Killing Truth: Left Resistance and Necropolitics in the Context of Chinese Higher Education

• In Event: 34.096 - MTCC Roundtable Session 12
  In Roundtable Session: 34.096-10 - Futures of Power and Resistance in Public Education

Abstract

This paper is about the death of truth. By appropriating the concept of necropolitics, I would utilize a recent arrest of eight left activists in a Chinese university to argue for an extended understanding. I would first offer a brief account of the incident; this is then followed by a concise summary concerning the bifurcation of what can be termed as ‘critical’ traditions in China: the liberal and the New Left (Marxism). I context that the state apparatus renders the life of the left student activist ‘a bare life’ through the politics of physical, social and ideological death as it advances its capitalist developmentalism. Lastly, although particular to China, these strategies are certainly replicable to suppress the education of truth.

Author

• Ian Liujia Tian, University of Toronto