China's Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution: Master Narratives and Post-Mao Counternarratives

Woei Lien Chong

Bloomsbury Publishing PLC, Jul 31, 2002 - History - 410 pages

Treating China's Cultural Revolution as much more than a political event, this innovative volume explores its ideological dimensions. The contributors focus especially on the CR's discourse of heroism and messianism and its demonization of the enemy as reflected in political practice, official literature, and propaganda art, arguing that these characteristics can be traced back to hitherto-neglected undercurrents of Chinese tradition. Moreover, while most studies of the Cultural Revolution are content to point to the discredited cult of heroism and messianism, this book also explores the alternative discourses that have flourished to fill the resulting vacuum. The contributors analyze the intense intellectual and artistic ferment in post-Mao China that embody resistance to CR ideology, as well as the urgent quest for authentic individuality, new forms of social cohesion, and historical truth.

Contributions by: Anne-Marie Brady, Woei Lien Chong, Lowell Dittmer, Monika Gaenssbauer, Nick Knight, Stefan R. Landsberger, Nora Sausmikat, Barend J. ter Haar, Natascha Vittinghoff, and Lan Yang.

Contents

• Rethinking Chinas Cultural Revolution amid Reform: 3
• Chinas Inner Demons The Political Impact of the Demonological Paradigm: 27
• From Harmony to Struggle from Perpetual Peace to Cultural Revolution Changing Futures in Mao Zedongs Thought: 69
• Red and Expert Chinas Foreign Friends in the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution 19661969: 93
• The Deification of Mao Religious Imagery and Practices during the Cultural Revolution and Beyond: 139
• The Ideal Socialist Hero Literary Conventions in Cultural Revolution Novels: 185
• POSTMAO COUNTERNARRATIVES: 213
• Philosophy in an Age of Crisis Three Thinkers in PostCultural Revolution China Li Zehou Liu Xiaobo and Liu Xiaofeng: 215
• Resisting Current Stereotypes Private Narrative Strategies in the Autobiographies of Former Rusticated Women: 255
• Chinas Generation X Rusticated Red Guards in Controversial Contemporary Plays: 285
• The Cultural Revolution in Feng Jicais Fiction: 319
• Bibliography: 345
• Chinese Glossary: 385
• Index: 399
• About the Contributors: 407

Popular passages

Page 366 - Summary of the Forum on the Work in Literature and Art in the Armed Forces with Which Comrade Lin Piao Entrusted Comrade Chiang Ching", Chinese Literature 9 (1967), pp.

Bibliographic information

• Title: China's Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution: Master Narratives and Post-Mao Counternarratives; World social change, ISSN 2690-9324
• Editor: Woei Lien Chong
• Edition: illustrated
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC, 2002
• ISBN: 0742518744, 9780742518742
• Length: 410 pages
• Subjects: History / Asia / China; Political Science / General; Social Science / Regional Studies