Politics of Memory: How to Rewrite and Reshape China in 1980s

Session Submission Type: Organized Panel Proposal Application

Abstract

Either for China itself or for the rest of the world, the 1980s was a transitional age. The 1990s saw the comprehensive marketization reform led by Deng Xiaoping, which somehow "salvaged" the Chinese society under repression and authoritarian since the June Fourth event. Meanwhile, the authoritarian has propelled the capitalism marching into China. The coexistence of authority and capital has resulted in rapid social stratification, followed by continuous differentiation in the intelligentsia. Since the beginning of the twenty-first century, the ever-changing political and economic patterns in the world, in particular, the so-called “China’s Rise”, have further polarized Chinese intelligentsia to a larger and deeper extent. Currently, one of the most prominent representations for such differentiation lies in the divergence about how to rewrite and reshape the history of the 1980s. So, the 1980s has become the battlefield for cultural hegemony construction. As a result, in this new century, the 1980s has become one of the most "nostalgic" objects in the Chinese society and a hot word with indelible but variegated marks. The "1980s Heat" is not only significant to the assessment of its previous age - The Mao Zedong Age, but also is important to a series of problems that urgent to be reflected on and answered today - what on earth the "Chinese Path" and "Chinese Experience" are? What does China mean to the world and what's its role? We hope deep and thorough discussions on these questions because they would be more available outside the Chinese Mainland.

Area of Study

• China and Inner Asia

Session Organizer

• Wei Teng, Ph.D.

Chair

• Jinhua Dai, Peking University

Individual Presentations

• Phantom Audio-Visionof the New Era films:History,Memory and Subject's Patterns - Bai Sun, Ph.D.

• The Paradox of Rewriting 1980s - Wei Teng, Ph.D.

• Forgotten Throes: Rewriting the Labor in the 1980s - Yan Liu, School of Chinese Language and Literature, University of International Business and Economics

Discussant

• Hsiao-hung Chang, National Taiwan University