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

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

• ISBN13: 9780742518735
• ISBN10: 0742518736
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2002-08-15
• Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

Summary

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.

Table of Contents

Editor's Preface	vii
Introduction	ix
Lowell Dittmer
Part I. Master Narratives
Rethinking China's Cultural Revolution amid Reform	3	(24)
Lowell Dittmer
China's Inner Demons: The Political Impact of the Demonological Paradigm	27	(42)
Barend J. ter Haar
From Harmony to Struggle, from Perpetual Peace to Cultural Revolution: Changing Futures in Mao Zedong's Thought	69	(24)
Nick Knight
Red and Expert: China's ``Foreign Friends'' in the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, 1966--1969	93	(46)
Anne-Marie Brady
The Deification of Mao: Religious Imagery and Practices during the Cultural Revolution and Beyond	139	(46)
Stefan R. Landsberger
The Ideal Socialist Hero: Literary Conventions in Cultural Revolution Novels	185	(30)
Lan Yang
Part II. Post-Mao Counternarratives
Philosophy in an Age of Crisis. Three Thinkers in Post-Cultural Revolution China: Li Zehou, Liu Xiaobo, and Liu Xiaofeng	215	(40)
Woei Lien Chong
Resisting Current Stereotypes: Private Narrative Strategies in the Autobiographies of Former Rusticated Women	255	(30)
Nora Sausmikat
China's Generation X: Rusticated Red Guards in Controversial Contemporary Plays	285	(34)
Natascha Vittinghoff
The Cultural Revolution in Feng Jicai's Fiction	319	(26)
Monika Gaenssbauer
Bibliography	345	(40)
Glossary	385	(14)
Index	399	(8)
About the Contributors	407