| This thesis examines narratives of Taiwan's 228 Incident, the uprising and subsequent massacres that began on February 28, 1947, and considers their contribution to the social and political construction of a cultural trauma. I argue that representations of personal trauma, as evinced by politicians and artists acting as cultural agents, construct a symbolic and mythologized 228 Incident in the imagination of the people of Taiwan, as they battle to attribute ownership of the event to different victim groups. In order to analyse this construction, I consider the historical and political understandings of the events before reviewing short stories by Taiwanese authors, Tzeng Ching-wen, Ch'en Ying-chen and Li Ang. |
