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Werke von Vera Schwarcz

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In Bridge Across Broken Time, Schwarcz writes about two cultures that treasure memory: Chinese and Jewish and how the concept of memory is intimately linked to the two cultures' pasts. Looking at the concept of cultural memory and how both Chinese and Jewish writers address the concept of memory and remembrance of recent historical traumas (the Holocaust and Cultural Revolution respectively), Schwarcz's book focuses on the transmission of cultural memory and how metaphor, personal remembrance and public commemoration all play a part in memory.

This book though is also an intensely personal and poignant reflection by Schwarcz on the trauma of the Holocaust and the sufferings her parents endured during the War. These parts of the book are the most moving as the reader sees first-hand how memory has shaped recollections of the past and how the author's parents have dealt with the great trauma endured.

Schwarcz uses both Chinese and Jewish sources extensively: poetry, interviews and archival documents, to bring to life the cultural struggles of Chinese and Jewish survivors and how important to both that their traditions are maintained.
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Gekennzeichnet
xuebi | May 30, 2014 |
This book examines the May Fourth Movement and its impact on Chinese society, both short and long term. Schwarcz defines the enlightenment as an attempt to reform and modernize the nation’s character. She accentuates the iconoclasm of May Fourth thought, which many intellectuals explicitly calling for “idol-smashing” and questioning all assumptions. Yet the movement itself did not, in fact, move China substantially. It had little impact on its target audience, the Chinese populace. Instead Schwarcz argues that it was a failed attempt at defining, or redefining, the national character. She claims that it was “the first of a series of incomplete efforts to uproot feudalism while pursuing the cause of nationalist revolution”.

Schwarz argues that the division of the movement had a profound effect. The movement centered around Beijing University, where there was an intellectual divide between the students and teachers. The teachers had lived through the revolutions of 1911 and were wary to advocate another revolution. The students, however, were more radical and demanded more drastic and immediate changes. Teachers’ attempt to rein in students backfired, fueling further radicalization and distrust of the established authority. Although the movement itself was short lived, the students’ participation in it would have longer effects, with many members of the movement later becoming CCP cadres, including one CCP founder Chen Duxiu. This is where Schwarcz sees the movement’s long term effect. The radicalized students established a new intellectual elite that would eventually have the power to implement some of its ideas.
It's reliance of oral histories without substantial documentary support makes its accuracy a little suspect, as the interviews were done over fifty years after the events in question, but it is still a very valuable work.
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Scapegoats | Dec 23, 2007 |

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