Re-envisioning the Chinese revolution : the politics and poetics of collective memories in reform China
Popular memories of the revolutionary past have become a political and cultural force in China. Traumatic memory and active criticism make up part of this wave, but so does nostalgia for collective responsibility and for feelings of freedom and progress. Re-envisioning the Chinese Revolution is the first comprehensive study of contemporary memories of China's revolutionary epoch, from the time of Japanese imperialism through the Cultural Revolution. Path-breaking in its scope, the research in this volume carefully examines the memories of a wide range of social groups, including disenfranchised workers and rural women, who have often been neglected in scholarship. Looking at a variety of embodiments of memories-interviews, films, photo exhibits, museums, and websites-the authors, ranging from anthropologists to film studies specialists, present original research on the idea of "memories as a cultural and political phenomenon." The result is an unprecedented and illuminating reexamination of the memory of, and occasionally nostalgia for, the Chinese Revolution. Contributors include: Anita Chan, Robert Chi, David J. Davies, Kirk A. Denton, Gail Hershatter, Ching Kwan Lee, Kimberley Ens Manning, Erik Mueggler, Paul G. Pickowicz, Jonathan Unger, Ban Wang, and Guobin Yang.
Squatting to end domicide? Resisting bulldozer urbanism in contemporary Shanghai
For millions of Shanghainese on the lower rung of society, the history of the great urban transformation in the city since the 1990s is written with their tears for the loss of their homes, communities and livelihood. In this paper, I argue for squatting as a straightforward, effective and potentially radical strategy to redress the displacees’ suffering, to take a more active and progressive control of the violent accumulation process and to challenge the hegemonic discourse of private homeownership that underpins the rapid transformation of Shanghai’s urban landscape. The argument is built upon an in-depth study of a family evicted by the World Expo 2010 and squatted in a resettlement apartment. Their framing of justice and entitlement, embedded in local cultural and moral universes, not only lends legitimacy to their squatting but also mobilises popular sympathy, both of which are conducive to effective resistance.
Carnival of Shame: Doctorow and the Rosenbergs
“Literature can turn language, for the moment at least, against the sentence of death.” Considering the national and international furor provoked by the sensational early 1950's “atom spy” trial and execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, one may be surprised that these dramatic and traumatic events have not inspired more literary artistry than they have. But a prominent playwright, Arthur Miller, did write The Crucible (produced in 1953) in part as a response to the rabid McCarthyism of that era, and two highly regarded novelists in a later decade composed ambitious novels drawing directly on the Rosenberg affair: E. L. Doctorow in The Book of Daniel (1971) and Robert Coover in The Public Burning (1977). In 1987, Sidney Lumet produced the little noticed film Daniel, based on Doctorow's novel, and still more recently Tony Kushner's Pulitzer Prize-winning play, Angels in America, with Ethel Rosenberg as one of the characters, has been playing on Broadway.