ISBN : 9789811260865
Author : Chih-yu Shih
Publisher : World Scientific
Year : 2023
Language : English
Type : Book
Description : Why have the influences of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (roughly 1966–1976) in contemporary China been so pervasive, profound, and long-lasting? This book posits that the Revolution challenged everyone to decide how they can and should be themselves. Even scholars who study the Cultural Revolution from a presumably external vantage point must end up with an ideological position relative to whom they study. This amounts to a focused curiosity toward the Maoist agenda rivaling its alternatives. As a result, the political lives after the Cultural Revolution remain, ulteriorly and ironically, Maoist to a ubiquitous extent. How then can we cleanse, forget, neutralize, rediscover, contextualize, realign, revitalize, or renovate Maoism? The authors contend that all must appropriate ideologies for political and analytical purposes and adapt to how others use ideological discourses.