Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-2plfb Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-22T17:56:07.781Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

11 - The National Subsumes the Local: The Fifties

from Part IV - Politics of Oblivion in the People’s Republic

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 March 2022

Pierre Fuller
Affiliation:
Sciences Po, Center for History, Paris
Get access

Summary

This chapter considers how revolutionary memory served as the cultural conditioning for key foundational aspects of the People’s Republic, starting with land reform. It aims to demonstrate how revolutionary memory served as a moral resource for those seeking to instil ideological discipline and justify radical intervention in communities by the revolutionary state, or by activists acting on its behalf, while also assisting the Communist program more generally in fostering acceptance of the New China’s growing pains along the way. The chapter opens by accounting for the potency of discursive strategies employed in the land-reform struggle sessions, which sought to expose the old society’s void of beneficial communal relations that the party structures and forms of association would step in and fill. The chapter also explores how revolutionary memory of the recent past, which suppressed the very possibility of community mutual aid and wider civic measures within the context of the old society, was foundational to the socialist imaginary as articulated through the rural cooperative movement.

Type
Chapter
Information
Modern Erasures
Revolution, the Civilizing Mission, and the Shaping of China's Past
, pp. 239 - 256
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×