The Breath of Knowledge under Historical Violence: A Study of Zhang Ling's Traumatic Writing
This paper examines Zhang Ling's Golden Mountain Blues (2009) and The Sands of Time (2016), focusing on the interplay between historical violence and the conditons of knowledge. By analyzing the characters and narratives, it reveals how historical trauma— embodied in scars, death, and disease—shapes the conditions of knowledge and its carriers. The study argues that in Zhang's writing, knowledge assumes a form of "spirituality" that moves transcendentally between history and individual destiny. It further contends that this "breath" of knowledge not only illuminates the entangled dynamics of history and memory in the transnational Chinese experience, but also offers a critical perspective for reassessing the cultural significance of contemporary Chinese literature within a global theoretical horizon.
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