History, Temporality, and the Interdynastic Experience: Yu Binshuo’s Survey of Nanjing (ca. 1672)

Abstract

T he calamitous events of the jiashen 甲申 year (1644) and their traumatic aftermath, eventually culminating in the complete capitulation of the Ming dynasty, precipitated a profound and prolonged cultural transition that lingered long after memories of the military takeover had begun to fade. As suggested by the term "remnant subject" (yimin 遺民)-the traditional designation for one who had grown to maturity under a previous dynasty and maintained loyalty to it-dynastic transition brought a heightened awareness of the Abstract: In this article, I examine the place of second-generation "remnant subjects" in the struggle to reconstruct Han literati collective identity following the traumatic Ming-Qing transition. The work of one such figure-Yu Binshuo (d. 1722), son of the betterknown Yu Huai (1616-1696)-can be read as a response to inherited cultural trauma. Temporally removed from the Ming past, Yu's Survey of the Ancient Sites of Jinling presents a subtly different kind of engagement with Ming cultural heritage than works of the eyewitness generation, yet Yu's reimagining of Nanjing's spatial order represents a discursive coping strategy that attempts to reclaim subjectivity in a time of loss. Understanding that loss as cultural trauma-a threat to both past and future identity-helps us to make sense of people's experience of the extended cultural transition from Ming to Qing, as well as the operation and transmission of trauma more generally. 摘要：本文通過探究余賓碩寫的《金陵覽古》 ，對第二代遺民在清初社會的影響做 了重新思索。雖然甲申之變時余氏尚幼，但他寫的六十首懷古詩表現了他對於明 朝的深切怀想。作者認為，余氏所關注的是明朝的歷史記憶，及明代古跡在南京 史上的地位。 Acknowledgments: This article has benefited greatly from the judicious comments of the editors and several reviewers, particularly those of Chuck Wooldridge, for which I am extremely grateful.