national sovereigns.
Therefore, Agamben applies the idea of potentiality/impotentiality to deconstruct the indistinguishable relation between the sovereign and the human beings, and further to uphold human beings’ autonomy, the ability to act and choose according to their ability and free will. Agamben uses his innovative idea of “the coming community” to accommodate these human beings who leave the confinement of the legal system, and to renew a rather positive meaning of the stateless. “The coming community”
resonates with Ha Jin’s concerns about the independence of individuals and his critic to blind patriotic national loyalty and compulsive responsibility for the party, nation and home.
From Agamben’s perspective, the Muselmann is the final stage of the sovereign’s exploitation against bare life, and it symbolizes the nation’s negation of humanity. The
Muslmanns are walking corpses, mummy men who can neither speak nor act for
themselves. In Nanjing Requiem, the Muselmanns are not only the Chinese civilians who have been tortured and fallen into mental disorder, but also the well-trained military faculty who gradually lose their morality and humanity, and finallycommitting horrible war crimes. The situation of the Muselmann reflects that in the state of exception, not only the dominated figures of bare life but also the faculty who represent the utmost power of the sovereign could suffer from dehumanization. The sovereign power is a double-edged sword which harms both sides. Because the
Muselmann symbolizes complete negation of humanity, Agamben regards it as the
end of traditional ethics as well as the starting point of a new ethics. The new ethics is initiated by the survivors when they turn into ethical subjects through speaking for theMuselmann. The Muselmann represents the most horrible side of the sovereign power
against human lives, which foresees the necessity of limiting the sovereign power and preventing it from becoming uncontrollable. The role of the survivors sheds a light on the significance of transitional justice to redress the injustice against the silent war victims, and excavate the concealed historical truth to the public.Transitional justice has been a crucial issue in recent decades, because it is believed to guarantee the future peace through redressing the injustice against innocent war victims. Pursuing transitional justice cannot be completely and fairly attained through war criminal trials and the survivors’ testimony, because the way that many countries and institutions pursue transitional justice are still controversial. As an institution affiliated with the national sovereign, juridical system, easily influenced by national interests and political concerns, is incapable of neutral conviction of the criminals. Moreover, from Agamben’s perspective, because of the lacuna remaining in the survivors’ testimony, the qualification of the survivors to present historical truth on behalf of the Muselmann is challenged. However, the survivors are unable to provide testimony to reconstruct the whole picture of historical truth as a way to attain transitional justice, but they can initiate a new ethical concern for the Other (the
Muselmann). In Agamben’s concepts, Ha Jin can be seen as an ethical agent who
speaks for the silent war victims, and his composing Nanjing Requiem and War Trash is his way of delivering ethical concerns, and pursuing transitional justice for the Other.
Although Ha Jin’s Nanjing Requiem and War Trash are the two novels about the misery in historic wars, the descriptions of the war victims’ suffering, violation of human rights and the issue of transitional justice in the two novels are very real and pertinent to our life. We can still see the violation of human rights happening in almost every place around the world. In North Korea, it is estimated that about 200,000 prisoners have suffered from inhumane exploitation in over 10 large concentration camps. Since the civil war in Syria began in 2011, the massive immigration of refugees from Syria has provoked the tension between the value of human rights and the problem of national security among the European Union. In Taiwan, the pursuit of transitional justice to redress the injustice caused by the Nationalist government, such as public massacre, framed-up sentences since the 228 Incident and the following White Terror lasting for 38 years, has never ceased. Ha Jin and Agamben’s works are not only about the story of the past, but also the story of the present, reminding us to review history so as to evaluate the present and to caution for the future.