Forgotten Throes: Rewriting the Labor in the 1980s

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

Abstract

As one of the most remarkable cultural phenomena in the mid-1980s, the search-for-roots literature was closely connected with the narrations of minorities in the meantime. Based on the common sense that China is a united and multi-nationality country, not only the minority writers being conscious of identity tried to become the representing subject of their own history and culture, but also some of the Han writers criticizing the mainstream of Chinese tradition were searching for their roots in minority culture, in order to reconstruct the cultural identity of Chinese people in the context of modernization. Although this search-for-roots writing failed to present constructive and substantial resources in minority culture, it made a narrative representing the social and cultural possibilities of the mid-1980s which cannot be reduced to any given project.

Author

• Yan Liu, School of Chinese Language and Literature, University of International Business and Economics