Contenu du sommaire : Remembering the Mao Era

While discussions continue about the details of the periodisation of post-1949 history in China, there is a general consensus to accept a divide between roughly two periods of 30 years: one spanning the events from the foundation of the People's Republic of China (PRC) to Mao's death and subsequent arrest of the “Gang of Four,” and the second running from the Third Plenum of the 11th Central Committee in December 1978, during which Deng Xiaoping consolidated his power, until the present day. While the second period is commonly referred to as the time of “Reform and Opening,” the first may be designated as the “Mao era,” given the central role of the PRC's first leader and the personality cult surrounding him from 1949 until his death and even beyond…

Since the scar literature of the early 1980s, fiction and fictionalised autobiography have played an important role in bringing to light the mass violence of the Cultural Revolution. However, these texts remained within a well-defined framework in which the political system itself was not questioned. Over the last decade, by contrast, the Chinese literary field has focused more specifically on the 1950s, with works such as Yang Xianhui's Chronicles of Jiabiangou (Tianjin, 2002), and Yang Jisheng's Tombstone (Hong Kong, 2008). This paper focuses on Yan Lianke's Four Books (Hong Kong, 2010), a full-fledged fictionalisation in a fantastic mode of the famine of the Great Leap Forward in a village on the Yellow River. Considering literature in the context of theories of the public sphere, it suggests that Yan's book aims to broaden decisively the discussion on certain previously out-of-bounds aspects of the Mao era, an aim only partially thwarted by its failure to be published within mainland China. Four Books, like Yang Jisheng and Yang Xianhui's works, thus represents an attempt to call into question the original legitimacy of the PRC polity and to create debate within the Chinese-speaking public sphere on the foundations of the current regime.

Independent documentary film projects dealing with history have recently multiplied in China. While all seek to shed new light on personal experiences of the Mao era, they vary greatly in form, method, and scale. Launched in 2010 by Wu Wenguang at the Caochangdi Workstation, a space devoted to contemporary dance and documentary film, the Folk Memory Project aims at producing various textual and visual records of the historical experience of rural populations, especially during the Great Leap famine. Of special interest are the 20 documentaries of the Folk Memory Project's film section – a body of works constantly growing following yearly returns by filmmakers to their “home” villages. These films are characterised by a performative aspect that is rare in other Chinese documentaries on similar topics. This contribution examines this body of documentaries and the role of performance and performativity in the recording of collective memory of the famine.

For a revolution over “culture,” remarkably little has been said about the Cultural Revolution culture itself, and even less about the apolitical, private art produced underground. This article explores this apolitical, private art, arguing that it was a “rebellion of the heart” against the state's ruthless destruction of the private sphere. Mao's Party-state drastically fragmented families, moulding socialist subjects through “revolution deep down into the soul.” Paintings of (broken) homes and interiors, flowers, and moonlight articulate lived experiences of the revolution while silently reinventing a private refuge for the body and soul to subsist beyond state control. Defying orthodox revolutionary mass culture, this apolitical art articulated private experience and created a private inner world for a new form of modern subjectivity, while generating community and human solidarity against relentless class struggle and alienation.

For a revolution over “culture,” remarkably little has been said about the Cultural Revolution culture itself, and even less about the apolitical, private art produced underground. This article explores this apolitical, private art, arguing that it was a “rebellion of the heart” against the state's ruthless destruction of the private sphere. Mao's Party-state drastically fragmented families, moulding socialist subjects through “revolution deep down into the soul.” Paintings of (broken) homes and interiors, flowers, and moonlight articulate lived experiences of the revolution while silently reinventing a private refuge for the body and soul to subsist beyond state control. Defying orthodox revolutionary mass culture, this apolitical art articulated private experience and created a private inner world for a new form of modern subjectivity, while generating community and human solidarity against relentless class struggle and alienation.

For a revolution over “culture,” remarkably little has been said about the Cultural Revolution culture itself, and even less about the apolitical, private art produced underground. This article explores this apolitical, private art, arguing that it was a “rebellion of the heart” against the state's ruthless destruction of the private sphere. Mao's Party-state drastically fragmented families, moulding socialist subjects through “revolution deep down into the soul.” Paintings of (broken) homes and interiors, flowers, and moonlight articulate lived experiences of the revolution while silently reinventing a private refuge for the body and soul to subsist beyond state control. Defying orthodox revolutionary mass culture, this apolitical art articulated private experience and created a private inner world for a new form of modern subjectivity, while generating community and human solidarity against relentless class struggle and alienation.