The history of Tibet under Chinese Communist rule is a neglected area within Tibetan studies and more broadly for some compelling reasons. The legitimacy of the Chinese state in Tibet depends to an exceptional degree on the control of history: essential documentary material is monopolized by the state and carefully restricted, and critical study of the past is not tolerated. State-approved narratives are actively cultivated, and contradictory voices are silenced: as a (precommunist) Tibetan proverb puts it, “The parrot is caged because it talks. Mute birds come and go freely” (Tib. ne tso smra bas gseb tu tshud / ’dab chags lkugs pa bde bar rgyu).
Conflicting Memories, the final outcome of a panel at the 2013 Seminar of the International Association for Tibetan Studies in Ulaanbaatar (which most Tibetan participants from China were prevented from attending), takes as its theme the constraints under which “memoirs, history, fiction, films and oral narratives produced within China since the late 1970s which describe the early encounters of Tibetans with the new China and the CCP [Chinese Communist Party]” (p. 19) have been produced. This focus on the limitations of history and memory proves to be a fruitful approach, generating a rich and diverse yet coherent collection of thirteen studies that explore the politics of talking about the past in the highly charged environment of contemporary Tibet. Frequent use is made of the term “re-remembering,” which is not rigorously defined or developed theoretically but is simply apt for expressing the heavy mediation of narratives of the past by the exigencies of the present in a variety contexts, ranging from officially produced histories to informal interviews.
The outstanding quality of many of the contributions makes this collection an encouraging statement of progress in the academic study of modern Tibetan history, particularly as several of the contributors belong to a new generation of up-and-coming scholars. The essays are supplemented by relevant documents in translation, which add welcome substance and perspective, as well as a comprehensive introduction by coeditor Robert Barnett; it all amounts to a considerable bulk, nearly 700 pages, but lucid presentation and careful editing make light of the material. The collection is arranged in five sections: official narratives of the 1950s “Liberation”; contradictory interpretations of key events; oral accounts of collectivization and the Maoist era; literary accounts of the events of 1958 in Amdo; and accounts by religious figures.
The first section includes two substantial studies of the “Cultural and Historical Materials” (Ch. Wenshi Ziliao) series produced by the United Front during the reform era (1980s–) that are relevant to this inquiry. Benno Weiner reviews the Qinghai series with impressive clarity, illustrating the contradictions involved in the post-Mao rehabilitation of local elites and reinvocation of the spirit of the early 1950s. Alice Travers presents a highly informative overview of the Tibet Autonomous Region series, finding there more nuance to the “articulation between personal testimonies and the goals of political legitimation” (p. 133). Barnett takes the inquiry into the visual realm with an excursus on representations of the early Sino-Tibetan encounter in Chinese film and TV drama, finding that although these have become more beautified and romanticized in the reform era, the main themes—that Tibet is backward and China's presence there is beneficial—have not changed.
In the second section, Alex Raymond argues incisively that “Peaceful Liberation” was not the CCP's initial intention for Tibet but rather a necessity dressed up as a virtue by official narratives. Chung Tsering assesses the widely differing perceptions of veteran politician Ngaphö Ngawang Jigme in Tibetan society. These contributions, to which I would add Bianca Horlemann's essay on the Liberation of Golok in section 1, while related to the overall theme of the collection, are simply critical studies of history that seek to unsettle dominant narratives and received wisdoms. Such studies, I would suggest, are essential to the development of the history of modern Tibet and warrant further collections like this one in future.
In the remaining sections, expert guides take us into the grimly fascinating territory of accounts by ordinary Tibetan witnesses of the terrible years. In two illuminating studies in oral history, Dáša Pejchar Mortenson examines the causes of “historical amnesia” about the Cultural Revolution in Gyalthang (now renamed “Shangri La,” where many elders “felt that the emotional hurdles were too high, and the political risks too great for them . . . to educate the younger generation about the past”; p. 300), and Charlene Makley, Donyol Dondrup, and Abho foreground methodological dilemmas in an interview about 1958 with a rehabilitated village leader in Rebkong, to “illustrate the exquisitely subtle art and politics of oral history among Tibetans in the PRC” (p. 331). The accompanying translations of oral accounts transcribed by Shamdo Rinzang and Orgyan Nyima are an excellent contribution to this genre. Françoise Robin looks at literary retellings of the events of 1958 in Amdo with reference to the idea of “postmemory,” pointing out that it is only in “literary representations by Tibetan writers who are sons and daughters of victims and survivors” (p. 420) that these cataclysmic events have been publicly memorialized. Xénia de Heering presents a study of the most remarkable of these retellings, the autobiographical novel by Naktsang Nulo, who eludes political constraints and expectations by narrating the experiences of his youth in the naive voice of a bewildered child.
The final section explores the perspective of persecuted Buddhist masters and their biographers, people whose training had prepared them to expect catastrophic change as an intrinsic part of worldly existence and to face it with equanimity, or take it as an opportunity for spiritual growth. In studies of the autobiographies of two of Tibet's great twentieth-century religious scholars (by Nicole Willock), and the biographies of a charismatic yogi (by M. Maria Turek) and a master painter (by Geoffrey Barstow), we are shown the uses of these traditional genres to “re-envisage the recent traumatic Tibetan encounter with the Chinese Communist state” and, as Barstow puts it, “celebrate subaltern survival” (p. 548).
Chilling as the human stories told in Conflicting Memories are, they are the product of an era of “liberalization” that is now over: field research of the kind that underpins these studies is now hardly possible in Tibet, and writers and cultural figures who are not actively employed in relaying state messages have mostly been detained in recent years or silenced by other means. In China's present “New Era,” there is no place for conflicting memories.
