Postsocialism and Cultural Politics: China in the Last Decade of the Twentieth Century

Xudong Zhang

Published by Duke University Press 2008

Postsocialism and Cultural Politics

China in the Last Decade of the Twentieth Century

Xudong Zhang
Edited by: Stanley Fish and Fredric Jameson

In the series Post-Contemporary Interventions

https://doi.org/10.1515/9780822388937

Overview
Contents

About this book

A sequel to Zhang's Chinese Modernism, it discusses crucial issues in China in the 1990s including nationalism, neo-liberalism, postmodernism, nostalgia, revisionism and the intellectual formulations and cultural politics.

Author / Editor information

Xudong Zhang is Professor of Comparative Literature and Chinese and Chair of the Department of East Asian Studies at New York University. His books include Chinese Modernism in the Era of Reforms: Cultural Fever, Avant-Garde Fiction, and New Chinese Cinema; Whither China: Intellectual Politics of Contemporary China; and Postmodernism and China (co-edited with Arif Dirlik), all also published by Duke University Press.

Reviews

With this new book, Zhang has provided an indispensible critical lens through which to discern the dizzying speed of social change and dazzling complexity that characterize the contemporary Chinese condition as symptomatic of ‘the Reagan, Thatcher, and Deng Xiaoping Revolution.’” - David Leiwei Li, Comparative Literature

“Postsocialism and Cultural Politics is, among many things, both well organised and easy to navigate. . . . [Zhang’s] application of postsocialism to literature and film is deft and nuanced, and proffers arresting insights into the works themselves as well as the socio-political situation they exist in. Zhang's subtle understanding of Deleuze, Adorno, Walter Benjamin, and Derrida underpins his analysis of Chinese literature and film. His examples drawn from the works of Baudelaire, Dickens, nineteenth-century German oil painting, Balzac, and Kafka lends Zhang's work a cosmopolitan quality, and draws parallels beyond the parameters of his subject. Postsocialism and Cultural Politics is a thorough and compelling examination of the socio-political situation in 1990s China.” - Joshua Hoey, M/C Reviews

“An extraordinarily rich panorama of the cultural and socio-political debates in China today. Xudong Zhang’s analyses are not only models of theoretical interpretation, the whole book can stand as a triumphant demonstration of the way in which readings of novels, films, social and political texts, and the polemics around them can be positioned to illuminate each other.”—Fredric Jameson, Duke University

“Xudong Zhang has produced a brilliant and compelling study of the various forces struggling with one another in China during the pivotal decade that followed the failure of the 1989 social movement. Through a deft explication of the complicated factors at play—summed up wonderfully in a clear exposition of the collision between postmodernism and postsocialism—Zhang is able to provide a uniquely nuanced picture of the China that has emerged as such a formidable force in our globalized age.”—Theodore Huters, author of Bringing the World Home: Appropriating the West in Late Qing and Early Republican China

“Postsocialism and Cultural Politics is, among many things, both well organised and easy to navigate. . . . [Zhang’s] application of postsocialism to literature and film is deft and nuanced, and proffers arresting insights into the works themselves as well as the socio-political situation they exist in. Zhang's subtle understanding of Deleuze, Adorno, Walter Benjamin, and Derrida underpins his analysis of Chinese literature and film. His examples drawn from the works of Baudelaire, Dickens, nineteenth-century German oil painting, Balzac, and Kafka lends Zhang's work a cosmopolitan quality, and draws parallels beyond the parameters of his subject. Postsocialism and Cultural Politics is a thorough and compelling examination of the socio-political situation in 1990s China.”

-- Joshua Hoey M/C Reviews

With this new book, Zhang has provided an indispensible critical lens through which to discern the dizzying speed of social change and dazzling complexity that characterize the contemporary Chinese condition as symptomatic of ‘the Reagan, Thatcher, and Deng Xiaoping Revolution.’”

-- David Leiwei Li Comparative Literature

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Acknowledgments Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
Introduction The Cultural Politics of Postsocialism Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
Part i Intellectual Discourse: National and Global Determinations
One The Return of the Political: The Making of the Post-Tiananmen Intellectual Field Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	25
Two Nationalism, Mass Culture, and Intellectual Strategies in the 1990s Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	102
Three Postmodernism and Postsocialist Society: Cultural Politics after the “New Era” Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	136
Part ii Literary Discourse: Narrative Possibilities of Postsocialism
Four Shanghai Nostalgia: Mourning and Allegory in Wang Anyi’s Literary Production in the 1990s Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	181
Five Toward a Critical Iconography: Shanghai, “Minor Literature,” and the Unmaking of a Modern Chinese Mythology Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	212
Six “Demonic Realism” and the “Socialist Market Economy”: Language Game, Natural History, and Social Allegory in Mo Yan’s The Republic of Wine Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	240
Part iii Cinematic Discourse: Universality, Singularity, and the Everyday World
Seven National Trauma, Global Allegory: Construction of Collective Memory in Tian Zhuangzhuang’s The Blue Kite Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	269
Eight Narrative, Culture, and Legitimacy: Repetition and Singularity in Zhang Yimou’s The Story of Qiu Ju Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	289
Notes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	311
Bibliography Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	331
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	341

Language: English
Publisher: Duke University Press
Pages
- Main content: 358
Illustrations
- Other: 4 b&w photographs

eBook

Published: April 25, 2008
ISBN: 9780822388937