Week 10, Nov. 9 : G.P.C.R., II. The Unknown Cultural Revolution.
Readings:
1. Final chapter from Richard Kraus: The CR: A Short Introduction.
2. Gao Mobo, “Debating the Cultural Revolution,” Critical Asian Studies.
3. Wang Zheng, “Call me Qingnian but not Funu: A Maoist Youth in Retrospect”; Some of Us: Chinese Women Growing Up in the Mao Era.
Week 11, Nov. 16 : TBA
Paper #2 Due date: November 20 Monday
Week 12, Nov. 23: Cultural Fever & the 1980s. Back to the Future?
Readings :
SCREENING: Xia Jun’s He Shang (Parts 4 and 6)
河殤 [錄影資料] / 中央電視臺 ; 總撰稿蘇曉康, 王魯湘 ; 製片黃每文 ; 製片人 王宋, 郭寶祥
SAMPLE: http://www.archive.org/details/ ddtv_40_china_presenting_river_elegy
WANG ZHENG’S ESSAY
“Call me Qingnian but not Funu…. “
WANG ZHENG piece… from Some of US…. Read-through parts of this together….
“Gender neutral” and “gender neutrality”: what does this mean? It is contradictory in that it still says gender exists or is there BUT should not and does not matter in terms of what women and men can do. They are the same in social or
ethical/political terms. Put another way: the sexual differences b/ w men and women – anatomy – should be disconnected from gender roles. Gender is social and political not natural. “Parts are parts” and not our concern. This gender neutrality is a basic Enlightenment notion and can be found in Mary Wollstonecraft for example (18th century) and in older, egalitarian societies (women warriors, for ex,) . It also says nothing about sexual orientation or sexuality. This keeps it from being a profoundly feminist theory but it is nonetheless a socialist/radical one about equality of gender/people, esp in the name of class: as in
WZ says: Does NOT mean that gender did not exist in Mao era.... There was still a gendering process going on and by no means could traditional culture or ways of seeing men and women just disappear overnight. .... see pp 38-41. But there was a concerted, planned attempt to make it go away and replace it with a gender neutral and egalitarian and revolutionary mindset or morality.
“gender neutral subject position” of Maoist discourse.... 51 subject position of a socialist constructor”... 37... “few gender constraints in our devotion to the revolution”.... 50
Cheerleader example—37 NEED this point.... If the Maoist state was into manipulation/production of identities for women and men (which it was) then in the USA (and elsewhere) you see a shaping influence through the mainstream/normal culture or environment. Individuals are shaped in a variety of ways in communist or non-communist societies.
Social construction point: it runs out that gender is malleable or can be changed, though it take great effort to do so. It went away, sometimes, for WZ’s generation (a/c to her analysis). It was still there but fading. In post-Mao China the production of “femininity” comes back strongly. …. “State manipulation” (so-called) or social engineering…. The point in Wang’s final
paragraph. .. >>>>Ie propaganda and moral education: individual autonomy vs collective belonging. Roles and responsibility of the state.
Recall the character of Li JiJinfeng in Breaking….. Gender politics and “gender neutrality”: women can be
revolutionaries just like men. They are not to be defined by their sex, romance, and so on. There is no romance or
understood as social roles/expectations/beliefs about the nature of women (and men) on the basis of their
sexual/’natural’ differences.] The Maoist idea was on
contrast about “gender neutrality”: gender is neutral and it or ‘natural’ sexual difference doesn’t mean anything in itself. Should make no social or political difference. Women can do whatever men can do. [we will talk about this
more…]
2. Gao Mobo, “Debating the Cultural Revolution,” Critical Asian Studies.
Mobo Gao: “Debating…?” essay: it makes some challenging theoretical points and has a lot of detail as well—I don’t expect you to master it all, but try to absorb as much of this as you can.
1. Even the points made in the footnotes, and the citations, are important because they establish an empirical basis to re-evaluate the CR and refute the common sense about it. For example, it is simply not true that Maoist China was economically backward and a disaster. There were about 4 bad years out of 30 during that era. That is actually pretty
remarkable, when the other years were very high and egalitarian growth.
is a relative or constructed belief and NOT the Real Truth, and ideological, even when we are dealing with something as large and allegedly “well known” as the reality of the CR (the terrible aspects). Or esp when we are dealing with such important and widely referred to events. It’s not that Gao has the one single, Real Truth about the CR, which is too complicated to be reduced to a simple good/bad opposition. We only have truths about it and the unrelentingly negative one about violence and terror and so on is both an ELITE perspective and at odds with other aspects of this ten year period. The elite point is just that those who were the biggest victims of the CR were children and adults who were elite— high up in the Party, from well-educated
backgrounds, descendants of the former rich or landlords, and so on. This may not justify the bad and unfair things that happened to them-- the point I just that it does make their stories and
remembrances or histories elite.
A. Laobaixing
3. 423 to 425 of “Debating” essay. And also on the positive aspects: from Gao Village, 159-170.
4. 431-432 of ‘Debating…” for some of the theoretical issues underlying all of this..
Holocaust/Nazi comparisons (CR was like a holocaust): ridiculously off the mark.
Violence: Not top down or ordered from above, a la Stalin’s purges of the 1930s. [According to Gao.] The violence existed and we have to think of the CR, esp. in its first 2 years, as akin to a civil war and hence think of fighting and battles between Red Guard Groups and later b/w them and the Army (sent in to stop the RG battles). The huge majority of causalities were RG youth themselves, not citizen/non-participants (i.e bystanders/civilians). This does not absolve the violence, of course. But we need to try and understand it correctly.
Historiography and elite history versus popular history and
the laobaixing experience…. Of the CR and Mao era.
Ordinary, non-elite people had and have a different experience and different memory of the CR.
Intentions and Goals: What were the aims of the CR and of different groups and actors? We barely know but has to be more than simple pursuit of political power. What if we have good or valid intentions and bad results?
