The Great Leap Backward: Forgetting and Representing the Mao Year ...

occurs when this aim of truthfulness is threatened. Memory is prone to abuse because of the elusiveness and fluidity of past images stored in conscious and subconscious minds, and because of the referential nature of language, which we rely on to construct a narrative of the past. Use and abuse of memory occur on various levels and manifest in different ways. Ricoeur’s analysis produces the following three levels and types: (1) on the pathological level, in the type of blocked memory; (2) on the practical level, in the type of manipulated memory; and (3) on the ethicopolitical level, in the type of obligated memory.²¹

Traumatic experiences instigate blocked memory—for example, Can Xue’s “deep memory,” Amos Funkenstein’s “anamnesis,” and Michael Bernard-Donald’s “forgetful memory,” as discussed earlier. The psyche blocks traumatic memories to protect itself, without giving control to the individual. To replace the blocked memory, the individual unknowingly and compulsively acts out in various ways to repeat the traumatic experience. Comparing two essays by Sigmund Freud on this subject, Ricoeur argues that speaking the traumatic memory—remembering—can be a way to counter the compulsion to repeat the abuse and also a way to relate truthfully with one’s past. Remembering can also lead to mourning the loss incurred by the traumatic experience and becoming free and uninhibited again.²² So on the pathological level, the uses and the abuses of memory can be summarized in these two pairs: remembering (productive) versus acting out (pathological), and mourning (productive) versus melancholia (pathological).

This paradigm is particularly useful in reinterpreting “scar literature” (傷痕文學 shanghen wenxue), which dominated memory writing in the immediate aftermath of the Cultural Revolution. On the level of collective memory, it becomes clear that national remembering and mourning are essential for society to heal from historical trauma and to avoid being trapped in acting out repeatedly and compulsively. As Ricoeur puts it, “too much memory recalls especially the compulsion to repeat, which, Freud said, leads us to substitute acting out for the true