Skip to main content

Lund University Publications

LUND UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES

Consuming Fragments of Mao Zedong : The Chairman's Final Two Decades at the Helm

Schoenhals, Michael LU (2010) p.110-128
Abstract
In a radical departure from conventional historical accounts of China’s recent history, this paper (the original working title of which was “The Great Leap Forward and All that Shit”) adopts an absurdist approach to what the conference organizers in their call for papers call “images and fragments of the past… produced and distributed by the dictatorial actors and then consumed by the mass.” Instead of attempting to probe the metaphors employed in contemporary political discourse in search for a presumed reality hidden behind them, the paper arrests the analysis at the level of the metaphors and with their help strings together an extraordinary narration of events from Mao Zedong’s launch of the so-called Great Leap Forward in 1958 to the... (More)
In a radical departure from conventional historical accounts of China’s recent history, this paper (the original working title of which was “The Great Leap Forward and All that Shit”) adopts an absurdist approach to what the conference organizers in their call for papers call “images and fragments of the past… produced and distributed by the dictatorial actors and then consumed by the mass.” Instead of attempting to probe the metaphors employed in contemporary political discourse in search for a presumed reality hidden behind them, the paper arrests the analysis at the level of the metaphors and with their help strings together an extraordinary narration of events from Mao Zedong’s launch of the so-called Great Leap Forward in 1958 to the high point of his “Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution” (1966–1976). The author’s subjective intention, in all of this, is to provoke forth a different—complementary, it needs to be stressed, rather than alternative—appreciation of a tragic chapter in China’s past that allows not only for intellectual binary conceptualization of dictatorship in terms of victims/perpetrators, but also for infinitely more basic human responses like alienation, disgust, and laughter. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
author
organization
publishing date
type
Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding
publication status
published
subject
keywords
Cultural Revolution, China, Mao Zedong, politics, food, Great Leap Forward, metaphor
host publication
A Critical Introduction to Mao
editor
Cheek, Timothy
pages
110 - 128
publisher
Cambridge University Press
external identifiers
  • scopus:84923449408
ISBN
9780521711548
project
Mass Dictatorships of the 20th Century
language
English
LU publication?
yes
additional info
An earlier version of this article appeared in Korean in the anthology Gender Politics and Mass Dictatorship: Between Mobilization and Liberation, edited by Jie-Hyun Lim and Woonok Yeom (Seoul, 2010) (ISBN 978-89-5862-305-2), pp. 217-238.
id
31a1a5db-279e-4abe-8d83-6a574fc2acf1 (old id 1615606)
date added to LUP
2016-04-04 10:54:32
date last changed
2023-09-06 08:02:49
@inbook{31a1a5db-279e-4abe-8d83-6a574fc2acf1,
  abstract     = {{In a radical departure from conventional historical accounts of China’s recent history, this paper (the original working title of which was “The Great Leap Forward and All that Shit”) adopts an absurdist approach to what the conference organizers in their call for papers call “images and fragments of the past… produced and distributed by the dictatorial actors and then consumed by the mass.” Instead of attempting to probe the metaphors employed in contemporary political discourse in search for a presumed reality hidden behind them, the paper arrests the analysis at the level of the metaphors and with their help strings together an extraordinary narration of events from Mao Zedong’s launch of the so-called Great Leap Forward in 1958 to the high point of his “Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution” (1966–1976). The author’s subjective intention, in all of this, is to provoke forth a different—complementary, it needs to be stressed, rather than alternative—appreciation of a tragic chapter in China’s past that allows not only for intellectual binary conceptualization of dictatorship in terms of victims/perpetrators, but also for infinitely more basic human responses like alienation, disgust, and laughter.}},
  author       = {{Schoenhals, Michael}},
  booktitle    = {{A Critical Introduction to Mao}},
  editor       = {{Cheek, Timothy}},
  isbn         = {{9780521711548}},
  keywords     = {{Cultural Revolution; China; Mao Zedong; politics; food; Great Leap Forward; metaphor}},
  language     = {{eng}},
  pages        = {{110--128}},
  publisher    = {{Cambridge University Press}},
  title        = {{Consuming Fragments of Mao Zedong : The Chairman's Final Two Decades at the Helm}},
  year         = {{2010}},
}