The Lurid and Ludic in the Chinese Cultural Revolution

Tür:

Kitap

Yazar:

Edward Weisband

Yayın yılı:

2017

Yayıncı:

Oxford University Press

This chapter examines the Chinese Cultural Revolution not so much to “explain” <italic>why</italic> it happened. Rather, it demonstrates the relevance of traditional values and certain child-rearing practices to psychosocial explanations of <italic>how</italic> mass atrocities were perpetrated. It focuses on the genocide of the Maoist revolution and its dystopian project of peasant collectivization. The Cultural Revolution was political in its imposition of the Communist Party structure throughout China; but it was also socioeconomic and thus essentially about food, its production and distribution at macrolevels of social organization and mobilization. During the Maoist revolution, macabresque transgressions had to be displayed, that is, performed before audiences comprised not only of perpetrators but also of community witnesses. Communal desire for vengeance over whatever was dramatized as “lost” represents a form of motivation relevant to explanations of sadism and its executions in the movement from filial piety to revolutionary shame and rage.

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