scholarly journals Politically Marginalized Female Figures: Female Grassland and Celestial Bath

2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 86-101
Author(s):  
Katherina Li
Keyword(s):  
Short Story ◽  
Cultural Revolution ◽  
Political Power ◽  
Women's Liberation ◽  
Youth Movement ◽  
Women’S Liberation ◽  
Female Figures ◽  
The Cultural Revolution

Yan Geling’s early work Female Grassland雌性的草地 (Yan, 1989) is a novel published in 1989, while Celestial Bath 天浴 (Yan, 2008) is a short story published in 1996. Both of Yan Geling’s works focus on female sent-down youth, with stories set in the grasslands of the Tibetan pastoral countryside during the mid-1970s, in the waning years of the Cultural Revolution 文化大革命 (1966-1976). This paper discusses women’s fragmentation to analyze the obstacles to women’s liberation during the sent-down youth movement, illustrating how female sent-down youth’ tragic experiences resulted because of political power.

The Chinese Army after the Cultural Revolution: the Effects of Intervention

1973 ◽  
Vol 55 ◽  
pp. 450-477 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ellis Joffe
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Revolution ◽  
Policy Making ◽  
Political Power ◽  
Political Process ◽  
Power Structure ◽  
The Political ◽  
Short Term ◽  
People's Liberation Army ◽  
People’S Liberation Army ◽  
The Cultural Revolution

Whatever may have been the objectives of the principal participants in the Cultural Revolution, there can be little doubt that they did not include what turned out to be, at least in the short term, the most striking and significant outcome of the upheaval: the rise of the People's Liberation Army (PLA) to a pivotal position in China's power structure. Compelled to intervene in the political process when the disruptive effects of the struggle reached dangerous dimensions, the army gradually ascended to the commanding heights of political power in the provinces, and acquired a substantial voice in the policy-making councils of Peking. When the Ninth Congress of the Party finally met in April 1969 to write the epilogue to the Cultural Revolution, it was the PLA rather than the Party that held most of the key positions of power in China.

The Chinese Communist Youth Movement, 1949–1966

1970 ◽  
Vol 42 ◽  
pp. 105-130 ◽  
Author(s):  
Victor Funnell
Keyword(s):  
Communist Party ◽  
Cultural Revolution ◽  
Party Organization ◽  
Youth Organizations ◽  
Youth Movement ◽  
Red Guard ◽  
The Cultural Revolution

In the Cultural Revolution, the task of dismantling and reorganizing the Communist Party has not spared the various youth organizations that operated under the Party's aegis. Mao's injunction to “bombard” the bourgeois central headquarters within the Party has involved a similar bombardment of lesser headquarters in dependent establishments. Just as the Party organization was by-passed in the formation of rebel committees, so Communist youth organizations have been subsumed or swamped in the Red Guard movement. The Youth League in particular, as the Party's “main assistant,” has shared its fate.

Mao's Cultural Revolution: The Struggle to Consolidate Power

1970 ◽  
Vol 41 ◽  
pp. 1-25 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip Bridgham
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Revolution ◽  
Political Power ◽  
Central Committee ◽  
Fundamental Question ◽  
Committee Work ◽  
History Of ◽  
Party Congress ◽  
The Cultural Revolution

In his keynote political report to the Ninth Party Congress, Lin Piao discussed at some length the history of the “great proletarian cultural revolution” from its formal inception at a May 1966 Central Committee work conference to its nominal conclusion at the Party Congress in April 1969. Although he listed the objectives of the Cultural Revolution as ideological, political and economic in character, Lin stressed that “the fundamental question in the current revolution” is “the question of political power, a question of which class holds leadership.”

Rhetorical Procedures in Chinese Literature

2019 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 289-301
Author(s):  
Lelia Mabel Gándara
Keyword(s):  
Literary Criticism ◽  
Short Story ◽  
Cultural Revolution ◽  
Chinese Literature ◽  
Inductive Reasoning ◽  
New Rhetoric ◽  
Persuasive Discourse ◽  
Literary Trend ◽  
Scar Literature ◽  
The Cultural Revolution

Abstract “Scar Literature,” a literary movement in twentieth-century Chinese literature, encompasses a series of works written after the Cultural Revolution. The scar metaphor was taken from the title of a short story, “The Scar,” and characterized a series of works with common features. The outlines of “Scar Literature” are blurred, mixed and intertwined with other literary trends and movements. But while Chinese and foreign literary criticism claim that it was short-lived, its influences are visible in several works by contemporary authors. Based on the idea that literary works are prone to being analyzed as a form of persuasive discourse, this paper identifies typical rhetorical procedures of this literary trend and its influences in certain emblematic works: the recurrence of topoi (figures such as “rehabilitation,” peculiar to the Cultural Revolution); inductive reasoning (the construction of a historiographic reasoning via the exemplum); recourse to pathos; and the metaphorical figure of the scar bearing the value of the plotline. This analysis applies concepts of New Rhetoric and discourse linguistics, in particular, concepts developed by Olbrecht-Tyteca and Perelman, Amossy’s approach about pathos and the role of emotions and “figurality” in argumentation, and Plantin’s linguistic theory of the emotions.

The Short Story in the Cultural Revolution

1978 ◽  
Vol 73 ◽  
pp. 99-121 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. E. Pollard
Keyword(s):  
Short Story ◽  
Cultural Revolution ◽  
Case Law ◽  
Personal Gain ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Cultural Revolution

The history of Chinese Communist literature up to this point has been one of ever-contracting boundaries, and all efforts on the ground to push back the frontiers or mark out reserves for tolerance have only fortified that trend, by defining what become yet other heresies to be avoided. The process had been uneven until the Cultural Revolution came along; then the presses shut down, the board was swept clean, and a unique opportunity offered itself to create a literature cleansed of historical impurities, impeccable in doctrine (given the new vetting procedures), and immaculate in conception (the lure of personal gain and fame being banished). Positively the new art had to guide it communist thought sharpened by the struggle between the two lines, negatively the treacherous ground has all been freshly sign-posted. It is the purpose of this paper to show what was made of this opportunity in the field of the short story. It will first be necessary to review briefly the central literary dogma and the interdictions established by case-law in the few years prior to the Cultural Revolution.

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