How do we remember, the little people in the big time?

Mondo Entertainment Updated on 2024-02-01

Stills from "Keep Walking".

Edit |Tan Shan Shan.

On December 30, 2023, a sharing session on the theme of "Individuals in the Great Waves: 'Little People Care' in Historical Writing" was held in the new store of Halloween Book Garden.

This is the second sharing session of Shaheli Puroki's works jointly organized by the "Gravity" publishing brand of Guangdong People's Publishing House, New Weekly and Halloween Book Garden. The sharing session was chaired by Liu Suli, the director of Wansheng Book Garden, and Sun Ge, a researcher at the Institute of Literature of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Zhao Shiyu, a distinguished professor of liberal arts at the Department of History of Peking University, and Song Nianshen, a professor at the Institute for Advanced Study of Humanities and Social Sciences at Tsinghua University, served as guests.

I am very interested in the thoughts, emotions and behaviors of individuals, but the most important thing is to discover and understand the political, social, cultural environments that shape these thoughts, emotions and behaviors, and the ways in which individuals cope with their circumstances. In my book, the people who make decisions, the people who 'shape' history, are not necessarily in high positions, they may be, and often only happen to be in that time and place, reflecting the light and sorrow of the times. ”

Professor Ploki explained his view of history in this way. In his grand narrative about the fate of mankind, there are always some important moments left for ordinary people who cannot leave their names in the history books.

A small wave of the times is enough to become a monstrous wave that drowns you and me. Fortunately, there are some people who are recording for us.

This article is an excerpt from the transcript of the sharing session.

Individuals in the Great Waves: 'Little People Care' in Historical Writing" theme sharing session and guests (from left): Liu Suli, Zhao Shiyu, Sun Ge, Song Nianshen. (Figure Gravitation courtesy).

The great waves of the times and the uncertain individual

Liu Suli: This is a very good topic. The individual in the great wave is about the fate of the individual in the general trend of history. "Fate", taken apart, is "fate" and "luck". There is no way to live, our parents gave birth to us, there is no way to transform, there is no way to reproduce; Fortune is very subtle, and it has a lot to do with the historical rhythm we are talking about today. Although Mr. Sun studies the history of ideas, he believes that he has long-term observations on the fate of individuals in history.

Sun Ge: At the end of September 2011, I went to Kyoto to get a closer look at how Japanese society emerged from the trauma after the March 11 nuclear disaster. This provided me with a valuable opportunity. Anyone who does intellectual history will pay attention to Benjamin's famous proposition that history suddenly reveals its true face only at the moment when it is saturated with crisis.

As individuals who can only survive for a few decades, we all want to live a lifetime free of illness and disaster; But as scholars of intellectual history, we must realize that disasters are not only disasters, but also an opportunity to get up close and personal with history. How to seize this opportunity to observe the abnormal parts of the seemingly normal way of life is a topic that I have set for myself.

The invention of nuclear energy as a war event, even if it was later used for peace, still carries with it enormous risks – not only technical risks, but also political, ideological, economic, and even human factors. "Atoms and Ashes" discusses nuclear experiments and nuclear power plant accidents side by side, which is an interesting arrangement: the former is war, the latter is peaceful use, but the author tells us that the two are inextricably linked.

Photographed in Chiba Prefecture, Japan, with the banner reading "Nuclear Energy is the Future of Energy". (Photo by Arkadiusz Podniesinski).

Liu Suri: Ploki's "Chernobyl" talks about the little people in the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. Mr. Zhao studies historical anthropology, also known as social history or microhistory. How did you get into this field?

Zhao Shiyu: I don't know about nuclear energy, but the use of nuclear energy or a series of tragic events happen all around us, especially in the process of globalization, whether it is thousands of miles away or thousands of miles, we will immediately have direct feelings.

The nuclear crisis has caused indelible scars on the minds and bodies of everyone, especially those damaged by the disaster. This trauma brings with it heavy memories. There is a theme in the study of history in Western countries that specializes in traumatic memory. I was exposed to this research in the United States in the early 90s of the 20th century, and initially it focused on the memory of the suffering of Jews who survived World War II. We always say that "the past is not forgotten, and the future is the teacher", and traumatic memory is a very important point in the "teacher of the future", but we have done very little, which is worth reflecting on.

Liu Suli: Mr. Song Nianshen is what I define as a "Mesozoic scholar", let's listen to what he wants to say on this topic.

Song Nianshen: The way Puloki writes feels very familiar to me. He writes less about historical research and more like journalistic writing. In "Atoms and Ashes", before the Japanese fishing boat exploded in a bikini, the captain's thought was, "My net is broken, I need to catch more fish, and I will go one more day."

Cover of Atoms and Ashes (October 2023 edition).

On September 8, 2001, I set foot on American soil for the first time, completely unaware of what would happen three days later. On 9/11, I went to see the smoking Pentagon and started doing street interviews. I don't know what's going to happen next, I just know that I'm going through one thing, and that's the normal reaction of an ordinary person – the uncertainty that happens when there's a real turning point in history.

So, I went to study history. It is only in history that you can appreciate what that experiential feeling brings to you. Historical writing and journalistic writing, I think they are very similar, both of them are based on what they already know what happened and speculate about what the structure was like before the event. For a humanist, the sense of destiny that cannot be grasped is more attractive than certainty.

Look for ordinary people in historical writing.

Liu Suli: Puloki is not quite the same as Shi Jingqian. When Shi Jingqian writes about the little people, he writes their stories; Poloki is writing about a big theme, putting small people in it to show their fate.

Zhao Shiyu: These three books are different from academic historical works in the general sense, they are very much like news gathering or non-fiction, and they are not the works of typical historians. I believe that such a narrative method must be intentional on the part of the author, who hopes to let a wider range of people, especially those who feel that this matter is far away from us and has little to do with us, to know the seriousness of the matter and the great harm it will do to a community with a shared future for mankind.

The idea behind finding people who have no documentary materials at all to do research is to prevent those who have played an important role in history or experienced important events from being forgotten by history within the controllable scope of the narrative. In addition to important figures such as Gorbachev, Kennedy, and Khrushchev, Ploki's three books also mention many witnesses, firefighters, and people who fled, which is common in newswriting or non-fiction, but rare in academic works.

Today, our concepts and values have undergone many changes, and we pay attention to those individuals in major events and major crises, including those in daily life. Each of us will encounter birth, old age, sickness and death, which is a crisis for the individual. Shouldn't these crises be a cause for concern? It's something that everyone has to face.

The experience of a major crisis can be very different from the experience of a day-to-day crisis. Zhu Ling passed away, and the young people here have not experienced that era, and my good friend will have completely different feelings when he talks about this matter, helpless, powerless, resentful and helpless. It's not a big deal, but the fact that so many people are talking about it today shows that we're making progress. I hope that this kind of thing will enter the field of view of historians.

Works by Shaheli Puloki. (Figure Gravitation courtesy).

Sun Ge: The tradition of Chinese historiography has always had faces and people. However, after learning from the West in modern times, history began to be socialized and impersonalized. Today, in the mainstream historical narrative, you can see events and find knowledge points, but you can't find the feeling of some people present in the uncertainty of history.

The strength of these three books is that they are written about the worst crises of the times, but at the same time they have faces—the faces of both big and small people.

We have two perspectives when we look at history and the crises of our time. One is the national perspective, which is given to us by the media and education, and it is also the perspective from which we constantly copy and reproduce with logic. The other is the perspective of living people - as a small person, people are faced with specific survival problems such as birth, old age, sickness and death, struggling in the dilemma of survival, what should he do if he wants to live?

There is a detail in Puloki's work that I have strongly felt in Japan: when a crisis comes, the people facing it do not know that it is coming. It's an important reminder, and it's a bit like how we feel when we face AI today: a little excited, a little irrelevant, and a little dangerous.

The second detail is that when scientists face such an energy that cannot be fully controlled by the nuclear, they treat it with the logic of three or seven open. For example, when a nuclear crisis strikes, the person in charge of the site thinks that a small dose of radiation can be ignored. Small doses of radiation can kill people, but these are negligible from a national perspective.

Fukushima nuclear leak area, abandoned classrooms. (Photo by Arkadiusz Podniesinski).

Back to the subject of people.

Sun Ge: Today, everyone thinks that nuclear energy is safe, and nuclear power plants are safe as long as they are built by the sea. There is an anti-nuclear scientist in Japan named Hiroaki Koide, who until 2011 worked at the Institute of Nuclear Physics at Kyoto University, but he has always been anti-nuclear. He said the nuclear power plant was "a high-end apartment without toilets" and that there was no way to dispose of nuclear waste.

Before 2011, no one knew that such a problem existed. But small people have the wisdom of small people, such as Fukushima, Fukui, and other areas where there are nuclear power plants, it is difficult for girls to marry boys in Tokyo, and the parents do not agree. Ordinary people are not stupid, they just don't say it. Small borrowed the nuclear crisis of 2011 and told it out.

Koide later said that people over 60 years old have no problem eating something with nuclear radiation, because radiation damage to the body requires an accumulation process. He also made a very unflattering suggestion that the store should have a special counter for seniors over 60 years old to store those contaminated ingredients.

Liu Suli: Zhou Qiren said that everyone wants to drink fresh milk, which should be original, delicious, and can be stored for a certain period of time, which is impossible to complete in the traditional way, but everyone has opinions on additives. So is this a problem of manufacturers, consumers or society?

Sun Ge: Koide is an honest scientist. The characteristic of scientific thinking is to set a goal and then push towards it. However, humanistic thinking should take care of human beings, a multifaceted, complex, and internally contradictory life complex, which is contradictory to scientific thinking. Koide's behavior exemplifies the typical flaws of scientific thinking.

Hiroaki Koide. (Figure Wikimedia Commons).

When we ideologize science and emphasize the need for scientific thinking to dominate everything, we are at great risk, because it means that people have to retreat to the margins of scientific thinking. Through the nuclear crisis and the myriad contradictory cases it has spawned, we have gained another opportunity.

In modern times, after science has been sacred, absolutized, and ideologized, we have ignored the more important – seemingly muddy and less glamorous – other elements that are closely related to each of our lives, and this is the core of the lives of the little people that scholars such as Zhao Shiyu salvaged in the fields. Of course, I am not challenging science, but the absolutization of scientific ideology.

Song Nianshen: Historical writing should focus on the little people, and the perspective of the individual is very important, and in the mainstream historical circles, this point does not need to be discussed. This style of writing has not been uncommon for nearly two years. In the past, it was mainly in the field of modern and modern history, because the materials were sufficient, there were diaries and oral materials left by low-level figures; Like Zhao Shiyu, they can also find a lot of materials from the inscriptions and genealogies in the countryside. As a method, it is now even traced back to medieval history and even antiquity.

Historical writing should respect the integrity of the narrative. Focusing on the discourse at the bottom is an effective complement to the national discourse. The two are a very delicate coexistence, and they are mutually constructed.

From "Chernobyl" to "Atoms and Ashes," Ploki's focus is more complex and macroscopic. The nuclear crisis is no longer just a national problem, but a global problem, extending to the modern survival of mankind as Sun Ge said. The purpose of writing about the little people is to reveal the more subtle and complex aspects of history.

Cover of The Death of Wang (September 2011 edition).

Zhao Shiyu: There is not much disagreement among the mainstream of international historiography about the care of small people or "individuals in the great waves". But there is still a big difference in the Chinese academic community, and I myself have experienced many peers who don't say it in their mouths, but don't think about it in their hearts, or think I'm different.

And in 2023, I see a change. An archaeological documentary broadcast by CCTV chose two stories when proving the value of Qin Jian's historical materials: one is the story of "Xi" written by Professor Lu Siqi, and the other is a letter from a little person in Qin Jian. This was unthinkable in the past.

The French scholar Philippe Alliers, author of The Century of Children, once said that economic history can help people understand how the little people, the obscure masses, live. In the French scholar Braudel's "The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II", we can see many specific things - the streets of Paris or the life scenes of the Venetian market; The family eats together in the kitchen. Braudel uses these things to talk about economic concepts such as food.

Academically speaking, there is still a long way to go in how to return to the theme of people. As far as the reader is concerned, when they are unable to empathize and substitute their own experiences into historical works, it is difficult to understand what the author is describing.

Liu Suli: A lot of things are like this, it must be the writer who walks in the front, the quasi-writer who walks in the middle, and then the scholar. In the past two years, the more famous ones, such as "Doctor Zhang and Dr. Wang" and "Journey to the Northeast", are quasi-literary works. Scholar Lu Tu has written several books on the theme of "China's New Workers", which shows that our scholars are aware of this matter.

Cover of the Mediterranean Sea and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II (January 2017 edition).

How the little people fought against the great waves of the times.

On-site question: Mr. Zhao mentioned "collective traumatic memory", we lack collective traumatic memory, and we also lack relevant education. What should I do if I realize that I am a small individual in the Great Wave and want to try to remember the memories of the times under the Great Wave?

Zhao Shiyu: There are many people like the Japanese scientist Hiroaki Koide mentioned by Mr. Sun Ge. When he first went against the tune, he didn't expect it to cause such a big repercussion. We can all do that, albeit not necessarily with the expertise of his.

Puloki gave us a hint. Why is this stuff written in his book? Because the information available to him became abundant. Why was there so little information in the past? In addition to the technical means, the historical outlook of the historians, or the problem of scientific ideology mentioned by Mr. Sun Ge, there are many complex reasons.

Nowadays, through various channels and means, the chances of little people being able to speak out have increased by I don't know how many times compared with the past. What we can do is not only to record every bit of us, but also to record every bit of our parents.

Individuals in the Great Waves: 'Little People Care' in Historical Writing". (Figure Gravitation courtesy).

For example, you can record your parents or even your grandparents, or let them write their own; A lot of old things left at home should not be thrown away as garbage. To give a simple example, we have experienced the period of the People's Commune for nearly half a century, and the sign was hung at the door of the office of each People's Commune, such as the People's Commune, the Revolutionary Committee, the Party Committee, etc. Later, when the State Administration of Cultural Heritage tried to collect such signs, it found that there was only one left in all of China — whereas in the past, there may have been hundreds of thousands of such signs in the country. You can imagine how many memories we usually lose inadvertently.

We need to be more attentive, to bring more initiative, to leave such things, to remember such history. As a result, the future may be different – not just for each individual, but even for our country.

End ·Editor丨Tan Shanshan.

Proofreading |Yang Chao.

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