China and New Left Visions: Political and Cultural Interventions

by Jie Lu (Editor), Ban Wang Stanford University (Editor), Xiaomei Chen (Contribution by), Daniel F. Vukovich (Contribution by), Xueping Zhong (Contribution by)

Overview

Against the dire consequences of China’s market development, a new intellectual force of the New Left has come on the scene since the mid 1990s. New Left intellectuals debate the issues of social justice, distributive equality, markets, state intervention, the socialist legacy, and sustainable development. Against the neoliberal trends of free markets, liberal democracy, and consumerism, New Left critics launched a critique in hopes of seeking an alternative to global capitalism. This volume takes a comprehensive look at China’s New Left in intellectual, cultural, and literary manifestations. The writers place the New Left within a global anti-hegemonic movement and the legacy of the Cold War. They discover grassroots literature that portrays the plight and resilience of the downtrodden and disadvantaged. With historical visions the writers also shed light on the present by drawing on the socialist past.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780739165188
Publisher:	Lexington Books
Publication date:	07/20/2012
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	290
File size:	589 KB

About the Author

Ban Wang is the William Haas Professor in Chinese Studies at Stanford University and the Yangtze River Chair Professor at East China Normal University in Shanghai. He is the author of Illuminations from the Past: Trauma, Memory, and History in Modern Cinema (2004), and The Sublime Figure of History: Aesthetics and Politics in Twentieth Century China (1997). He edited Words and Their Stories: Essays on the Language of the Chinese Revolution (2010) and co-edited The Image of China in the American Classroom: Personal Reflections by Chinese Scholars in the US (2006), and Trauma and Cinema: Cross-Cultural Explorations (2004). He has published numerous articles in the fields of Chinese literature and film, aesthetics and comparative literature.

Jie Lu is professor of Chinese studies & film studies at the University of the Pacific. She is the author of Dismantling Time: Chinese Literature in the Age of Globalization (2005) and has edited: China’s Literature and Cultural Scenes at the Turn of the 21st Century (2008); “Writing against Spectacular Reality: Cultural Intervention in China and Taiwan,” Journal of Contemporary China (2008); “New Literary and Culture Scene in Contemporary China,” Journal of Contemporary China (2003 & 2004); and “Chinese Literature in the Post-Mao China,” American Journal of Chinese Studies (1998).

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Introduction: China and New Left Critique by Ban Wang and Jie Lu

Part I: Geopolitics and New Left Perspectives
1. Back to the Future: Contemporary China in the Perspective of Its Past, Circa 1980 by Arif Dirlik
2. The Geopolitics of the New Left in China by Lisa Rofel
3. The Battle for Chinese Discourse and the Rise of the Chinese New Left: Toward a Postcolonial Politics of Knowledge by Daniel Vukovich
4. What Is Political Theater?: A Critique of Performance Studies by Ban Wang

Part II: New Left Literature in China
5. Internationale as Specter: Na’er, “Subaltern Literature,” and Contemporary China’s “Left Bank” by Xueping Zhong
6. Constructing Agency: Challenges and Possibilities in Chinese New Left Literature by Jie Lu
7. Toward a New Leftist Ecocriticism in Postsocialist China: Reading the “Poetry of Migrant Workers” as Ecopoetry by Haomin Gong
8. The Rise of the Short-short Genre by Aili Mu

Part III: Rethinking Socialism and Market Reform
9. The Road to Revival: A “Red” Classic or a “Black” Revisionist Epic in Praise of a Postsocialist China by Xiaomei Chen
10. A New Narrative of Development in Chinese Television Media Representations of Africa
11. Redistribution of the Sensible in Neoliberal China: Real Estate, Cinema, and Aesthetics by Hai Ren

What People are Saying About This

Charles A. Laughlin

"China and New Left Visions is the first book to take on the formidable rise of China's New Left primarily from the point of view of artistic expression. Most existing treatments give the impression that the New Left is constituted entirely of cultural and economic theory, but Ban Wang and Jie Lu's book dramatizes and illuminates the re-animation of popular culture, theater, and literature underNew Leftinfluence. The editors have assembled some of the most exciting commentators currently writing on the Chinese cultural scene. This book is a must read for the thoughtful China watcher.

Editorial Reviews

China and New Left Visions is the first book to take on the formidable rise of China's New Left primarily from the point of view of artistic expression. Most existing treatments give the impression that the New Left is constituted entirely of cultural and economic theory, but Ban Wang and Jie Lu's book dramatizes and illuminates the re-animation of popular culture, theater, and literature under New Left influence. The editors have assembled some of the most exciting commentators currently writing on the Chinese cultural scene. This book is a must read for the thoughtful China watcher.

Charles A. Laughlin

This book provides a broad-ranging discussion of China’s New Left’s intellectual discourse and debates since the 1990s.. . .These essays provide vivid, multi-faceted description and analyses of China’s New Left and its wide-ranging discourse.

The China Journal