This panel offers an interdisciplinary conversation on the polemical relation between violence and emotionality, as represented in three dramatic and fictional works from China’s seventeenth century, an epoch haunted by war and chaos, bandits and rebellion. The late imperial Chinese state’s attitude towards violence is characterized by a firm belief that “physical coercion, education, [and] moral suasion” could transform the most noncompliant individuals into members of a civil community (Robinson 2001). However, the rich body of visual representations, theatrical works, jottings, and documentary materials of this era unravel a far livelier and more complicated tableau of emotionality, bodily defiance, and visceral politics in response to atrocious fate and trauma. Emotionality at the personal and collective levels illustrate how civilians and communities strived to cope with violence and resisted the plight of victimhood. The panelists explore the interconnections of violence and emotion within the contexts of a rising commercial culture, social change, and impending rebellion and warfare. Together, these presentations explore written and performed accounts of crisis, violence, and trauma as part of the global horizons of the turbulent seventeenth century.

Wenbo Chang’s presentation “Death of a Roving Peddler: Chaos and Violence in A Load of Cinnabarite: Dripping Water and Floating Foams (1615) examines a zaju play in its manuscript edition. Chang explores how chaos and violence are interpreted and theatricalized in the context of urban culture. The play features a hero of the merchant class traditionally positioned at the bottom of social hierarchy, represented by a weak and morally ambiguous roving peddler who is in his pursuit of personal welfare. When forced to confront chaos and violence personified by a bandit of unrestrained lust, the roving peddler repeatedly outwits the bandit and wards off danger by propitiation, negotiation, and coaxing, and demonstrates shrewdness, stamina, and self-control. His murder by the bandit highlights his all-too-human vulnerability of desire. By examining the staging of the peddler’s unheroic fight with a bandit in defense of his interest in zaju theater, Chang explores the agency of ordinary and powerless individuals, adding a new perspective to the study of human response to chaos and violence in light of growing commercialism and the changing social ethics and literary imaginations in late Ming.

Zhaokun Xin, in “Violence and Utterance: How Can ‘Yang Siwen’ Contribute to Trauma Studies?” explores war violence, forced displacement, and the question of ineffability in trauma studies. Cathy Caruth’s characterization of trauma as “amnesiac and unspeakable” has undergone revision that affirms traumatized subjects’ agency in articulating extreme experiences, especially via alternative registers to prose narrative. Studies on the Ming (1368-1644)-Qing (1644-1911) transition paid increasing attention to poetry and drama as prominent genres that mediate remnant subjects' utterance of traumatic experiences. Xin draws on a colloquial story “Yang Siwen Encounters His Old Acquaintances in Yanshan” to complicate the debates on the interrelation between trauma, violence, and utterance. Set in the Song-Jin dynastic transition, this story demonstrates the shift of genres, rather than specific ones per se, as the indicator of trauma's utterance. It challenges the dichotomous model of effability vs. ineffability as the two polarities, and illustrates that speaking about traumatic sufferings does not mean speaking them out. The proliferating retelling of the ghostly heroine’s displacement and death in “Yang Siwen” highlights the distinction between speakability and spokenness of trauma, and questions the possibility of witnessing extreme violence.

Alison Bailey’s topic is “Dispatches from the Front: Military Pragmatism and the Emotions of Loyalty in Record of Crimson Loyalty in Liaohai (1630).” Debates around the execution for treason in 1629 of general Mao Wenlong indicate that Lu Renlong’s (1587-1666) novel was a partisan defence of Mao. Bailey examines how the uneasy mix of pragmatic reports of military campaigns, and the emotionality of heroic loyalty, combine to shape the rhetoric of that defence and provide a vivid picture of front-line battles. Lu’s text is both reportage and plea for justice, building a case to restore Mao’s reputation and alert readers to the growing Manchu threat. The current affairs novel was a late Ming phenomenon created to critique chaotic times and advocate for policy change. The rhetorical strategies Lu employs bear urgent witness to his insistence on getting the word out, providing accurate information, and presenting evidence to right an injustice, while utilizing emotionally resonant terms to stir sympathetic responses and win his case. Tracing the powerful valency of emotions linked to violence in Lu’s novel gives insight into their representation in 17th-century China.