Description
What does it mean to write in a socialist revolution? What defines labor in a communist society? In revolutionary China, writers were regularly dispatched to the countryside or factories with the expectation that, through immersion in the life of workers and peasants, they would be remade as "culture workers" whose writing could serve the communist project. Their cultural labor would not merely reflect or represent the process of building socialism-it would actively participate in it by excavating the contradictions and challenges of the ongoing reorganization of social relations.
Benjamin Kindler examines how writing transformed the Chinese Revolution even as the revolution remade what it meant to write. He argues that the revolution sought in unparalleled ways to overcome the basic division between those who write and those who work. This book combines close readings of a wide range of texts-from the works of established figures to the writings of amateur workers drawn from the factory floor-with analysis of Chinese socialist political economy. Far from being drab instances of state propaganda, these texts and cultural experiments were lively and inventive attempts to determine what a different, more equal society might look like. Offering new ways to understand cultural production as a material, embodied process, this book reconsiders the role of art and literature in radical politics.
About the Author
Benjamin Kindler is an assistant professor in the Department of Cultural Studies at Lingnan University, Hong Kong.
Reviews
What does the labor of writing mean in the midst of an ongoing social revolution? Through elegant and detailed exposition, Kindler addresses with seriousness and sympathy China's transition to socialism as a culturally creative narrative process that helped shape the social relations and the imagination of a future not yet foretold. -- Rebecca E. Karl, New York University
Book Information
ISBN 9780231219327
Author Benjamin Kindler
Format Paperback
Page Count 280
Imprint Columbia University Press
Publisher Columbia University Press
Benjamin Kindler examines how writing transformed the Chinese Revolution even as the revolution remade what it meant to write. He argues that the revolution sought in unparalleled ways to overcome the basic division between those who write and those who work. This book combines close readings of a wide range of texts-from the works of established figures to the writings of amateur workers drawn from the factory floor-with analysis of Chinese socialist political economy. Far from being drab instances of state propaganda, these texts and cultural experiments were lively and inventive attempts to determine what a different, more equal society might look like. Offering new ways to understand cultural production as a material, embodied process, this book reconsiders the role of art and literature in radical politics.
About the Author
Benjamin Kindler is an assistant professor in the Department of Cultural Studies at Lingnan University, Hong Kong.
Reviews
What does the labor of writing mean in the midst of an ongoing social revolution? Through elegant and detailed exposition, Kindler addresses with seriousness and sympathy China's transition to socialism as a culturally creative narrative process that helped shape the social relations and the imagination of a future not yet foretold. -- Rebecca E. Karl, New York University
Book Information
ISBN 9780231219327
Author Benjamin Kindler
Format Paperback
Page Count 280
Imprint Columbia University Press
Publisher Columbia University Press
