‘Power of One’: Situating the ‘Iris Chang Phenomenon’ in the National/Transnational Remembering of the Nanjing Massacre

This article examines the 'Iris Chang phenomenon'—the hypervisibility of Chang in the national/transnational remembering of the Nanjing Massacre—which recalls memories dialectically to become relevant to Chinese socio-political and cultural transformations. It mainly investigates why and how Chang's historical narratives have altered Chinese official discourses and triggered transnational literary and cinematic works that resist simplifying history into heroes and victims. Specifically, it analyzes how Chang's moving body in the dance drama Deep in Memory functions as a conduit for transmitting the national trauma and makes history felt affectively and viscerally in the present. Overall, this article argues that Chang has been mobilized as an ethnic, cultural, and political signifier that unceasingly recalls the past to shape the Chinese public's historical consciousness regarding World War II.