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Many people in the West can recognise an image of Mao Zedong (1894–1976) and know that he was an important Chinese leader, but few appreciate the breadth and depth of his political and cultural significance. Fewer still know what the Chinese Cultural Revolution (1966–76) was, or understand the extent of its influence on art in the West or in China today. This anthology, which is the first of its kind, contends that Maoism and the Chinese Cultural Revolution were dominant cultural and political forces in the second half of the twentieth century – and that they continue to exert influence, globally, right up to the present. In particular, the book claims that the Chinese Cultural Revolution deserves a more prominent place in twentieth-century art history. Exploring the dimensions of Mao’s cultural influence through case studies, and delineating the core of his aesthetic programme, in both the East and the West, constitute the heart of this project. While being rooted in the tradition of social art history and history, the essays, which have been written by an international community of scholars, foreground a distinctively multidisciplinary approach. Collectively they account for local, regional and national differences in the reception, adoption and dissemination of – or resistance to – Maoist aesthetics.
This book is the first in the new series The Labour Governments 1964–70 and concentrates on Britain's domestic policy during Harold Wilson's tenure as Prime Minister. It deals, in particular, with how the Labour government and Labour party as a whole tried to come to terms with the 1960's cultural revolution. The book is grounded in original research, takes account of responses from Labour's grass roots and from Wilson's ministerial colleagues, and constructs a total history of the party at this critical moment in history. It situates Labour in its wider cultural context and focuses on how the party approached issues such as the apparent transformation of the class structure, the changing place of women in society, rising immigration, the widening generation gap, and increasing calls for direct participation in politics. Together with the other volumes in the series, on international policy and economic policy, the book provides an insight into the development of Britain under Harold Wilson's government.
This is a comprehensive study of US policy towards China during the presidency of Lyndon Baines Johnson, a critical phase of the Cold War immediately preceding the dramatic Sino-American rapprochement of the early 1970s. Based on a wide array of recently declassified government documents, it challenges the popular view that Johnson's approach to China was marked by stagnation and sterility, exploring the administration's relationship to both the Vietnam War and the Cultural Revolution. By documenting Johnson's contributions to the decision-making process, the book offers a new perspective on both his capacity as a foreign-policy leader and his role in the further development of the Cold War.
The Caribbean Post's treatment of West Indian femininity reflected the growing significance of the beauty contest in the British Caribbean. Phyllis Woolford, 'Miss British Caribbean' of 1948 was pictured on the cover of the Post, epitomising modern Caribbean womanhood. This book examines the links between beauty and politics in the Anglophone Caribbean, providing a cultural history of Caribbean beauty competitions. It discusses the earliest Caribbean beauty competition, 'Miss Jamaica', launched in 1929 on the cusp of Jamaican cultural blossoming, and explores the emerging radical feminist voices amidst the cultural revolution. The 'Miss Trinidad' beauty competition, started in 1946, doubled as the search for an annual 'Carnival Queen', and represented the power of the moneyed white elite against an emergent black political force. The image that emerges of Barbados's 'Carnival Queen' contest is of a decidedly bourgeois contest, in which the 'creme de la creme' of Marcus Jordan's account were the most esteemed 'young ladies' of middle-class society. It examines the institutionalisation of the 'Ten Types' model and provides examples of copycat competitions elsewhere in the Caribbean. The 'Ten Types - Miss Ebony' contest was championed as a lesson in Jamaican racial democracy for other, less advanced, West Indian audiences. The book highlights the radical vantage point of exiled Trinidadian-born communist-feminist Claudia Jones who launched a Caribbean beauty competition in London. The burgeoning black beauty culture of London was imagined, through the West Indian Gazette as a pragmatic means of acquiring the respectable appearance that was 'race-pride' work.
, Kissinger jetted in to Beijing for forty-eight hours of talks. When they concluded, with an agreement that President Nixon would undertake an official visit to China the following year, Zhou Enlai told Kissinger that their announcement would ‘shake the world’. 2 For many Chinese, however – particularly those of a certain generation – the name of Diaoyutai is inextricably linked not to the foreign dignitaries who have stayed there, but rather to the calamitous drama of the later Mao years – the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, which
Ten Lessons tells the story of modern China from the eve of the First Opium War to the Xi Jinping era. This was a most turbulent period of time as the Middle Kingdom was torn apart by opium, Christianity, modernisation, imperialists, nationalists, warlords and the Japanese, and as China reinvented and reasserted itself on the world stage in the post-Mao era. Unlike the handful of existing textbooks, which narrate without primary sources and without engaging with academic debate, Ten Lessons is devoted to students, from university to high school, as it uses extensive primary sources to tell the story of modern China and introduces them to scholarship and debates in the field of Chinese history and beyond. This will help students understand the real issues involved, navigate their way through the maze of existing literature and undertake independent research for essays and dissertations. The book also points out gaps and inadequacies in the existing scholarship, to encourage postgraduate studies. It is ‘mental furniture’ for the increasing army of journalists, NGO workers, diplomats, government officials, businesspeople and travellers of all kinds, who often need a good source of background information before they head to China.
idea of praxis around the categories of art and politics, we might consider what remains of the idea of cultural revolution. From the side of politics, the idea of revolution is not one that is popular with today’s prefigurative politics because of its assumption of a heavy-handed, top-down and violent imposition of change. In this respect, Susan Buck-Morss calls for a commonist rather than communist transition. In the terms of commonists, according to Buck-Morss, neither art nor politics has an ontological specificity. There is no particular way of being
5 Bridge-building in limbo The impact of the Cultural Revolution, 1966–67 Since the early 1960s, China watchers both inside and outside government had urged that US policy toward the mainland be tailored in such a way as to exploit the apparent differences in perspective between the rigid ideologues ruling the country and the younger, presumably more pragmatic leadership-in-waiting. According to this logic, a more accommodating approach would compel Mao Zedong’s potential successors to reconsider their preconception of US hostility, an image inculcated by Maoist
handed over to the destitute. But he had been allowed to retain his old home on the mound and its furniture. This was discussed during the Cultural Revolution of 1966 and judged to be wrong. That year he was told to move out into a smaller cottage, and he was relieved of the last of his ill-gotten gains. The big house was reserved for public use as a brigade office and meeting room. 7 According to one government claim, 300 million landless or land-poor peasants received 700 million acres of land. But no one has calculated how many landowners and their families
Introduction: the art of contradiction Jacopo Galimberti, Noemi de Haro García and Victoria H. F. Scott Contradiction is present in the process of development of all things; it permeates the process of development of each thing from beginning to end. Mao Zedong, ‘On Contradiction’, 19371 Art and images were and continue to be central channels for the transnational circulation and reception of Maoism. While there are several books about the significance of Mao Zedong and the Chinese Cultural Revolution, this collection, featuring seventeen chapters by