Abstract: »Since its publication in 2017, Fang Si-Qi’s First Love Paradise has become one of the quintessential #MeToo novels in Chinese-language spaces. While many discussions on the novel have focused on its provocative depiction of sexual violence, this paper explores the formation of post-traumatic subjectivity in the acts of writing and translating. I will examine the author, Lin Yi-Han's reflection on the aesthetic injunction to translate, re-member, and re-present violence through the use of fictional language. Theoretically, I draw from Veena Das (2006)’s thesis that a personal experience can be “dressed” in discursive excess and that “being able to draw a boundary itself raises the issue of the experience of limit” (4). Therefore, injustice should not be approached by re-dressing what has been wrongfully connotated, but rather by considering the “possibility that words might become untethered from their origins” (163). First Love Paradise exemplifies Lin’s intentionally “disgraceful writing” to grapple with precisely such a singular representational mode of speaking about sexual violence. I argue that the author’s deliberate contrasts between singular instances of injury and mass killings, between the anonymity of #MeToo and its inevitable publicity, and, above all, between living and writing transpire a desire to confront the politics of translating violence.« (Source: Online Program)

Wikipedia: History of Asia: History of China / History of Taiwan (1945–present) | Literature: Taiwanese literature / Lin Yi-han, Fang Si-Chi's First Love Paradise | Sex and the law: Sexual violence