Cultural Revolution and Revolutionary Culture

Alessandro Russo

• Publisher: Duke University Press Books
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN:
  9781478009528
  9781478008590
• eBook ISBN:
  9781478012184
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Chinese History
• Index: History

In Cultural Revolution and Revolutionary Culture, Alessandro Russo presents a dramatic new reading of China's Cultural Revolution as a mass political experiment aimed at thoroughly reexamining the tenets of communism. Russo explores four critical phases of the Cultural Revolution, each with its own reworking of communist political subjectivity: the historical-theatrical "prologue" of 1965; Mao's attempts to shape the Cultural Revolution in 1965 and 1966; the movements and organizing between 1966 and 1968 and the factional divides that ended them; and the mass study campaigns from 1973 to 1976 and the unfinished attempt to evaluate the inadequacies of the political decade that brought the Revolution to a close. Among other topics, Russo shows how the dispute around the play Hai Rui Dismissed from Office was not the result of a Maoist conspiracy, but rather a series of intense and unresolved political and intellectual controversies. He also examines the Shanghai January Storm and the problematic foundation of the short-lived Shanghai Commune. By exploring these and other political-cultural moments of Chinese confrontations with communist principles, Russo overturns conventional wisdom about the Cultural Revolution.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Part I. A Theatrical Prologue
• Part II. Mao’s Anxiety and Resolve
• Part III. A Political Test for Class Politics
• Part IV. At the Edge of an Epochal Turning Point
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index