Wow! Can’t believe we have all made it to the end of term two in our first year at UBC! I want to say thank you to everyone in our ASTU course as well as everyone in the GPC CAP for creating an atmosphere atmosphere great for academic discussions.

To be very frank, I am not the biggest fan of the ASTU class since I struggle from time to time during the course, but I do genuinely love what Professor Luger was trying to tell us in the course! The ASTU 100 class focused on contemporary literatures, many of the literatures are surrounding the topics of contemporary events and struggles as well as trauma. The literature we focused on were mainly on three topics: the post-9/11 world, the Viet Nam War and the struggle of the Indigenous population in Canada. As a person who was born after or was too young to understand what were happening around us, these world-changing events might seem to have so little to do with our lives nowadays at first glance. However, no matter how we would like to find a way to distant ourselves with those events that might have portrayed the darkest side of human beings, it is inevitable those events are still having tremendous influence in the world we are currently living in.

The best way for us human to not repeat mistakes we made in the past is not to ignore them, but to acknowledge what was done was done and try to look for the reasons behind. In my opinion, ASTU 100 offers us a great chance to review the tragedies many of us may choose to ignore. One of the topics in term 2 to me would be discrimination towards people from certain ethnicity. I would argue one of the reasons of discrimination in the past was due to the dominant narrative in the past. Not that people in the past wanted to be racist but rather they lived in a society where discrimination towards a non-white person was seen as the norm. In Abel’s Injun, Abel highlighted the use of some racially discriminating words that were in literature of the past. One of the biggest way people perceive the world is through literatures, people at the time were influenced by the literature written with a racial bias, possibly making the readers racially biased as well. That is why I am very hopeful that the future is bright since the master narrative have changed into embracing differences between people.

Again, here I would like to thank everyone who has been a part of my first year in UBC, I have truly learnt a lot in this friendly environment. The ASTU class will always be one of the most memorable course in my university life。

At the beginning of the ASTU 100 course, we went over Tangled Memories by Sturken. In the part of Memory and Forgetting, Sturken mentioned big powers could utilize strategic/ organized forgetting to reduce the national consciousness of people from a region within the country that may see themselves as an independent nation (e.g., case of Catalonia in Spain) (7). One of the ways of strategic forgetting would be countries defining languages with different approaches that a linguist would define languages. By doing this, countries can either unite or divide people, stating that they are speaking the same language, so they are people from the same country or stating that they are speaking different languages, so they are people of different nations. This topic was explored both in our Political Science and Linguistics class.

By linguistics standard, two persons speaking different dialects of the same language should be able to communicate without having to learn the language the other person is speaking, which is called mutually intelligibility. For example, if a person speaking with a heavy Scottish accent English to a North American speaker, though the North American Speaker may not be able to comprehend a 100% of the Scottish English Speaker, he should still be able to understand most words in a sentence and have not much of a problem communicating with each other.

In Political Science, we talked about languages could be used for nation building and for unity within a nation. By promoting an official language in a country with multiple languages spoken and having schools teaching the official language sure does help promoting Nationalism and belonging to a country. For example, there are many branches such as Cantonese and Mandarin within “Chinese” that the branches are not mutually intelligible – a Mandarin speaker cannot communicate with a Cantonese speaker without learning Cantonese. If a Linguist has to determine whether Cantonese and Mandarin are dialects of the same language, the Linguist will probably say no. However, China would consider “Chinese” as one language in order to unify their people. China is a giant-sized country with a plethora of mutually intelligible languages being spoken, from the country’s viewpoint, having to many languages within a China may lead to parts of the country fighting for independence, especially the case of Hong Kong and Macau, Cantonese-speaking former Western colonies. Indeed, in recent year, there is a policy from by the Hong Kong Government (which its power came from the Mainland China Government) to slowly decrease the importance of Cantonese, such as teaching Chinese subject at schools with Mandarin instead of Cantonese. I myself came from an elementary school having Chinese subject conducted in Mandarin. Before I got into my Secondary School, I would say my ability and knowledge to Cantonese, my mother tongue, was much worse than many of my schoolmates in my secondary school.

There are many languages around the world that are in a similar situation with Cantonese, such as Catalan and Basque spoken in regions of Spain. Sometimes regimes assume speakers of a minority language have a higher tendence to cause “chaos” in the country and therefore they many choose to suppress certain languages in their own country. As a person who experienced the suppression myself, I would say suppression is never the best strategy since the rise localism of Hong Kong came after the suppression. Instead, why can’t we respect and appreciate differences between people?

In the illustrated memoir “The Best We Could Do”, Bui illustrated the situation when she and her parents were discussing a photo about a Vietnamese general shooting in the head of a Viet Cong prisoner (206). Nam, Thi’s dad, talked about that was the photo made many of the Americans view the South Vietnam negatively, however, what the public omitted was the context behind the killing of the Viet Cong prisoner.

I did a little research on the photo after reading that page. The actual name of the photo on page 206 of the book is “Execution of Nguyen Van Lem”, taken by Associate Press photographer Eddie Adams.

Picture of South Vietnam general Nguyen Ngoc Loan pointing his gun towards Nguyen Van Lem, captain of  Viet Cong .

The photograph won Adams the 1969 Pulitzer Prize for Spot News Photography. Showing the unnecessary use of violent by a general from the South Vietnam, Adam’s work caused outrage among the US citizens and accelerated the anti-war movement in the US.

However, what is often neglected, is the context behind the execution– earlier the day, Nguyen Van Lem murdered the whole family of a South Vietnam lieutenant colonel. Of course, knowing what Nguyen Van Lem has done before cannot completely justify the summarily execution. Yes, no killing is morally acceptable, but the blame that was borne by the general is un-proportional. The person being executed is not an innocent Vietnamese man, but a criminal who destroyed another person’s family earlier.

The blame on General Nguyen Ngoc Loan followed him. The general fled to the US after the fall of Saigon. He had tremendous pressure and he closed his pizzeria after being discovered as the man in Adam’s photo. Adams regretted taking the picture without also taking a picture of Nguyen Van Lem killing the family. He thought he “killed” the general with his camera.

Photos could be a great source for us to be informed what are happening or what happened in somewhere we are not able to go ourselves. But it could be dangerous– only by looking at the photo without proper context could lead to conclusions that are way off of the truth.

We all have our very own bad moments, if the photo used to represent us were taken in our worst moments, we would all seem like terrible human beings. That is why, when trying to judge/ interpret something through third parties like media or social platforms, it is best for us try to also understand the context behind.

After the tragic event of 9/11 in 2001, the US government started a “War on Terror” in mainly Muslim countries such as Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya etc. that lasted for 20 years. Although the war involves invading territories outside of the US, politicians justify it as an act that protect the US and the world from Terrorism. True, terrorist groups such as al-Qaeda and ISIS/ISIL were greatly suppressed thanks to the military force, but that fact is that civilians in those countries suffered the most. For those civilians, they may not be supporting the actions of terrorists, but they are killed by both US and ISIS/ al-Qaeda soldiers, their homes were raided, destroyed. To people outside of those countries in war, people may just treat them as just another unlucky person that born in the wrong place or a “threat” because “they stand by the terrorists”, while soldiers who soldiers that killed them are remembered as “heroes” for making the world safer.

In “Frames of War: When is Life Grievable?”, Judith Butler suggest that they could be seen as “threats” but not “lives” to us (42). The lives of threats are significant and not grievable.  American soldiers that died on the war field are seen as sacrificing their lives to protect their families, their homes and their country, they are remembered, they are honored, their names are carved on memorials. On the other hand, under influence of politicians and mass media (that could be to a certain extent controlled by the government and politicians), we tend to ignore lives of muslim states civilians. I am not trying to discredit what soldiers who fought for our safety and freedom, but rather to contrast the unfairness of treatment between the two types of people.

In the first chapter of “Redeployment”, Klay portray the inability of Sergeant Price to adapt to  a normal life when he returned to his hometown, Wilmington. The first chapter of the book ended with Sergeant Price using his gun to shoot his old and dying dog to end his pain. When we were talking about the scene on class, I remember many of us thought it was “cruel” and “terrible” to shoot a cute pet dog. It inspired me to think: why was killing people in Iraq okay for us but killing a pet dog is not? This links back to Butler’s point: Iraqis are treated as “threats” and the pet dog Vicar is treated as “special friend of human”, therefore, we decide who to grieve for. Also, on the class, we talked about what the scene and Vicar represent for Sergeant Price. I believe Vicar is a symbol of Sergeant Price’s normal life and his humanity. By killing the dog, a part of Sergeant Price died.

Humans are proud to be human beings because we possess virtues that many other forms of life do not – empathy and sympathy. Are we becoming less human when we celebrate for and justify the death of people we are less related to?

With the ongoing globalization as well as the widespread of cheaper and more advanced  traveling and communicational technologies (such as cheaper air tickets and cell phones), it is inevitable that the mobility of people from a country to another has been greatly enhanced. As a result, more and more people could move overseas to pursue the lives they wanted by leaving the place they originally come from – that is when, transnational communities are formed. According to sociology scholar Sergio Chavez definition of transnational communities in “Boarder Lives, Fronterizos, Transnational Migrants, and Commuters in Tijuana” (2016), they are: “communities, that is, whose member leaves their homes and settle in another country but nevertheless maintain important connections with those original homes.”

The forming of transnational communities were harder in the past since those who wanted to leave a place may be unwilling to give up connections they had in the place so they turned out staying in the place they originally from or for those who left a place they lost most connections to people they knew due to the lack of cheap and convenient communication platform at the time. For example, international mailing took days for mails to travel from country to country. These constraints now would no longer be a problem with the rise of social medias and popularization of messaging applications.

As a person from Hong Kong, I can definitely feel how easy it is today to form transnational communities. Hong Kong has been known as a very small city with a highly dense population – over seven million people live in the city! There had been various waves of emigration especially in 1997 when Hong Kong was decolonized from the British Empire and transferred to China and since 2019 which the Anti-Extraditon Law Amendment Bill (Anti-ELAB) Movement broke out. Many Hongkongers could have little faith in Hong Kong’s future under China with her ambition to gain greater-than-ever control over Hong Kong in every aspects and would see living elsewhere more prosperous and just, livable, than staying in Hong Kong.

(Roughly Around one million of protestors in black protesting peacefully on June 16th, 2019)

Here is an interesting example that involves myself. As students, approaching the end of high school life, students face a question: to continue study here or overseas? For my best friends and I, three out of four chose to receive higher education in foreign countries (The UK and Canada). But guess what, despite the all differences geographically and differences in time zones(GMT+8, GMT+1, GMT-7), we still chat very often using applications like Skype or Whatsapp, we still pay attention to things happening back home. I believe, unintentionally, we are forming a transnational community.

(Photo of me and my friends at Hong Kong International Airport)

My experience shows how easy to form transnational communities – having a significant of people in a community to live in foreign countries and having ways for them to connect back to where they come from, boom! Here goes a transnational communities.

I believe transnational communities will be easier to be achieved in the future. With more and more opportunities globally, transnational communities could also be formed when people work or study overseas. We, may already be a part of a translational community without knowing.

P.S. The topic of this blog is inspired by one of the slides on Wednesday’s Pre-recorded lecture. This is a personal topic to me and I got emotional while writing the blog so it could be more subjective than it should be.

Sturken writes that “Cultural memory is a field of negotiation through which different stories vie for a place in history.”(Sturken). To interpret the meaning of Sturken’s words, a good way to  start is by looking at the definitions of wordings used in the sentence.

Cultural (adj.) : relating to the habits, traditions, and beliefs of a society
Memory (n.) : something that you remember from the past
Negotiation (n.) : the process of discussing something with someone in order to reach an agreement with them, or the discussions themselves
Vie (v.) : to compete with other to achieve or get something
History (n.) : (a record of) past events considered together, especially events of a particular period, country, or subject.
(definitions from Cambridge Dictionary: dictionary.cambridge.org)

As the saying goes: “History is Written by Victors.” (quoted by Winston Churchill). What we know as “History” nowadays about an event happened 50 years ago might not reflect the exact fact at the time. We may have a hard time to confirm the genuineness of the history that we are told unless we were there to witness. Though history usually sound objective, but it could easily be controlled by the power or the regime. What is left in the history book could be filtered, selected by the power.

For example, Tiananmen Square Massacre happened in China on June 4th & 5th, 1989, could be considered history rewritten be the regime. Information of the event is still unable to be found on Chinese Search engines such as Baidu. The victims’ families form a group called “Tiananmen Mothers” that hope the Chinese government to admit and explain what happened at the square.
Iconic Picture taken on June 5th at Tiananmen Square (BBC News https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-48445934)

Sometimes, history could be the result of negotiation. History could be what the majority of the people agree on in certain events. Since not everyone was at a place to witness everything happen. For example, at war times, since not everyone could survive, different people may come back with different stories because they may have slight differences in their experiences or their experiences were from different point of view. It is then up for the people to decide which side to trust, what is trusted will then be considered “history”. Sometimes, not the story with the highest authenticity would be considered “true” in society, rather what society think fits their value would be considered “true”.

An example for this would be what happened on United Air Flight 93 on September 11, 2001. After being hijacked by terrorists, the plane eventually crashed in Somerest Country, Pennsylvania.
UA 93’s flight path (Wikipedia, United Air Flight 93            https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Airlines_Flight_93)
It was believed that the intended target was the US Capitol Building. However, it was believed that the bravery of passengers on flight 93 that stopped the flight reaching Washington D.C.. Though no concrete evidence could prove the attack failed is contributed by the passengers, most still believed in the story. Not questioning the bravery of passengers on flight 93, but the story the public chose the believe in to somewhat extent it the explanation that fits the “American Spirit”.

To conclude, my interpretation to Sturken’s quote is that history may not be 100% of the truth, but rather what the power or what we the people want to believe.

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