Synopses & Reviews
Mao Zedong envisioned a great struggle to "wreak havoc under the heaven" when he launched the Cultural Revolution in 1966. But as radicalized Chinese youth rose up against Party officials, events quickly slipped from the government's grasp, and rebellion took on a life of its own. Turmoil became a reality in a way the Great Leader had not foreseen.
The Cultural Revolution at the Margins recaptures these formative moments from the perspective of the disenfranchised and disobedient rebels Mao unleashed and later betrayed.
The Cultural Revolution began as a "revolution from above," and Mao had only a tenuous relationship with the Red Guard students and workers who responded to his call. Yet it was these young rebels at the grassroots who advanced the Cultural Revolution's more radical possibilities, Yiching Wu argues, and who not only acted for themselves but also transgressed Maoism by critically reflecting on broader issues concerning Chinese socialism. As China's state machinery broke down and the institutional foundations of the PRC were threatened, Mao resolved to suppress the crisis. Leaving out in the cold the very activists who had taken its transformative promise seriously, the Cultural Revolution devoured its children and exhausted its political energy.
The mass demobilizations of 1968-69, Wu shows, were the starting point of a series of crisis-coping maneuvers to contain and neutralize dissent, producing immense changes in Chinese society a decade later.
Review
The Cultural Revolution at the Margins aims to make the Cultural Revolution thinkable, to rescue it from the relentless effort both in the PRC and abroad to consign it to the proverbial dustbin of history as an aberration or a disaster. Yiching Wu's study is based on rich materials, some previously unavailable, and is theoretically well-informed and sophisticated. It is a serious intervention not only in discussions of the CR and the Chinese revolution, but also in discussions of socialist politics. Arif Dirlik, author of < i=""> Culture and History in Postrevolutionary China <>
Review
The Cultural Revolution at the Margins is a carefully researched and equally carefully thought-out account of the ideological struggles of the Cultural Revolution and its eventual suppression by a restored Party apparatus between 1966 and 1968. Using a sophisticated theoretical methodology, Wu makes a case for a compelling reinterpretation of the import of the familiar events of the CR. This book will eventually take its place as an important new analysis of the CR, and of how events of the time continue to resonate in Chinese political discourse. Ted Huters, author of < i=""> Bringing the World Home <>
Synopsis
The Cultural Revolution began from above, yet it was students and workers at the grassroots who advanced the movement's radical possibilities by acting and thinking for themselves. Resolving to suppress the resulting crisis, Mao set events in motion in 1968 that left out in the cold those rebels who had taken it most seriously, Yiching Wu shows.
Synopsis
2013 President's Book Award, Social Science History Association
About the Author
Yiching Wu teaches East Asian studies, history, and anthropology at the University of Toronto.
University of Toronto