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

(Paperback)

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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.

Reviews

A very professional collection of essays. Standards of scholarship are high, and the essays are often provocative and informative....Many readers would benefit from its careful assessments, especially as the Western propaganda media too often simplify the Cultural Revolution as a cartoon of mob rule in which members of the Red Guard generation apparently spent an entire decade doing nothing but worshipping Mao and beating their teachers to death. * The China Journal *
China's Great Proletarian Revolution derives a little bit of extra fragrance from excellent bibliographies, a glossary of Chinese terms and a combined index at the end. * Pacific Affairs *

Author Bio

Woei Lien Chong is lecturer and researcher in Contemporary Chinese Philosophy, Sinological Institute, Leiden University, The Netherlands.