Robert André LaFleur, History, Beloit College
“Contested Space, Conceded Place Negotiating Political and Historical Discord on China’s Southern Sacred Mountain”

It has often been said that “the winners write the history.” This is only partly true. Winners, more often than many realize, concede part of the narrative to those they defeat. From the American Civil War to World War II and beyond, field sites commemorate times and places of struggle that expand—and even challenge—the rhetoric of the victors.

On China’s southern sacred peak (南嶽衡山) in Hunan Province stands a square kilometer of landscaping and elaborate buildings that is celebrated by a wide variety of Chinese travelers—the focus of outsize attention in terms of historical memory and political commemoration in today’s People’s Republic of China. The Martyr’s Shrine (忠烈祠), about a third of the way up the slope, is the site of serious homage to the Nationalist forces who fought the Japanese in the late-1930s and 1940s, enduring withering bombing assaults even as they hid in mountain caverns and planned their own military strategy.

The shrine has been maintained by the People’s Republic of China, and occupies by far the largest single “politico-religious-space” on the entire mountain—larger than either the base temple or peak temple, and dwarfing the size of all others. It focuses on the very Nationalist (Guomindang; Kuomintang) forces that the Communists defeated in 1949 to take possession of the “mainland.”

So why is a major commemorative space dedicated as a shrine to these very “enemy” soldiers? The southern mountain contains the seeds of communion even between viciously opposed armies that reluctantly allied to fight a common enemy. Both Communist and Nationalist forces endured dreadful attacks in different locations. In the end, the victorious Communist government has sought a kind of political and religious statement in a shrine to the Nationalist forces that is seemingly unafraid even to acknowledge its paramount leader, Chiang Kai-shek (Jiang Jieshi). Indeed, perhaps the strangest place of commemoration is a memorial pine grove dedicated to the late, defeated general.

Space and place are often contested in key historical moments. But it is also (and never more clearly than here) conceded—sometimes for uncertain political and cultural capital. This lecture will examine the idea of contested space and, explore the similarities and differences between “contestation” and “concession” in modern Chinese history. Matters are further complicated by what the social theorist Pierre Bourdieu terms “strategies of condescension.” Such strategies—clearly at work in and on the Martyrs Shrine—bring added complexity to the idea of contested space and place. The theoretical implications are significant for work in many fields—from history and anthropology to economics, religious studies, and education.

Co-sponsored by the Department of History