The Art of Cloning: Creative Production During China's Cultural Revolution
Cultural production under Mao, and how artists and thinkers found autonomy in a culture of conformity

In the 1950s, a French journalist joked that the Chinese were “blue ants under the red flag,” dressing identically and even moving in concert like robots. When the Cultural Revolution officially began, this uniformity seemed to extend to the mind. From the outside, China had become a monotonous world, a place of endless repetition and imitation, but a closer look reveals a range of cultural experiences, which also provided individuals with an obscure sense of freedom.

In The Art of Cloning, Pang Laikwan examines this period in Chinese history when ordinary citizens read widely, traveled extensively through the country, and engaged in a range of cultural and artistic activities. The freedom they experienced, argues Pang, differs from the freedom, under Western capitalism, to express individuality through a range of consumer products. But it was far from boring and was possessed of its own kind of diversity.
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The Art of Cloning: Creative Production During China's Cultural Revolution
Cultural production under Mao, and how artists and thinkers found autonomy in a culture of conformity

In the 1950s, a French journalist joked that the Chinese were “blue ants under the red flag,” dressing identically and even moving in concert like robots. When the Cultural Revolution officially began, this uniformity seemed to extend to the mind. From the outside, China had become a monotonous world, a place of endless repetition and imitation, but a closer look reveals a range of cultural experiences, which also provided individuals with an obscure sense of freedom.

In The Art of Cloning, Pang Laikwan examines this period in Chinese history when ordinary citizens read widely, traveled extensively through the country, and engaged in a range of cultural and artistic activities. The freedom they experienced, argues Pang, differs from the freedom, under Western capitalism, to express individuality through a range of consumer products. But it was far from boring and was possessed of its own kind of diversity.
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The Art of Cloning: Creative Production During China's Cultural Revolution

The Art of Cloning: Creative Production During China's Cultural Revolution

by Pang Laikwan
The Art of Cloning: Creative Production During China's Cultural Revolution

The Art of Cloning: Creative Production During China's Cultural Revolution

by Pang Laikwan

eBook

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Overview

Cultural production under Mao, and how artists and thinkers found autonomy in a culture of conformity

In the 1950s, a French journalist joked that the Chinese were “blue ants under the red flag,” dressing identically and even moving in concert like robots. When the Cultural Revolution officially began, this uniformity seemed to extend to the mind. From the outside, China had become a monotonous world, a place of endless repetition and imitation, but a closer look reveals a range of cultural experiences, which also provided individuals with an obscure sense of freedom.

In The Art of Cloning, Pang Laikwan examines this period in Chinese history when ordinary citizens read widely, traveled extensively through the country, and engaged in a range of cultural and artistic activities. The freedom they experienced, argues Pang, differs from the freedom, under Western capitalism, to express individuality through a range of consumer products. But it was far from boring and was possessed of its own kind of diversity.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781784785222
Publisher: Verso Books
Publication date: 01/10/2017
Sold by: Penguin Random House Publisher Services
Format: eBook
Pages: 320
File size: 3 MB

About the Author

Pang Laikwan is a Professor of Cultural Studies at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and author of Creativity and Its Discontents.

Table of Contents

List of Figures ix

Acknowledgments xi

Introduction 1

I Art, Politics, and Economics

1 Maoist Aesthetics 29

2 Production and Circulation of Literature under the Revolutionary Cultural Economy 57

II A Culture of Models and Copies

3 Art and the Culture of Models and Copies 83

4 Barefoot Doctors and Femininity 107

5 Opera and Transplantation between Cultures 136

6 Ballet across Genres and Forms 162

7 Mao as Doxa 194

8 Intellectuals as Ghosts 216

Conclusion 239

Notes 247

Chinese Glossary 293

Index 297

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