Publication Type

Journal Article

Version

publishedVersion

Publication Date

1-2007

Abstract

With the coming of industry to Europe and European empire to the world, individual bodies took on a new role to represent the modern body politic in international space. [...]the Boy Scouts was established as a way of safeguarding the fitness not just of specific boys against venereal disease, but of safeguarding the general fitness of British imperial rule that was 'threatened' by miscegenational temptations in the colonies.2 2. Rather than producing and distributing positive role models of Chinese patriots like the Boy Scouts, the National Humiliation Gymnastics primer uses basically the same image to construct the community of China through the trauma of its weakness. Chinese (and South Korean) anger continues to be aroused by right-wing Japanese politicians who still deny these war crimes.8 In China the party-state worked to turn a scattered collection of specific memories of the Nanjing massacre into lasting national institutions; to mark anniversaries of the massacre a memorial hall and museum were built, feature films distributed, and dozens of commemorative photo albums and hundreds of illustrated articles published. Starting in the 1990s these haunting images spread out into cyberspace, up-loaded onto the military websites of official security studies think tanks in China,10 as well as patriotic websites maintained by transnational Chinese groups.11 When posted on the web these free-floating images are separated from any narrative that would help us to interpret their meaning - except as a provocation for the raw hatred of foreigners as devils.

Discipline

Asian Studies | Political Science

Research Areas

Political Science

Areas of Excellence

Digital transformation

Publication

Theory & Event

Volume

10

Issue

4

First Page

1

Last Page

27

ISSN

2572-6633

Publisher

Johns Hopkins University Press

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