Myth, spectacle, memory: Envisioning history in contemporary Hong Kong literature and film.

摘要

Myth, spectacle, and memory---these are three alternative ways to capture and account for an elusive past, each with its own claim and flaw. This dissertation traces the vicissitude of historical consciousness in contemporary Hong Kong, aiming to demonstrate how representations of history are aestheticized and how these aesthetic forms, knowingly or unknowingly, resist the hegemony of identity politics.;The three decades from 1970s to 2000 were one of those fanatical moments in Hong Kong, when the notion of history reemerged, condensed and imploded, generating as much tension as energy. Propelled by the imminence of the sovereignty handover, debates have continued in the public sphere around the issue of local identity. When the geopolitical definition of the city had to undergo an indefinite and contingent revision, history was reinstated to play a leading role in the political anchoring of Hong Kong's collective identity.;The crafting of history has thus turned into a massive campaign in various realms of culture. When identity politics serves as a focal point for nearly all literary and film creation, culture becomes more or less a survival strategy. The insistence on a specific, coherent, and continuous identity works to reduce the diversity and complexity of cultural and social influences under which local identity is formed. However, this discursive synergy of history making has also given rise to a different kind of cultural practice, one that has surpassed the content and contour of the given agenda. The innovation and resilience displayed in these works, in my opinion, reveal admirable strength and the ability to sustain and articulate who one really is, by providing alternatives to augment self-understanding and to defy the homogenizing, exclusionary process of identity formation.;The dissertation exemplifies how different layers and forms of historical narratives invent, appropriate, reshuffle, and contest the historical "real," which, like identity, can never be fully conveyed. The thesis is organized into two parts along the parallel lines of literature and film. The first three chapters embrace and/or contradict the notion of history as myth, spectacle and memory, respectively; whereas the fourth chapter provides a spatial analogue for this largely time-oriented project.