Issue Details: First known date: 2024... 2024 Remembering and Forgetting June Fourth 1989 in Australia’s Sinophone Narratives
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'This article considers remembrance and forgetting of ‘June Fourth’ (also known as the Tiananmen Square Incident or the Tiananmen Square Massacre) in Australia’s Chinese-language (Sinophone) narratives. Australia’s Sinophone narratives are defined as including those texts created using the Chinese language in Australia as well as the Chinese-language translations of Australian Anglophone narrative texts involving China. The article considers four examples of remembrance and forgetting of June Fourth – each Australian in substance: the 1989 performance of Retrial of a Political Prisoner by Chinese students in Sydney; the novel Oz Tale Sweet and Sour by Leo Xi Rang Liu (Liu Ao), written and first published in Chinese; and Chinese-language translations of two Anglophone texts written by white Australians – Nicholas Jose’s Avenue of Eternal Peace (translated by Li Yao) and The Hawke Memoirs (translated by a large committee).'

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon Australian Historical Studies Opening Australia’s Multilingual Archive no. 55 4 2024 29118918 2024 periodical issue

    'Archives, multilingual or otherwise, have histories of their own. Jacques Derrida has described those who are the creators of archives as exercising social order (the archons): they employ power through their interpretation of texts and stories of the past.  The interrelation between power and knowledge, and the building of a collective, public memory, operates in both the material and metaphorical spaces of the national archive. Archives constitute the set of rules which define the limits and forms of human expression, conservation, memory and appropriation. Bias and subjectivity are structurally part of the official archive through the evaluation appraisal, cataloguing, censoring, description – including errors – preservation and translation of sources.  In this way, archives can establish the legitimacy of governments and shape ideas of national history. At the same time, in Foucault’s terms, archives are ‘systems of statements’ as ‘events’ and ‘things’.  Although they are governed by institutional infrastructures they cannot really be described in their totality. Also, the material and stories they preserve can challenge or form a threat for the state power.' (Editorial introduction)

    2024
    pg. 743-759
Last amended 4 Nov 2024 09:59:29
743-759 Remembering and Forgetting June Fourth 1989 in Australia’s Sinophone Narrativessmall AustLit logo Australian Historical Studies
Subjects:
  • Tiananmen Square, Beijing,
    c
    China,
    c
    East Asia, South and East Asia, Asia,
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