Samuel (Sai Hay) Chan
I am Samuel Chan, a historian of Hong Kong. My thesis, titled “Accessing the Inaccessible: A Morellian Reading of Trauma in Post-1989 Hong Kong,” attempts to delineate the unconscious response of Hong Kong people to the trauma of the Tiananmen Massacre through examining seeming negligible details, or in Carlos Ginzburg’s words, “inadvertent little gestures,” in popular cultural products. My purpose is to explore how the trauma of 1989 fundamentally altered Hong Kong people’s attitude towards the Chinese government and influenced public opinion regarding the sovereignty transfer in 1997, a process that largely excluded the voice of Hong Kong people.
I am Samuel Chan, a historian of Hong Kong. My thesis, titled “Accessing the Inaccessible: A Morellian Reading of Trauma in Post-1989 Hong Kong,” attempts to delineate the unconscious response of Hong Kong people to the trauma of the Tiananmen Massacre through examining seeming negligible details, or in Carlos Ginzburg’s words, “inadvertent little gestures,” in popular cultural products. My purpose is to explore how the trauma of 1989 fundamentally altered Hong Kong people’s attitude towards the Chinese government and influenced public opinion regarding the sovereignty transfer in 1997, a process that largely excluded the voice of Hong Kong people.