哈金作品中的裸命：以《南京安魂曲》和《戰廢品》為例

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(1)國立台灣師範大學英語學系碩士. 論. 文. Master Thesis Graduate Institute of English National Taiwan Normal University. 哈金作品中的裸命：以《南京安魂曲》和《戰廢品》為例. Reading Bare Life in Ha Jin: A Study of Nanjing Requiem and War Trash. 指導教授：張. 瓊. 惠. Advisor: Dr. Joan Chiung-huei Chang 研究生：林. 揚. 傑. 中華民國一〇六年一月 January 2017.

(2) 摘要本論文研究華裔美國作家哈金的兩本戰爭小說《南京安魂曲》和《戰廢品》裡的難民和戰俘，從戰爭受害者的角度，檢視對歷史事件的另類敘述。透過生命政治的觀點，探討人權和轉型正義，期待跳脫國家、民族和法律的框架，對於他者有更加積極的關懷。本文分為三章，第一章介紹在戰爭中所建立的戰俘營和難民營等場景如何成為阿岡本生命政治理論中的「例外狀態」，以及身處其中的中國戰俘和平民如何成為「裸命」。從受害者的角度來分析，讓他們成了裸命狀態的國家主權不只是美國和日本軍隊，國共兩黨的主權力量影響更加深遠。本章分析哈金如何藉由中國角色的裸命狀態來反思國家和人民間的忠誠關係。第二章將這些裸命人物與無國籍的難民相比，從中探討其人權危機，以及進行人道協助的外籍人士如何面臨在戰場上保持中立和拯救生命的兩難抉擇。本章嘗試延伸阿岡本所論的「潛力」，以翻轉無國籍的概念，形成「來臨共同體」的政治想像。第三章探討裸命角色在戰後所面臨的轉型正義問題。由司法審判所追求的轉型正義往往因為政治因素的影響，而淪為另一形式的法律暴力。因此本章會從法律之外，以見證歷史的觀點出發，探討生還者以證言為受害者發聲的倫理議題。論文最後指出哈金如何因「作家的責任」，讓文學在批判社會問題、保存歷史記憶和推動轉型正義上成為一種對他者倫理的實踐。. 關鍵字：生命政治、例外狀態、裸命、倫理、他者、證言、哈金. i.

(3) Abstract This thesis centers on the POWs and refugees in a Ha Jin’s Nanjing Requiem and War Trash. Narrated by war victims, the two novels provide alternative perspectives on historic wars. With the viewpoints of biopolitics, this thesis aims to expound the issue of human rights and transitional justice and expects to deliver a more active concern to the Other beyond the framework of nations, ethics and laws. This thesis consists of three chapters. Chapter One analyzes how the POW camps and the refugee camp are turned into “the state of exception” in Agamben’s biopolitical term, and how the characters within are in the existence of “bare life.” From the perspectives of war victims, the sovereign powers which cause the state of exception and bare life are not only the Japanese and American troops but the Nationalist and the Communist which bring about more profound and influential impacts. Ha Jin uses the Chinese characters of bare life to satirize the blind patriotism and contemplate on loyalty between nations and their citizens. Chapter Two regards these characters of bare life as the stateless refugees, investigating their human rights crisis during the war, and the non-Chinese characters’ dilemma of humanitarian aids between remaining neutrality in the battlefield and rescuing the lives in immediate threats. This chapter extends to the renewal of the traditional idea of the stateless through Agamben’s “potentionalty” into a new political vision: “the coming community.” Chapter Three elucidates the post-war transitional justice for war victims. War tribunals to convict war criminals are easily influenced by political causes and turn into another form of legal violence. Therefore, beyond the framework of legal systems, the thesis investigates the ethical issue of the survivors who voice for the victims through testimony, providing the witness of history. Eventually, Ha Jin ii.

(4) promotes his “responsibility of the author,” which proposes that literature is a practice of the ethics of the Other in criticizing social injustice, preserving history and memory and promoting transitional justice.. Keywords: biopolitics, the state of exception, bare life, ethics, the Other, testimony, Ha Jin. iii.

(5) Acknowledgement Completing a master thesis within three years is not an easy task for any literature major student, especially for me who also have to spare much time to take the courses of teacher education program and to present conference papers in different countries. The assistance and encouragement of many honorable mentors are really crucial and precious for me to finish this mission impossible. First and foremost, I owe my deepest and sincerest gratitude to my advisor, Professor Joan Chiung-huei Chang. With her expertise, patience, encouragement and guidance, I can finally accomplish this tough goal. Prof. Chang inspired my interests in Ha Jin’s novels in her Asian American Literature class and later she encouraged me to present conference papers about Ha Jin’s novels in China, Czech Republic and the United States. These experiences have helped me to develop topics and accumulate materials of my further study in Ha Jin’s novels, to receive a sequence of rigid and systematic training in polishing my ideas and improving my ability to organize a well-developed master thesis. During my writing, Prof. Chang had assisted me to solve problems for many times; otherwise I have no confidence in passing through so many difficulties. Besides my advisor, I also appreciate the valuable feedback from my two committee members, Professor Cory Han-yu Huang in Department of English, NTNU and Professor Yauling Hsieh in English Department, Soochow University. Prof. Huang offers his insightful perspective of biopolitics, which enables me to formulate a more complete theoretical framework and clarifies several blind spots in my textual analysis. Moreover, Prof. Huang also generously offered me recommendation letters to apply for conference presentation travel grants, so I can present papers and collect ideas in formal academic events. The starting point of my thesis was initiated in Prof. Hsieh’s Asian Literature in English course. She is a warm and open-minded teacher. iv.

(6) who respects my all kinds of ideas and helps me to organize them into a developable topic. Therefore, I feel honored to invite her to be my committee member to see the accomplishment of my study in graduate school. In the three years, I have been helped, inspired and encouraged by many classmates in NTNU. I feel really fortunate to have Hei Yuen Pak, who also finished her thesis under Prof. Chang’s guidance. We often had the chance to discuss our topics, solve all kinds of problems of writing and encourage each other. Moreover, I especially thank Clara Lai and Annie Chuang for their opinion and kindness to me. They are my reliable and considerate companions in the graduate school. I am grateful to Cindy Hsieh and Baily Chen in TESOL program. Although we are in different majors, we can still share our interest, happiness and worries in our teaching and academic research. Thanks to all their company, I have never felt lonely when occupy myself in studying materials and writing papers. I am unable to list the names of all who have supported me but what they have done for me will be preserved in my heart. Furthermore, I thank my family members and relatives for spiritual and financial supports during these years. Although I seldom share my study and life in school with them, they have totally trusted me and believed I can have a great success. Finally, this accomplishment is also dedicated to my aunt, who took care of me in my childhood and sponsored me to study in graduate school. Although she has no chance to see my graduation but I firmly believe she will be proud of me in the Heaven.. v.

(7) Table of Contents Introduction I.. Literature Review. 1. II.. Theoretical Framework. 8. III.. Outline of Thesis Chapters. 29. Chapter One: Bare Life in Nanjing Requiem and War Trash I.. The Camp and Bare life. 33. II.. The Muselmann. 40. III.. Loyalty and Betrayal. 43. Chapter Two: The Plights of Human Rights I.. The Stateless: The Politics of Human Rights. 49. II.. Neutrality: The Plights of Humanitarian Aids. 55. III.. Potentialities: A New Route for the Stateless. 62. Chapter Three: Witness, Ethics and Justice I.. Limitation of the Tribunal. 67. II.. Truth Commission and Testimony. 72. III.. Ethics of the Other and Transitional Justice in Literature. 73. Conclusion Works Cited. 81 `. 87. vi.

(8) Introduction. A thousand years from this tonight, When Orion climbs the sky The same swift snow will still the roofs The same mad stars run by. And who will know of China's war Or poison gas in Spain The dead...they’ll be forgotten, lost, Whether they lose or gain. But only beauty, only truth Will last a thousand years. —Ted Malone, “Survival”1. As a Chinese American writer, Ha Jin is famous for portraying the impediments of trivial characters in harsh environments, such as oppression of the proletariats under the reign of Communist China, Chinese immigrants’ maladjustment in American society, and the miseries of war victims. Ha Jin composes stories to criticize the society, to show sympathy for miserable people and to reflect on issues such as immigrant identity, nationalist loyalty, and social justice. Ha Jin often writes stories about war, and about people’s struggle under persecution and their resistance against injustice. Therefore, this thesis aims to choose Ha Jin’s two war novels, War According to Hualing Hu, Minnie Vautrin sent this poem to her friend, Rebecca Griest, before her death (146-47). No evidence can prove that Ted Malone wrote this poem to deliver his condolences to Nanking Massacre. In my interpretation, Minnie Vautrin states that although the war victims will be forgotten someday, literature and other forms of documentation can preserve this history and pass it down to the following generations. 1. 1.

(9) Trash (2004, with a setting in the Korean War) and Nanjing Requiem (2011, with a setting in World War Two), in the discussion about Ha Jin’s narrative and reflection on the life in war. Even though War Trash was published before Nanjing Requiem, since Korean War happened after World War Two, Nanjing Requiem is discussed before War Trash in this thesis. In Nanjing Requiem, thousands of Chinese civilians shelter themselves hopelessly in the dangerous Safety Zone during Nanking Massacre, facing the immediate threat of unpredictable death and torture. Under overwhelming pressure, several non-Chinese missionaries, businessmen and scholars voluntarily provide sanctuary to these Nanjing citizens and accompany them during the difficult time. In War Trash, two million soldiers of People’s Volunteer Army who fight in Korean War against American imperialism suffer severe casualty. Imprisoned in POW camps, these soldiers are trapped in a political struggle between the forces of Communist China and the Nationalists of Chiang Kai-shek, and afflicted with illtreatment and even assassination. After an exhausting wait for screening, when these prisoners could finally leave the camp, those who choose to be repatriated to China are criminalized as treason, while those who choose to leave for Free China (Taiwan) have to abandon their family and homeland. Ha Jin states that “I wanted to describe my characters as individuals, mostly ordinary people, and place them in some historical events and see how they act in the situation” (“In the Ocean of Words” 145). This thesis centers on the trivial characters’ life in War Trash and Nanjing Requiem, and it starts from the following research questions: What kind of circumstance during the war can cause the vulnerability in life? What kinds of impediments and dilemma these civilians and soldiers have to cope with during the war? Is there any possibility for those characters to be saved during wartime? Even after the wars end, it is still difficult for them to gain justice.. 2.

(10) How is the idea of bare life pertinent in Ha Jin’s literary works? Traumatized by the atrocities during the war, these characters are not compensated by appropriate redress for their loss; instead, these war victims have to bear suspicion of treason, political liquidation, and various kinds of accusation against them. In this research, this thesis not only analyzes the difficult situation that these war victims have been through, but also explores the justice that Ha Jin proposes for war victims.. I.. Literature Review In narrating experiences in war camps, Nanjing Requiem and War Trash are. unprecedented in Chinese American literature, because Ha Jin is the first writer who composes the novels about refugee camps during Nanking Massacre and POW camps in Korean War. About the camps in China during WWII, many Chinese were imprisoned and suffered from the misery in camps. Most of the camps set in China during WWII were POW camps by Imperial Japanese troops. Many large camps were set in Manchuria, North China and Shanghai to imprison Chinese civilians and the soldiers of enemy nationals. Nanking Safety Zone was different from these camps in China as it was a refugee camp established by non-Chinese volunteers for protecting Chinese noncombatants. Civilians’ miseries in war camps during World War Two have been a regular topic in literature, such as Anne Frank’s The Diary of A Young Girl (1947), Eile Wiesel’s Night (1960), Thomas Keneally’s Schindler’s Ark (1982) and John Boyne’s The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas (2006). However, few texts have been published about the refugee camps and POW camps in China. The reason for this lack in literature is again political. Iris Chang states that “the curtain of silence” which oppressed the truth of Nanking Massacre was “politics;” all the related countries, including China, Japan and the U.S. “contributed to the historical neglect of. 3.

(11) this event for reasons deeply rooted in the cold war” (11). In WWII, Japan was the primary enemy of China, but the damage caused by Japanese troops was downplayed during Cold War when the U.S. allied Japan with anti-Communist group. Therefore, many serious war crimes, such as Nanking Massacre and Unit 731, were intentionally neglected.2 Iris Chang states that Nanking Massacre is “one of the worst instances of mass extermination” (5) in WWII, and “the massacre remains neglected in most of the historical literature published in the United States” (6). Moreover, in the beginning of Cold War, People’s Republic of China (PRC) was denied participation in the international society. Therefore, it is hard for the West to collect data in China to know and write about Nanking Massacre. During the time when both Republic of China (ROC) and PRC were desiring for diplomatic recognition from Japan, they shut eyes to Japanese troops’ atrocities during the war and did not demand the reparation from Japan (Chang, Rape 11). For the Chinese soldiers in Korean War, with their miseries downplayed by the Chinese government, the life of Chinese POWs in the prisoner camps during Korean War has been little known to the public, not only because PRC was isolated by the West during the Cold War, but also because the repatriated soldiers were stigmatized as traitors of China and the subject of their camp life seems unpresentable. Sympathizing with these soldiers who had suffered mistreatments in POW camps, Ha Jin composes War Trash to commemorate their stories, and this novel is the first one which describes the camp life of Chinese POWs from the perspective of Chinese soldiers. The stories of both Nanking Massacre and of Chinese POWs in camps have been Unit 731 was a troop of Imperial Japanese army which conducted biochemical human experiments with Chinese civilians in Manchuria during World War Two. Like Nanking Massacre, Unit 731 has been considered as one of the most notorious war crime undertaken by Imperial Japanese troops during World War Two. 2. 4.

(12) neglected by the public for decades. In the prologue of Nanjing Anhunqu (Traditional Chinese Character version of Nanjing Requiem), Ha Jin is inspired by Iris Chang’s The Rape of Nanking and composes Nanjing Requiem based on Iris Chang’s research. The Rape of Nanking is the first published historical research which reveals the courageous deeds of an American principal, Minne Vautrin in Jinling College, a German businessman, John Rabe, and other non-Chinese figures who established Nanking Safety Zone to provide sanctuary for approximate 250,000 Chinese refugees, and Ha Jin’s Nanjing Requiem is the first novel which focuses on the events in Nanking Safety Zone. While the description about Nanking Safety Zone is only one chapter out of the total of ten in The Rape of Nanking, it is the major story in Nanjing Requiem, presenting a strong contrast of the volunteers’ humanitarian devotion for miserable refugees and the brutality of war. With the availability of historical documents about Nanking Massacre at present time, many novels about Nanking Massacre have been published in Chinese, but few in English, so Ha Jin’s Nanjing Requiem is precedent.3 In “Sublimating History into Literature: Reading Ha Jin’s Nanjing Requiem,” Te-shing Shan writes that “a number of historical documents are collected, translated and printed in Chinese,” but there are no works “comparable to the Japanese literature on the suffering caused by the atomic bombs, not to mention the voluminous literature about the Jewish people and Holocault” (30). Ha Jin’s contribution is his commemoration of these nearly forgotten people and preservation of their stories. As a Chinese immigrant writer in America, Ha Jin has the advantage of acquainting himself with two languages and two cultures. Ha Jin tells the stories of. A few examples include Geling Yen’s Jinling Shisan Chai (The Flowers of War, 嚴歌苓《金陵十三釵》, 2010), Zhigeng Xu’s Nanjing Da Tusha (Nanjing Massacre, 徐志耕《南京大屠殺》, 2014), and Jianming He’s Nanjing Da Tusha Quan Jishi (The Whole Record of Nanjing Massacre, 何健明《南京大屠殺全紀實》, 2014). 3. 5.

(13) Chinese people and introduces Chinese history and culture to English readers, while for Chinese readers, Ha Jin provides them alternative perspectives on these stories. Te-hsing Shan argues that Ha Jin’s purpose of composing Nanjing Requiem is “to fight against amnesia and injustice” through “producing a literary representation of that neglected tragedy from a creative writer’s perspective that is, in some sense, the return of the repress” (27). Moreover, Shan’s research investigates the multiple meanings of “requiem” as “whose requiem is represented in this novel” is the major question. In Shan’s analysis, Ha Jin offers his requiem to the “silenced victims,” for example, Minnie Vautrin who deserves the honor as a “heroic Christian missionary and educator” (30). From Shan’s perspective, writing Nanjing Requiem is also a requiem for Ha Jin himself. Knowing Vautrin’s story from Iris Chang’s The Rape of Nanking, Ha Jin decides “to write about the catastrophe to do justice to Vautrin” (31). Undergoing many difficulties, unbearable sorrow and uncountable revisions of the novel, Ha Jin spends three years to compete this novel. Shan states that “completing a work as best as one can is a requiem for the author” (31). Eventually, this is a “public requiem” for “those who are ready to recognize and represent the suffering of others, which, in the present case, refers to the suffering of the victims of Nanjing Massacre” (31). In “Refusing the False Consolations of History: On Ha Jin’s Nanjing Requiem,” Anis Shivani comments that Ha Jin “refuses the temptation of conceptualizing Japanese as beasts, Chinese as passive victims, and Westerners as saviors” (140), and Jin “saves this novel from collapsing into facile notions of good and evil” (141). Furthermore, Nanjing Requiem inspires readers “to explore the legal, conceptual, philosophical, and practical meanings of genocide” (139). In the research about War Trash, Daniel Y. Kim, in “Korean War Fiction,” proposes that War Trash “issues an indirect condemnation of the role of the US. 6.

(14) military in Asian civil wars not by highlighting atrocities it directly committed, but by suggesting how the American presence worked to intensify the violence,” and this novel is “critical of the US role in a period of Asian history that was shaped, from one historical vantage point, by the geopolitical imperatives of the Cold War” (296). The prison camps are “a product of its enclosure by US military forces and the US policy of containment that so greatly intensified the carnage of the civil wars of decolonization that raged during the Cold war period in Korea” (296). In “Literary Afterlife of the Koran War,” Joseph Darda states that “framed by the present-day homeland security state, Jin foregrounds the biopolitical logic of postwar warfare in which all are, through differentially, constituted in relation to a normative and politicized global population,” and War Trash “unsettles American history’s account of the war and reveals a lasting biopolitical turn in global warfare” (88). In Darda’s opinion, the manifestation of biopolitical state power is Yu Yuan’s “FUCK US” tattoo, which is “a discernable sign of the political instrumentation of his body during the war” (89). Every time when Yu Yuan goes to the camps of the Nationalists or the Communists and even to the U.S. after half a century, he has to “worry about the political content of his body, as a thing to be concealed, regulated, monitored and refused entry” (89). Yu Yuan’s status is what Agamben calls “bare life,” and his tattoo is the “indicator of this abandoned state,” which makes him “situated within a global biological community that is constructed and modified by a network of sovereign authorities” (90). Joseph Darda analyzes Yu Yuan’s existence of bare life from biopolitical perspective, but he centers on the political meaning of his tattoo, without regarding the structural contexts which cause the situation of bare life. My thesis attempts to begin from analyzing the camps in Nanjing Requiem and War Trash to clarify the cause of “bare life.”. 7.

(15) II.. Theoretical Framework 1. State of Exception and Bare Life in Camps Both Nanjing Requiem and War Trash depict the fragility and perseverance of. lives in camps during merciless wars, presenting powerless living beings exploited in the institutions featuring of controlling and disciplinary forces. The thesis aims to examine these figures by Michel Foucault’s biopolitics which proposes that human lives are under the control of the disciplinary power of the state. Therefore, biopolitics is an appropriate starting point of the theoretical framework in the discussion of Nanjing Requiem and War Trash. Biopolitics is first raised by Foucault in his lecture in Collège de France in 1976 and later addressed in The History of Sexuality (1980): “the old power of death that symbolizes sovereign power was now carefully supplement by the administration of bodies and the calculated management of life” (139-40). In the last lecture of Society Must Be Defended (2003), Foucault examines diverse disciplinary mechanisms, such as birth rate mortality rate and related statistic measurements, exercised by state power in dominating human life. The state institutionalizes these mechanics into public health policies, medical care systems, conscription and national security measures, and it “controls over relations of human beings insofar as they are species, insofar as they are living beings, and their environment” (245). Foucault draws the process of the transition of the sovereign power from the era of federal monarchs, like the emperors or the kings who demonstrate their power through determining the life and death of their people, to the age of modern nation states which govern all aspects of their citizens’ life through establishing diverse “disciplines (legal regulations)” and “mechanisms (state institutions).” As living beings, humans are subjects to the regime of politics, and politics is enforced through comprehensive legal institutions and. 8.

(16) regulations. This circular relation between life and politics is biopolitics. Biopolitics indicates the seamless control of every aspect of life under ordinary laws, enforced by multiple disciplines. Foucault explains that the “discipline allows nothing to escape. Not only does it not allow things to run their course, its principle is that things, the smallest things, must not be abandoned to themselves” (Security 45). From Foucault’s perspective, the power of the state to govern its people does not come from a specific source, but a well-developed mechanism. Foucault draws a solidly-structured and self-effective model of interwound state institutions to secure a well-functioning state. In contrast, Carl Schmitt argues that the ordinary legal regulations and institutions are not effective enough to cover all kinds of situations, so a central entity is required to determine the application of laws (see Lars Vinx). In Carl Schmitt’s view, no legal regulations can govern “an extreme case of emergency or an absolute state of exception,” so “a polity must be entitled to decide whether to suspend the application of its law on the ground that the situation is abnormal” (see Lars Vinx). Schmitt defines the state of exception to be a situation which is “not confined in the existing legal order, can at best be characterized as a case of extreme peril, a danger to the existence of state” (6). Therefore, as Schmitt emphasizes, a person who can “decide in a situation of conflict what constitutes the public interest of the state, public safety and order” is needed (6). The sovereign can “decide whether there is an extreme emergency as well as what must be done to eliminate it” (Schmitt 7). Besides Foucault’s disciplinary power over life, Agamben is inspired by Schmitt’s idea about “the sovereign,” the one who can “decide the exception” (Schmitt 5). In fact, the sovereign can be either a person or an institution “bringing about a total suspension of the law and then to use extra-legal force to normalize this situation” (see Lars Vinx). Agamben explicates that the sovereign is “the one whom the juridical order grants the. 9.

(17) power of proclaiming a state of exception and, therefore, of suspending the order’s own validity” (Homo 15). The power of the sovereign is sovereignty, defined by Jean Bodin as “the absolute and perpetual power of the republic” (Bodin 1), and “the authority to suspend valid law is the actual mark of sovereignty” (Schmitt 9). The sovereign seems a powerful entity that “stands outside the juridical order and, nevertheless, belongs to it, since it’s up to him to decide if the constitution is to be suspended in toto” (Schmitt 15). The consequence is a paradox as the sovereign subtly stands “outside the law,” and “declares that there is nothing outside the law” (Schmitt 15). Schmitt states that the sovereign “stands outside the normally valid legal system,” but he (either the person or the institution) “nevertheless belongs to it, for it is he who must decide whether the constitution needs to be suspended in its eternity” (7). In the constitution, the sovereign frees himself/itself from legal confinement, but meanwhile he/it is not completely separated from the law, because he/it possesses the power to determine the application or suspension of the law. Besides the state of exception determined by the sovereign, in State of Exception (2005), Agamben thus defines the relation of the state of exception and human lives: the state of exception is “the suspension of law itself,” and it “binds and abandons the living being to law” (1). “Bind” denotes the way of including, while “abandon” refers to exclusion. “To bind and to abandon” seems a paradoxical proposition; however, they are not antithetic in Agamben’s explication: “the exception is a kind of exclusion” (Homo 17). However, “what is excluded in it is not, on account of being excluded, absolutely without relation to the rule,” but “what is excluded in the exception manifests itself in relation to the rule in the form of the rule’s suspension. The rule applies to the exception in no longer applying, in withdrawing from it” (Homo 17, emphasis in original). The exception is “an inclusive exclusion (which thus. 10.

(18) serves to include what is excluded)” of living beings in laws (Homo 21). To be more precise, the living being is not abandoned by the law, but put outside by the law. According to Agamben, the life in the state of exception is called “bare life” (Homo 4), a term originating from a legal term, homo sacre, in ancient Rome. In Homo Sacre: Sovereign Power and Bare Life (1998), Agamben explains homo sacre as “the one whom the people have judged on account of crime. It’s not permitted to sacrifice this man, yet he who kills him will not be condemned for homicide” (41). Homo sacre is excluded from the application of divine law (ius divinum) and human law (ius humanum), and he is killable because all the laws and rights (ius divinum and ius humanum) which can protect him have been suspended. According to Agamben, a human being in the existence of bare life excluded by state power is only “a biological body of humanity” (Homo 13). The situation of laws suspended is the state of exception and it leads to the fragility of life within. In ancient Rome, divine law and human law might be suspended in the state of exception. Hannah Arendt, in The Origin of Totalitarianism (1996), analyzes the modern state of exception and concludes that it consists of the suspension of two laws related to state power and human life: firstly, a citizen’s “civil rights” guaranteed by state power, and secondly the “human rights” which is the “norms that help to protect all people everywhere from severe political, legal and social abuse” (see James Nickel). Arendt argues that although human rights should have been internationally recognized as inviolable and respectable rights, anyone deprived of civil rights may also lose the protection from human rights (291-92). Without secured citizenship, people would lose the right to be acknowledged as human beings. Though homo sacre is the concept originated in ancient Rome, it still exists nowadays and is a particular legal existence of some individuals in a specific space:. 11.

(19) bare life. According to Agamben, the camp related to military activities, such as Nazi’s concentration camp, is a distinctive space under the state of exception rather than under the dominance of ordinary laws, and all the lives in the camp are in the status of bare life. The evolution of the state of exception from an ontological state of existence to the camp is a process of “localization,” which creates a real place and “traces a threshold between the two, on the basis of which outside and inside, the normal situation and chaos, entering into those complex topological relations that make the validity of the juridical order possible” (Homo 19). A space can be established outside the ordinary laws, so another juridical system can be legalized in the space. Here comes a question how the state of exception can be realized. Agamben exemplifies that “the camp is the space that is opened when the state of exception begins to become the rule” (Homo 169), and the camp is thus “the structure in which the state of exception…is realized normally” (Homo 170). Normal realization implies that the state of exception is enforced through regulations and institutions, and the camp “constitutes a space of exception in the sense we have examined —in which not only is laws completely suspended but fact and law are completely confused— is everything in the camps truly possible” (Homo 170). In the place where the laws are “confused” and “indistinct,” no violation of the law can be judged and punished, and no protection from the law can be offered to resist the actions violating the law, either. This is a “zone of indistinction” where “every subjective right and juridical protection no longer made any sense” (Homo 170). The living beings are “stripped of every political status and wholly reduced to bare life, and the camp is also the most absolute biopolitical space ever to have been realized, in which power confronts nothing but pure life” (Homo 171). Overall, in Agamben’s explanation, the camp is the realization. 12.

(20) of the state of exception, a place of ordinary laws remaining invalid. The sovereign includes what is excluded in the place, and he/it becomes a completely dominative force over these living beings. The living beings deprived of political status become the figures of bare life, fragile and powerless human beings but not politically recognized as humans. Agamben gives other examples of POWs in the state of exception; for example, during the war in Afghanistan, President George W. Bush commands an order to “erase any legal status of POWs defined by the Geneva Convention” (State 3). In Agamben’s observation, these prisoners are “not persons accused,” but simply “detainees, the object of a pure de facto rule” (State 3). The stories of Nanjing Requiem and War Trash happen in similar distinctive spaces. My research aims to argue that the Chinese civilians sheltered in the refugee camp in Nanking Safety Zone in Nanjing Requiem and the Communist soldiers imprisoned in POW camps in War Trash are the figures of bare life, and to examine how they are controlled and exploited in camps. In Nanjing Requiem, the state of exception is not initiated by the camp from within, but by an outward force when the sovereignty of China could not protect its citizens after the fall of Nanjing. When Nanjing is taken over by Japanese troops, Chinese civilians fall into the dominance of Imperial Japan’s sovereignty. Undisciplined Japanese imperial soldiers are allowed by their officers to kill, plunder and rape Chinese civilians in Nanjing at their will as the reward and an emotional outlet of their dissatisfaction of the exhausting war. In the beginning of the story, the boy Ben cries out, “human lives suddenly became worthless” (6), implying that all Chinese are killable during the Japanese occupation, and they have become figures of bare life who may lose their lives at any time. In the POW camps in War Trash, the Americans in principle obey the Geneva Conventions and treat POWs in humanitarian. 13.

(21) ways, but at the same time they permit pro-Nationalist officers to govern conNationalist soldiers in inhumane manners. The sovereign (the Americans) stands outside the law (the regulations of the camps) to suspend the application of the laws (the guidance of the Geneva Conventions). Therefore, a bizarre stratification occurs in the POW camp in War Trash: the Americans are the sovereign in the camp, but they authorize some pro-Nationalist officers to exercise their sovereignty on behalf of them. As a result, it becomes a camp within a camp, putting the most stratified under the state of exception. In Agamben’s research, most cases about the state of exception happen in Nazi’s concentration camps. The refugee camp (Nanking Safety Zone) and the POW camps in the two novels highly coincide with Giorgio Agamben’s ideas of state of exception, and bare life. Agamben’s theory is appropriate to examine the occupied Nanjing in Nanjing Requiem and the situation of POW camps in War Trash, and to analyze how the human rights of prisoners and refugees are controlled and exploited during wars. In Chapter One, the reason of applying Agamben’s concept of bare life to inspect the miserable situation of the characters in Nanjing Requiem and War Trash is not only because Ha Jin and Agamben have similar descriptions of military camps in their works, but also because Ha Jin has explored the interrelation between human lives and national legal system in his works. Ha Jin shows his ethical concern to those people who have been neglected and vanished in the history. The narrative of the two novels, Ha Jin’s questions and concerns presented in Nanjing Requiem and War Trash, concisely resonate with Agamben’s key concepts, such bare life, the Muselmann, potentialities and testimony, which is the fundamental reason of applying Agamben’s theory to analyze Ha Jin’s work in multiple stratification.. 14.

(22) 2. The Plights of Human Rights Besides Chinese civilians and soldiers, non-Chinese characters are significant in the two novels, such as Minnie Vautrin and John Rabe in Nanjing Requiem and Dr. Greene and Father Woodworth in War Trash. Most of them appear as altruistic helpers, such as a doctor, a priest or a teacher. Some others have special identities; for example, Rabe is a businessman and a member of German Nazi, and Dr. Green and Father Woodworth are affiliated to the military faculty in American troops. In the early 20th century, non-Chinese figures are treated as the national and cultural Other in rather conservative Chinese society and easily blackened as accomplices of Western imperialism. However, in the two novels, non-Chinese characters save countless Chinese ones of bare life, and their humanitarian deeds transcend the prejudice against them. Zhang Guoling proposes that these non-Chinese characters reveal Ha Jin’s ideal value in humanity, and they stand on the opposite to the cruelty of war and collapsed morality (153). However, in Nanjing Requiem, these non-Chinese characters encounter different plights and obstacles in their rescue missions, and their humanitarian aids to Chinese refugees does not not very smoothly. In War Trash, the humanitarian treatments that these POWs deserve seem full of political concerns and calculation from different sovereigns, which does not obviously improve the situation of the POWs. Chapter Two examines the humanitarian plights in Nanjing Requiem and War Trash. In the thesis, the humanitarian issues in War Trash and Nanjing Requiem are initiated by the discussion on human rights. John Lechte and Saul Newman concisely clarify that the way of human rights, in practice, has largely been reduced to humanitarianism (5). In other words, human rights are the theoretical guideline to humanitarian practices, so examining the fundamental elements of human rights is. 15.

(23) necessary to the following discussion of humanitarian practices. Moreover, in Lechte and Newman’s opinion, “human rights, which in theory seek to call sovereignty to account, to make it answer to universal principle of justice, therefore invoking an alternative ontology of the human” (vii). Human rights, which appeals to universal value of humanity, should be worldwide respected and transcend the cultural and political boarders established by national sovereigns. For Arendt, human rights are indistinguishable from the civil rights of political communities. Arendt states that: Rights of Man…had been defined as “inalienable” because they were supposed to be independent of all governments; but it turned out that the moment human beings lacked their own government and had to fall back upon their minimum right, no authority was left to protect them… (171-2) In Arendt’s opinion, human rights should be a widely recognizable and universal value, but after all, they still need political entities to enforce. Only through being included into political entities could a human really have human rights. Therefore, Arendt concludes that the “stateless” people who lose the citizenship of their countries (perhaps they are denationalized or their countries annex) naturally lose “a right to have rights,” and become “the rightless” (296). The tragedy of the rightless is “not that they are deprived of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, or of equality before the law and freedom of opinion,” but that “they no longer belong to any political community” (295). It is “not the loss of specific right, then, but a loss of a community willing and able to guarantee any rights” (297). Furthermore, Arendt highlights a tricky point that a human can “lose all so-called Rights of Man without losing his essential quality as man, his human dignity. Only the loss of a polity itself expels him from humanity” (297). This statement reveals a discrepancy between legal. 16.

(24) humanity and natural humanity: whether one’s political rights guaranteed by the political community can be equivalent to his essence of humanity. Lechte and Newman suggest that the solution be “not simply to argue for their integration into the national state order and established identities of citizenship,” but instead “to break down this very ontological distinction between political community and its other, between political life and bare life” (viii-ix). This statement indicates that when the indistinguishable relation between the human being and the sovereign deconstructs, the human being can be essentially liberated to be independent individuals and gain the universal human rights. Agamben’s critique of human rights is slightly different from that of Arendt: the deprivation of human rights is not from the exclusion of political entities, but from the inclusion in the form of exclusion (Lechte and Newman ix). Thus, from Agamben’s perspective, “human rights cannot be detached from the nexus of biopolitical sovereignty, from that infernal machine of modern and ancient power which holds life itself within the clasp” (Lechte and Newman ix). Moreover, Lechte and Newman point out the weakness of human rights developed under the national sovereignty: it is precisely the fact of the human as essentially biological bodies…that qualifies it to be included in the civil sphere. Yet paradoxically, while it is through rights that we are included in the civil sphere as citizens, this inclusion coincides with the growing weakness of rights and the readiness on the part of the state to sacrifice them in the name of security. (7) This proposition means that even human rights are a kind of discourse produced by national sovereigns which can have reasons to retreat human rights if necessary, which resonates with Agamben’s idea of the state of exception: the sovereign is qualified to announce the state of exception to normalize emergent situation with the. 17.

(25) name of security. Lechte and Newman briefly conclude that “at worse, we could say that the discourse of rights is used, or misused by the sovereign power in an ideological way to legitimate itself, even as it goes about suspending and curtailing those very rights” (8). In Agamben’s critique, only the sovereigns have power to determine the application of human rights, but in reality, NGOs and humanitarian institutions worldwide urge nation states to account for implementing policies to improve human rights, such as improving the treatments to prisoners in jails, transitional justice for victims in wartime, and accepting refugees from other countries. These efforts of humanitarian institutions sometimes touch off tension between human rights and national security. Therefore, the national sovereign does not completely dominate the power of discourses of human right, but it has to compromise with these humanitarian institutions and implements human right policies. Agamben exemplifies the situation of refugees and the stateless people to further examine the tension between human rights and national security. Agamben foresees that the refugee is “perhaps the only thinkable figure for the people of our time and the only category in which one may see today” when “now unstoppable decline of the nation-state and the general corrosion of traditional political-juridical categories” (“Beyond” 90). The refugee has gradually become the “exception” for national and political systems, existing in the marginal place of their dominance. In Agamben’s analysis, the refugee and the stateless people have drastically appeared since World War One. The refugees, “who were not technically stateless, preferred to become such rather than return to their country” while the stateless is the refugees who were “denationalized” by their own nations (“Beyond” 91). For Agamben, the status of refugees “has always been considered a temporary condition that ought to lead either. 18.

(26) to naturalization or repatriation” (“Beyond” 92). Agamben states that the current situation of refugees is unstable and hardly recognizable, so most of them have been included into the system of the sovereign of their origin (repatriation) or of their host country (naturalization, becoming the citizens in the host countries) in the end. However, neither repatriation nor naturalization can change the crisis of human rights within national sovereignty. Agamben suggests a new route for refugees: “the concept of refugee must be resolutely separated from the concept of the “human rights,”” (93) and the refugee should be considered for what it is, namely, nothing less than a limit-concept that at once brings a radical crisis to the principles of the nation-state and clears the way for a renewal of categories that can no longer be delayed. (94) Based on Agamben’s point, it assumes that the refugee has been identified as a potential threat to national security and the unrecognizable Other to the existing composition of racial and cultural communities. The solution to the impediment of the refugee is to focus on the essential part of the refugee instead of its political status inscribed by the sovereign. Therefore, perhaps the concept of “refugee” also needs to be redefine because it conveys specific political ideology which worsens misunderstanding toward them. Agamben observes that many developed countries in the European Union today face “a permanently resident mass of noncitizens that do not want to be and cannot be either naturalized or repatriated,” and “these noncitizens often have nationalities of origin, but, inasmuch as they prefer not to benefit from their own states’ protection, they find themselves, as refugees, in a condition of de facto statelessness” (2008: 94). Agamben does not explain what has caused the complicated impediment of this case. 19.

(27) of refugees, but their appearance somehow reflects the complex international situation and the national systems which make them the unrecognizable and non categorizable Other. Agamben adopts Thomas Hammar’s neologism of “denizens” to describe these noncitizen permanent residents, because “the concept of “citizen” is no longer adequate for describing the social-political reality of modern states” (2008: 94). The concepts of “refugees,” “nation,” “citizens,” and “denizens” resonate Agamben’s idea of “the coming community,” foreseeing a new form of politics to those people without firm identities of nation, race and culture. Generally, both Arendt and Agamben mention the crisis of human rights under the national sovereigns, and the tension between improving human rights and maintaining national security. In practice, improving and securing human rights for the stateless has often been carried out in the form of international humanitarian laws, such as the Geneva Conventions, and humanitarian aids launched by international NGOs, such as International Committee of Red Cross (ICRC), Doctors without Borders (MSF), and UN’s Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). Not only humanitarian organizations but also national sovereigns should follow the guidelines of the Geneva Conventions to protect the people in danger. J. Patrnogic states that The Geneva Conventions should be considered as a specific kind of protest against war. The Conventions regulate the protection of some basic human rights. War is a negation of the rights of human beings, so fixing of obligation contained in the Conventions, the detailed regulation of the protection of elementary human rights for such large categories of people, as it is done in the Conventions, representing something that stands against the conception of the annihilation of humans. (285). 20.

(28) The Geneva Conventions urge the protection of human rights during wartime. In War Trash, Chinese POWs use the Geneva Conventions to demand appropriate treatments, defending themselves from the prejudice and discrimination due to their national identities and political stance. However, the limited application of the Geneva Conventions for national security and political concerns causes the plight of humanitarianism. Launching humanitarian aids for the refugees is to rescue them out of severe environments, such as fierce battlefields and serious famines. However, humanitarian aids often encounter tensions with national security as well, and face moral dilemma between their responsibility for their missions and the moral principle of saving the people in emergency. Because the committee of Nanking Safety Zone, which is established as a neutral organization in the battlefield, performs its humanitarian aids in the name of Red Cross, this thesis exemplifies the case of ICRC to examine the plight of non-Chinese characters’ humanitarian aids in emergent battlefields. Ritu Mathur states that ICRC has been “severely critiqued for its silence in public with regard to the violence of the holocaust” (1), which indicates their silence to Nazi’s atrocities to the Jews in concentration camps during World War Two. Jean Claude Favez criticizes ICRC’s silence to atrocities as “a moral failure” as “it did not take the supreme risk of throwing the full weight of its moral authority into the scale on behalf of these particular victims….We have no choice but to recognize that it should have spoken out” (282). Ritu states that ICRC is now “faced with a recurrent moral dilemma of speaking out or remaining silent in situations of armed conflicts,” and the question is “how we understand the ethics behind the ICRC’s decision to remain silent” in the face of atrocities (1). According to its own principles of impartiality and neutrality, ICRC should not speak or act for particular groups, especially in armed. 21.

(29) conflicts which would possibly jeopardize their own humanitarian missions. Therefore, ICRC insists that “it act in accordance with its legal mandate,” and its actions are “governed by international humanitarian laws” (Ritu 4). Another dilemma of ICRC is that it cannot accept “individual responsibility as an international actor which is more significant than the collective responsibility of all international actors” (7). Their strictly impartial and neutral attitude inevitable has been condemned for indifference to injustice. Chapter Two intends to read the characters of bare life in Nanjing Requiem and War Trash as the stateless, explores the non-Chinese characters’ plight of humanitarian treatments and aids for the stateless people, and it further meditates on the possible new route for the stateless beyond the borders of national sovereigns.. 3. Witness, Justice and Ethics Justice is a crucial issue for the war victims. Both the stories in Nanjing Requiem and War Trash deal with post-war justice, jus post bellum i.e., “the practice after war ends” defined by Hugo Grotius (see May 1). After the abolishment of the state of exception, the figures of bare life can restore their human rights and political statuses, but it remains a question whether they can claim their justice afterward. Chapter Three aims to illuminate the justice issue for the victims after the war. In Nanjing Requiem, after Imperial Japan is defeated, International Military Tribunal for the Far East (Tokyo Trials) is established to convict war criminals, which can be seen as “transitional justice” for war victims. Defined by the United Nations, transitional justice is the full range of processes and mechanisms associated with a society’s attempt to come to terms with a legacy of large-scale past abuses, in order. 22.

(30) to ensure accountability, serve justice and achieve reconciliation. Transitional justice processes and mechanisms are a critical component of the United Nations framework for strengthening the rule of law (See United Nations). In Larry May’s After War Ends: A Philosophical Perspective (2012), transitional justice concerns “the way to move from an authoritarian regime that did not respect the rights of the people to a democratic regime that does respect the rights,” and aims for “reconciliation with a violent past” (6). Larry May proposes that both just post bellum and transitional justice appeal for “moderation” between previously conflicting groups to achieve lasting peace (6). The state has to guarantee that the atrocities against humanity, such as holocaust, will never happen again. The government has to reform its juridical system to prevent abusing of justice, and “to establish a just and lasting peace” (1). Theoretically, transitional justice can rehabilitate the reputation of victims, and abusers should deserve juridical judgments. In War Crimes Tribunals and Transitional Justice: The Tokyo Trial and the Nuremburg Legacy (2008), Madoka Futamura proposes that the positive impacts of International Criminal Tribunal (ICT), such as Nuremberg Trials and Tokyo Trials, establish “a culture of law and order,” promote “the transformation of post-conflict society,” and contribute to “international peace and security” (49). The tribunal is expected to be a “warning” to the leader of the country and to the group who may commit the war crime again (49). However, in Nanjing Requiem, the justice enforced by laws faces its limitation and obstacles in application. Because of insufficient evidence to prove their crimes, not all criminals can be convicted and punished. Moreover, like the humanitarian aids affiliated to national system, the juridical judgment is easily manipulated by political causes,. 23.

(31) because juridical systems are affiliated to the state system as well. On some occasions, even the juridical judgement after the war does not provide justice; instead, it punishes the war victims because of political reasons. In War Trash, those repatriated Chinese soldiers are war victims. Without concerning their will, Chinese government drafts them to engage in the war. While imprisoned in the POW camps, more than one hundred soldiers sacrifice their lives to show loyalty to their nation, but all of them are treated as traitors after they return to China due to their captivity in the enemy’s camp. The purpose of transitional justice provided by war trials can be explained by Walter Benjamin’s critique of “law-preserving violence,” a kind of long-lasting “threatening violence” (285). Law-preserving violence is not designed to punish the violators of laws but “to establish a new law,” which can exercise violence “over life and death more than in any legal acts” (286). Although the criminal trials after the war really convict several primary war criminals, its effect of law-preserving violence is more profound and influential to the future era. For example, besides convicting some major war criminals, Tokyo Trials have established a new order for future peace and the international regulations of war violence exercised by the state power, but some suspects who should have taken the responsibility for war crimes were intentionally spared because of the legal system’s essential limitation and the American’s political concerns. One primary cause is that, in some occasions, “criminal trials do not instill respect for the rule of law, and actually increase the likelihood of violence” (May 110). Criminal trials often bias toward particular sides or participants. May indicates that trials criminalize “just the person who is in the dock, not those who may have aided the alleged perpetrator or those who could have prevented him from acting as he did” (111). This is the limitation and the challenge against the war trials which cannot. 24.

(32) judge the suspects without sufficient proof. Therefore, not all transitional justice can be achieved by trials, so May proposes that “truth commission,” could be an alternative and non-legal way “to promote healing within communities that have been ravaged by war or mass violence” (98).4 Truth commission is regarded as “a reconciliation that will lead to the return of a just and lasting peace,” to promote the recognition of “the truth of what happened” for the war victims and communities since the recognition of truth can be regarded as “the process of healing” (98). As Tehsing Shan comments on the significance of recording true history, “if crimes and trauma are not sufficiently recognized and addressed, there will be no possibility of putting the past to past, nor of moving into a more hopeful future” (26). Therefore, truth commission indicates that transitional justice should not be limited to juridical judgment, but can be any practice of commemoration, such as investigating unrevealed history, establishing memorial museums, or composing memoirs. As a way to attain transitional justice, truth commission requires various kinds of materials, such as evidence, documents, testimony of the witnesses to investigate and present the historical truth. However, how much truth can be revealed with these materials still remains questionable. Chapter Three intends to use Agamben’s “lacuna in testimony” to explain the limitation of truth commission as a way for transitional justice. Because testimony is provided by “the survivors” who had been involved in the incident, compared to other kinds of material evidence, testimony plays a more significant role in representing the truth.5 Agamben composes Remnants of Auschwitz (1999) as his investigation and commentary on the testimony of the survivors in. In Madoka Futamura’s research, the truth commission has been a popular forum which thrived during the transitional period of Latin America and South Africa, and provides “both victims and victimizer opportunities to tell their story and reveal the truth” (49). 5 Agamben explains the idea of the survivor: “a person who has lived through something, who has experienced an event from beginning to the end and can therefore bear witness to it” (Remnant 17). 4. 25.

(33) Auschwitz, and proposes that “testimony contained at its core as essential lacuna; in other words, the survivors bore witness to something it’s impossible to bear witness to” (13). In Agamben’s explanation, the survivors in Auschwitz are not qualified enough to present complete historical truth with their testimony. About the war trials, Agamben disagrees that the trial can prove the truth, stating that “the ultimate end of the juridical regulation is to produce judgement; but judgement aims neither to punish nor to extol, neither to establish justice nor to prove the truth” (19). The ultimate goal of the law is “the production of a res judicata, in which the sentence becomes the substitute for the true and the just, being held as true despite its falsity and injustice” (18). In Agamben’s critique, it remains a question whether legal trials can prove the truth and claim transitional justice for war victims. His statement implies the juridical “truth” leaves a discrepancy with the real truth. Besides the juridical court, truth commission also promotes transitional justice through collecting the testimony of the survivors to present historical truth. Agamben points out the essential cause of testimony as “a lacuna,” which questions the “identity and reliability of the witness (Remnants 33). The same question challenges the qualification of the survivors, who have been through the misery in the camp. Primo Levi, a survivor in Auschwitz whose testimony is cited by Agamben in Remnant, agrees that “there is another lacuna in every testimony” because “the complete witnesses,” “Muslims,” “the submerged,” who can provide testimony have “not returned to tell about it or have returned mute” (83-84). The complete witnesses had already “lost the ability to observe, to remember, to compare and express themselves,” so the survivors “speak in their stand, by proxy” (84). Because the complete witnesses who had been through the severest misery lost their ability to provide testimony, the survivor, who had undergone the peripheral part, served as a proxy to speak for them.. 26.

(34) The proxy of the survivor here is a legal role, and he/she can provide testimony in the court on behalf of these complete witnesses. However, when speaking about “the truth,” the qualification of the survivor’s role as a proxy remains questionable, suggesting that the truth commission pursued by the survivors’ testimony still cannot reconstruct truth. Therefore, Agamben enhances his contemplation from the legal function to the ethical role of testimony, attempting to untangle the limitation of using testimony to pursue transitional justice. Agamben analyzes the impossibility of formulating “a complete subject of testimony:” “testimony takes place where the speechless one makes the speaking one and where the one who speaks bears the impossibility of speaking his own speech, such that the silent and the speaking…enter into a zone of indistinction” where “it is impossible to establish a position of the subject, to identify…the “I” and, along with it, the true witness” (Remnant 120). Emile Benveniste writes that “it is in the instance of discourse in which I designates the speaker that the speaker proclaims himself as the “subject,”” and “it is literally true that the basis of subjectivity is in the exercise of language” (226). Since “I” am speaking, a speaking subject “I” is formulated. As Agamben states, “to speak, to bear witness, is thus to enter into a vertiginous movement in which something sinks into the bottom, wholly desubjectified and silenced, and something subjectified speaks without truly having anything to say of its own,” and briefly concludes that “the subject of testimony is the one who bears witness to a desubjectification” (12021).When “I” am speaking for someone, the speaking subject “I” surrenders part of its subjectivity to speak for someone unable to speak. This is a process of desubjectification, initiating an I-other relation, to be more precise, the ethics to the Other, to those Muselmanns losing their capability of speaking for themselves. Based. 27.

(35) on Agamben’s perspective, it seems hard for, truth commission as a way of pursuing transitional justice through testimony, to reveal the truth, but it directs a new route of the ethics to the Other. In Nanjing Requiem and War Trash, the two narrators, Yu Yuan and Anling, are the survivors who can provide testimony on behalf of the war victims who cannot speak for themselves. Ha Jin designates Yu Yuan and Anling to elucidate his ethics of the Other. Furthermore, Ha Jin attempts to pursue transitional justice through truth commission not in the form of presenting historical truth but raising a signpost for the ethics of the Other. As a novelist, Ha Jin commits himself to write War Trash and Nanjing Requiem not to present historical truth but to express a strong sense of concern for the Other through literature. Besides the two novel, Ha Jin, in The Writer as Migrant (2008), his essays of literary criticism, elaborates the social role and responsibility as a writer, the migrant author’s impediment of language usage and the identity issue of the diaspora. Chapter Three uses Ha Jin’s philosophy about the writer’s social role and responsibility in The Writer as Migrant to elaborate Ha Jin’s ethics and justice of the Other. Agamben also proposes his idea of justice, but it is not appropriate to explain the justice in War Trash and Nanjing Requiem. Agamben develops his theory of justice from Benjamin’s Messianism, writing that “the Messiah’s arrival signifies the fulfillment and the complete consummation of the Law” (Homo 56). The Messiah is “the figure through which religion confronts the problem of the Law, decisively reckoning with it” (Potentialities 163). The Messiah attains the salvation of life through the fulfillment and consummation of the Law, deconstructing the indistinguishable relation of the Law and life. All the laws in the past are completely suspended to attend a complete liberation of the life, which finally restores the life’s. 28.

(36) potentialities/impotentiality. The Law is no longer applicable but only remains a wreckage for study in the future. The justice is about what Messiah restores to the life, finally falling into the “potential not to act” (181). However, Ha Jin’s idea of justice is an active consideration and participation in acting and voicing for the miserable people. Seeing a discrepancy exists between the considerations of justice by Agamben and Ha Jin, Chapter Three centers on examination of Ha Jin’s justice revealed in War Trash and Nanjing Requiem.. III.. Outline of Thesis Chapters In addition to introduction and conclusion, this thesis is composed of three. chapters. Chapter One applies Giorgio Agamben’s ideas of “the state of exception” and “bare life” to examine how the characters of bare life in Nanjing Requiem and War Trash are governed and exploited in the state of exception. This chapter begins by discussing how Nanjing and the POW camps in the two novels fall into the state of exception during the wartime. Then following analysis is the structure of the space in the state of exception where multiple dominate sovereigns, including the Japanese troops, the Nationalist Party, the Communist Party and the Americans, utilize various tactics, including nationality, political stands and values. Moreover, it examines the boundary of loyalty and betrayal, to have the Others (such as Chinese civilians, the enemy POWs and the possible traitors) suffer from the deprivation of the legal and human right, and finally fall into the existence of bare life. In the two novels, the different tensions of the sovereign to discriminate the Other produce different kinds of figures of bare life. Finally, Chapter One concludes that different sovereigns can coexist and exercise their power over the characters of bare life without directly colliding with each other, but the tension and conflicts between sovereigns are. 29.

(37) represented through the miserable situation of bare life. Furthermore, most Ha Jin’s characters of bare life are mercilessly betrayed by their own nation, so this chapter concludes by discussing Ha Jin portrays the figures of bare life to satirize national loyalty. In Nanjing Requiem and War Trash, the Chinese characters are deprived of their human rights after losing the protection of their nations. In Chapter Two, these Chinese characters are seen as the stateless people in Agamben’s definition, and the human rights of the stateless people are in crisis in the Safety Zone and the POW camp. Moreover, many non-Chinese characters attempt to stand neutral on the battlefield to offer the Chinese refugees and POWs humanitarian aids, including shelters, medical treatments and psychological comfort. However, these non-Chinese characters face different kinds of plights which obstruct their services for the civilians. This chapter further analyzes the cause of the plights of humanitarian service from a biopolitical perspective so as to excavate a way to deconstruct the indistinguishable relation between the sovereign and its dominance over its citizens. Finally, several characters express their desire to rid of the confinements of the nation, party and home to be “independent persons without a homeland.” Their desire resonates with Agamben’s concept of potentiality/impotentiality which provides a novel perspective of the independence of human beings, and renews “the stateless” with a positive meaning. Both Nanjing Requiem and War Trash deal with the pursuit of justice after the wars: transitional justice for the war victims. After World War Two, Tokyo Trials are executed to convict the primary war criminals. However, in the two novels, the war trials seem to have failed in claiming transitional justice. Therefore, Chapter Three examines the limitation of juridical system in attaining transitional justice, and. 30.

(38) analyze the difficulties of convicting war criminals through war trials. Moreover, from Agamben’s perspective, Anling and Yu Yuan, the narrators of the two novels, are “the survivors” who can provide testimony to pursue transitional justice for the war victims; however, it is impossible for the survivors to present a whole scale of historical truth because of “the lacuna” in testimony. Although the survivors are unable to serve as the subject speaking for the Other and tell the complete historical truth, the survivors’ speaking can formulate an ethical relation between the survivors and the Other (the Muselmann, who cannot speak for themselves). Therefore, Ha Jin can be seen as a subject speaking for the Other, because he attempts to pursue transitional justice through his novel to commemorate these war victims, preserve their memories and redress injustice against them. In sum, this thesis expects three objectives. First, it aims to examine how the mechanisms of national sovereigns dominate human lives so as to find a way to prevent it from excessive power which might cause serious violation of human rights. The second objective is to contemplate on the appropriate relation between nations and citizens, who could be liberated from the submissive situation under the dominance of the national sovereign. Finally, it inspects legal and non-legal aspects of transitional justice to offer more possible ways to pursue transitional justice. The three issues mentioned above are not only a significant retrospect of the historic incidents, but also pertinent for us to evaluate the present and to caution for the future.. 31.

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(40) Chapter One Bare Life in Nanjing Requiem and War Trash. Thousands tethered like cattle, herded like sheep into the mountains, the suburbs, the city squares, into the gullies and waterfront, to be skewered like pigs, mounted from behind like goats, castrated, pummeled senseless, clubbed to death, —Wing Tek Lum, “Nanjing, December, 1937”6. I.. The Camp and Bare Life Based on Giorgio Agamben’s concepts of “the state of exception” and “bare. life,” Nanjing City in Nanjing Requiem and POW camps in War Trash can be viewed as the state of exception which turns the refugees and POWs to bare life. This chapter explores how these characters of bare life are governed and exploited in the state of exception. In Nanjing Requiem, although most stories take place in Nanking Safety Zone, which is like a refugee camp protecting powerless Chinese civilians from the atrocities of Japanese troops, the state of exception actually happens in the whole Nanjing City. After Chiang Kai-shek’s armies retreat, Japanese troops occupy the whole Nanjing City and turn the city into a void of laws where Chinese citizens lose protection from Chinese government and are deprived of human rights. Japanese troops are allowed by their officers to rob, rape and kill the Chinese at will, holding Wing Tek Lum, an Asian American poet in Hawaii, composes a poetry collection, The Nanjing Massacre: Poems (2012), to commemorate the Chinese war victims in Nanking Massacre. In “Nanjing, December, 1937,” the narrator describes the Japanese troop’s ruthless manslaughter against Chinese citizens. 6. 33.

(41) the sovereignty over this state of exception. The unprotected Chinese civilians and disarmed soldiers thus fall into the existence of bare life. The narrator of this novel, Anling Gao, mourns, “our ancient city, noted for its beauty and cultural splendor, had become hell overnight, as if forsaken by God…. No one could brutalize others like this with impunity in the long run” (55). George Fitch, an American missionary, describes the situation, “the Japanese arrest practically all the young men. There was no way to reason with them. Oh, Minnie, this is horrible, as if we still live in the Dark Ages” (54). As Nanjing is in a state of exception, without the protection of Chinese civil rights and human rights, Chinese civilians are not treated as humans but as killable living beings. Japanese troops can determine the life and death of any Chinese noncombatants in Nanjing during their occupation. Dr. Chu, a Chinese doctor who works for Autonomous City Government, says that “in war, victory justifies all sorts of violence. A complete victory means to have finished off the enemy. In fact, I believe that Japanese committed all the atrocities as a celebration of their victory, as a kind of reward and gratification” (190). In the state of exception, morality and humanity seem suspended as Japan’s victory has justified their brutality. However, non-Chinese missionaries, teachers and journalists are free from the Japanese atrocity as “a white face could serve as a pass and a guarantee of personal safety here” (158). When Anling claims that she works in the American embassy, the Japanese troops dare not arrest her. In Nanjing Requiem, Chinese civilians are excluded from the protection of laws due to their nationality, but they are included in Japan’s cruel governance. Thus, their paradoxical status can be regarded as bare life. In Nanjing Requiem, the Chinese who cooperate with Japanese troops is another kind of bare life. Many Chinese choose to collaborate with their enemies to protect themselves and family. Anling’s husband, Yaoping is invited by his friend to. 34.