China Perspective Issues
BOOK REVIEWS
BARNETT, Robert, Benno WEINER, and Françoise ROBIN (eds.). 2020. Conflicting Memories: Tibetan History under Mao Retold. Essays and Primary Documents. Leiden: Brill.
With 13 chapters featuring 15 illustrations (excerpts from books, film dialogues, interviews, etc., translated from Tibetan or Chinese), the book focuses on three events marking contemporary Tibetan history: the Chinese Army’s arrival in Kham (1935-1936), the imposition of so-called democratic reforms (1955-1956 in Kham, 1958 in Amdo, and 1959 in Lhasa), and the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976). It is structured in five major parts offering new analyses rereading published official texts (Part One) and archives (Part Two), oral collections of memories (Part Three), and the rewriting of literary secular (Part Four) and religious events (Part Five). The chapters are mainly based on written or oral testimonies, biographies, and autobiographies of the laity (Horlemann, Mortensen, Mackley, and de Heering) or monks (Willock, Turek, and Barstow). Others present accounts of particular events by civil servants or anonymous people, such as Materials for the Study of Culture and History (Bod kyi lo rgyus rig gnas/Wenshi ziliao 文史資料) of Qinghai (Weiner) and central Tibet (Travers), Chinese filmography on Tibet (Barnett), and literature concerning the 1958 Amdo rebellion (Robin). Tsering’s chapter considers the evolution of Chinese and Tibetan opinions on the actions and personality of Ngawang Jigme (1910-2009), who played a major political role from 1950 onward. Another chapter offers a reinterpretation of CCP ambitions in 1949 based on recently unveiled Chinese archives (Raymond). All chapters show the changes and continuities in the historical interpretation of events that marked the twentieth century’s second half, attested in post-1949 Chinese writings on Tibet. They reveal elements that oral history illustrates as a counterpoint to an agreed official Chinese history.
The stories analysed testify to an experience lived almost 60 years earlier in the case of the most recent events. They refer to an intergenerational transmission by the oldest and to a writing practice intended to fill the silence of a generation. They thus convoke accounts of events witnessed by the author, the ones they heard about, and those that now await discussion. These testimonies highlight the urgent need for Tibetans to write their own history of contemporary events in order to be able to rebuild themselves as individuals and as groups in given geographical settings.
The book’s editors are right in using “re” in prefixing its parts: “Revisualisations” (Part One), “Rereading” (Part Two), “Remembering” (Parts Three and Five), and “Retellings” (Part Four). This underlines the importance of testimony and oral history in comparison with official history, and also of the narrative methods authors and interviewees adopt in a context that hardly gives scope for it. The first accounts gathered in the framework of the collection Materials for the Study of Tibetan Culture and History came from civil or military officers and fulfilled the various objectives of Chinese policies. Articles published in the collection’s first volumes on Qinghai, for example, aimed at fashioning a new Tibet different from the old Tibetan society whereas the more recent ones pursued the building of an imaginary past. Nevertheless, the objective of these official collections was to create a shared memory based on accounts gathered from officials and under controlled conditions. Thus, they form part of so-called official history.
The book’s contributors give readers translated raw sources and content analyses while noting limitations linked to censorship and publishing environment in China. They offer writings transmitting the words of unnamed people who, without acrimony and eschewing discussion of the legitimacy of Chinese presence in Tibet, narrate events that marked their childhood or adult life. These documents, public or private, display strategies that enable them to appear and be considered as fiction, biography, or autobiography (for example, the absence of retrospective elements, narrating facts from a child’s perspective, or using the passive voice). None criticises the events or challenges China’s authority. The last three chapters focusing on the memories of monks show how they took advantage of imprisonment and hardship to practise their faith. The book brilliantly demonstrates the complementarity between official accounts (given the roles of the authors and the context of their writings) and those of ordinary people to better understand contemporary Tibetan history and the divergent historical interpretations (Chinese and Tibetan, as well as between protagonists, actors, and witnesses).
While some chapters lack inquiry and reflexivity over the circumstances of the testimonies’ disclosures or of Tibetan accounts, and, in fine, over discourses coproduced by the researchers’ requests, the book is most important for understanding the current Tibetan situation. This volume’s contributors are themselves witnesses, albeit surrogates giving voice to Tibetan ones, fuelled by the urgency to bear witness.