BobKKKindle$
27th April 2009, 00:53
I recently remarked in the CC that one of the reasons why I don't post in here as much as I should is because I find that the discussions tend to be centered around a very narrow range of issues, and it seems that most threads seem to take the form of people making short responses to the OP without any real discussion or citation of sources. I decided that instead of moaning I would try and start threads on some of the things that I find interesting, and a topic that I've been reading about for some time now is the historiography of the Chinese Revolution, and, in particular the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution that took place in the 1960s and 70s, otherwise known as the GPCR, or simply the Cultural Revolution. I find this event very interesting, partly because it was an important chapter in China's post-war history, but also because there has recently been a growth in the number of oral accounts published by students and workers who took part in the event, and these accounts, in contrast to the more widely-publicized narratives (a genre that is widely known as - shānghén wénxué, or "scar literature", because the individuals who fall into this genre tend to portray themselves and Chinese society as having been "scarred" by the GPCR and other aspects of China under Mao) such as those of Jung Chang and other authors, which have historically informed the view held by foreign observers, tend to focus more on the positive aspects of the GPCR, including the impact that the event had on women, as well as the lessons that participants were able to draw from their experiences.
This emerging positive narrative conflicts not only with the majority of oral accounts (which are overwhelmingly written by individuals who were part of the political elite prior to the GPCR, giving us a clue as to why they are so persistently negative) but also with the view that was adopted by the Chinese government in the years following Mao's death, and vigorously promoted through a campaign that was intended to discourage radical challenges to governmental authority. The dominant account of the GPCR tends to be centered around the notion that it was initiated by Mao as a means of strengthening his own position within the CPC and combating potential opponents such as Lin Biao and Liu Shaoqi, who were allegedly seeking to challenge Mao's position and take control of the Chinese state for their own purposes. In other words, this account focuses on the pragmatic decisions of elites situated at the apex of the political system and implies that the people who took part in the revolution and played out political struggles in their communities were simply unwitting pawns of those at the top.
The Maoist account, on the other hand, tends to argue that although Mao was responsible for the birth of the movement, and encouraged its development once it had emerged, he did so because he recognized that there was a growing tendency within the core of the CPC which aimed to gradually undermine the gains of the Chinese Revolution and eventually shift the PRC onto what was described at the time as the "capitalist road", i.e. to defeat socialism. I don't think you need to be a Maoist, or view Maoist China as a living example of socialism to show an interest in the GPCR, or even to admire the event, because, regardless of its origins, it did involve radical attempts to change the way people interacted with each other and viewed the world around them, through experimentation in art, as well as intense political debate involving all sections of Chinese society.
A book that sparked my interest in the subject is called 'Some of Us', which is a collection of accounts from Chinese women who were part of the Down to the Countryside Movement, whereby large numbers of urban students were encouraged to move to rural communes in order to learn from the peasants and engage in manual labour. In the introduction, one of the authors explicitly states that her decision to write the book was based on an observation that the majority of her accounts did not conform to her personal experiences during the GPCR and are based solely on themes of victimization and persecution, which for me really sums up what these new oral histories are about - giving the "other side" of what was actually a very complex process that had different impacts depending on locality, class, gender, and a range of other variables that prevent us from making simplistic statements.
In addition to opinions on the GPCR, I'd be interested to hear thoughts on oral history in general. What are its weaknesses? How does it relate to the postmodernist critique of other types of history, i.e. that we can never obtain an entirely accurate view of the past because the only way to learn about the past is through "texts", which can be interpreted in any number of different ways depending on the views of the interpreter?
This emerging positive narrative conflicts not only with the majority of oral accounts (which are overwhelmingly written by individuals who were part of the political elite prior to the GPCR, giving us a clue as to why they are so persistently negative) but also with the view that was adopted by the Chinese government in the years following Mao's death, and vigorously promoted through a campaign that was intended to discourage radical challenges to governmental authority. The dominant account of the GPCR tends to be centered around the notion that it was initiated by Mao as a means of strengthening his own position within the CPC and combating potential opponents such as Lin Biao and Liu Shaoqi, who were allegedly seeking to challenge Mao's position and take control of the Chinese state for their own purposes. In other words, this account focuses on the pragmatic decisions of elites situated at the apex of the political system and implies that the people who took part in the revolution and played out political struggles in their communities were simply unwitting pawns of those at the top.
The Maoist account, on the other hand, tends to argue that although Mao was responsible for the birth of the movement, and encouraged its development once it had emerged, he did so because he recognized that there was a growing tendency within the core of the CPC which aimed to gradually undermine the gains of the Chinese Revolution and eventually shift the PRC onto what was described at the time as the "capitalist road", i.e. to defeat socialism. I don't think you need to be a Maoist, or view Maoist China as a living example of socialism to show an interest in the GPCR, or even to admire the event, because, regardless of its origins, it did involve radical attempts to change the way people interacted with each other and viewed the world around them, through experimentation in art, as well as intense political debate involving all sections of Chinese society.
A book that sparked my interest in the subject is called 'Some of Us', which is a collection of accounts from Chinese women who were part of the Down to the Countryside Movement, whereby large numbers of urban students were encouraged to move to rural communes in order to learn from the peasants and engage in manual labour. In the introduction, one of the authors explicitly states that her decision to write the book was based on an observation that the majority of her accounts did not conform to her personal experiences during the GPCR and are based solely on themes of victimization and persecution, which for me really sums up what these new oral histories are about - giving the "other side" of what was actually a very complex process that had different impacts depending on locality, class, gender, and a range of other variables that prevent us from making simplistic statements.
In addition to opinions on the GPCR, I'd be interested to hear thoughts on oral history in general. What are its weaknesses? How does it relate to the postmodernist critique of other types of history, i.e. that we can never obtain an entirely accurate view of the past because the only way to learn about the past is through "texts", which can be interpreted in any number of different ways depending on the views of the interpreter?