scholarly journals After Babel in China

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yifeng Sun
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Revolution ◽  
The West ◽  
Key Concepts ◽  
Chinese Cultural Revolution ◽  
English Translations ◽  
The Cultural Revolution

When George Steiner’s After Babel: Aspects of Language and Translation was published in 1975, the excitement and controversy generated by this book in the West were naturally unknown in China since the country was still in the thrall of the Cultural Revolution. Nevertheless, the subsequent journey of After Babel to Chi­na seems to be unimpeded, though apparently belated, which is understandable, given the fact that the Chinese Cultural Revolution only came to an end in late 1976, prior to which the conditions for accepting such Western theoretical works did not exist. This paper will present a succinct trajectory of the reception of After Babel by reviewing how some of the key concepts of Steiner’s hermeneutic theory were and are perceived and adapted to the Chinese environment. The travel of Stei­ner’s theory to China will be briefly sketched, followed by accounts of different in­terpretations of Steiner’s chapter “The Hermeneutic Motion” and a discussion of the various attempts to supplement and expand it in a critical light. Some specific examples concerning English-Chinese and Chinese-English translations are dis­cussed in order to illuminate the relevance and applicability of the theoretical con­cepts con­tained in After Babel for addressing some of the fundamental issues per­tain­ing to translation.

Female warriors: a reproduction of patriarchal narrative of Hua Mulan in The Red Detachment of Women (1972)

2020 ◽  
Vol 176 (1) ◽  
pp. 66-77
Author(s):  
Zhuying Li
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Revolution ◽  
Chinese Women ◽  
Gender Discourse ◽  
Patriarchal Family ◽  
Chinese Cultural Revolution ◽  
The Cultural Revolution

During the Chinese Cultural Revolution, the CCP officially claimed that Chinese women achieved an equal position as men, and the Confucian patriarchal family was deconstructed. This article is an ongoing exploration of Maoist gender discourse by analysing the image of female warriors in the revolutionary opera film, The Red Detachment of Women (1972) which was made and popularised during the Cultural Revolution. This article finds that Maoist gender discourse failed to deconstruct the Confucian patriarchy. The image of female warriors in the revolutionary opera films was a reproduction of the patriarchal narrative of Hua Mulan, which served an ethical symbol of loyalty and filial daughter in the discourse of Confucian patriarchy. Similar to Mulan, the masculinised image of female warriors in the revolutionary opera films cannot be identified as a feminist representation yet a cultural and ethical symbol of filial daughter that leads to women’s subordination to men’s needs.

The Impact of the Cultural Revolution in China on the Mongolians of Inner Mongolia

1994 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 409-430 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Sneath
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Revolution ◽  
Government Policy ◽  
Inner Mongolia ◽  
The Political ◽  
The West ◽  
Autonomous Region ◽  
News Reports ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Cultural Revolution

A number of papers have been written in the west on the subject of the Cultural Revolution in Inner Mongolia. Hyer and Heaton's (1968) account of the period in the China Quarterly deals with events up until 1968, and relies heavily upon an analysis of the news reports broadcast by Radio Inner Mongolia at that time. The paper focuses upon the fate of Ulanhu, the Chairman of the Inner Mongolian Autonomous Region who fell from power during the Cultural Revolution. Hyer and Heaton are concerned primarily with the power struggles within the political apparatus, and they include no first-hand or eyewitness accounts. The paper gives no indication of the effects of the Cultural Revolution upon the great bulk of the population of the I.M.A.R., either Mongolian or Han Chinese. However, the article does carefully document the rapidly changing tide of Inner Mongolian government policy and the emergence of populist groups which challenged the political establishment, over the period 1965 to 1968.

Psychiatric Concepts and Treatment in China

1976 ◽  
Vol 66 ◽  
pp. 315-323 ◽  
Author(s):  
Seymour S. Kety
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Medical Journal ◽  
Cultural Revolution ◽  
American Psychiatric Association ◽  
Chinese Journal ◽  
The West ◽  
Primary Literature ◽  
The Status ◽  
Exchange Visit ◽  
The Cultural Revolution

There is practically no knowledge in the west regarding the status of psychiatry in the People's Republic since the time of the Cultural Revolution. The three publications on Chinese psychiatry that I was able to find, all of which are based largely upon the primary literature, terminate abruptly at the Cultural Revolution. At that time the Chinese Journal of Neurology and Psychiatrystopped publication and has not been reinstituted. The only medical journal which has begun publication, the China Medical Journal, carries occasional papers in neurology but thus far there have been none in psychiatry. A group of American psychiatrists who had been hoping to participate in an exchange visit to China under the auspices of the National Institute of Mental Health and the American Psychiatric Association had not succeeded in making the necessary contacts, and were in fact unable to give me the names of any Chinese psychiatrists in responsible positions.

The Chinese Cultural Revolution and the Decline of the Left in Singapore

2011 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 211-246 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yinghong Cheng
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Revolution ◽  
Chinese Politics ◽  
Overseas Chinese ◽  
Political Opposition ◽  
Ethnic Chinese ◽  
Strength Based ◽  
Chinese Cultural Revolution ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Cultural Revolution

Abstract Represented by the Barisan party and mainly participated in by ethnic Chinese, the leftist movement in Singapore was the thrust behind the island’s independence (1965) and the major political opposition to the ruling PAP (People’s Action Party). But within several years after independence, the movement disappeared as the PAP’s one-party regime grew in strength. Based on the leftist publications of that period, this article argues that Maoist China’s influence, the Cultural Revolution in particular, significantly contributed to the decline of the movement. The radicalization and dissolution of Singapore’s leftist movement was one example of the destructive impact of Maoism and the Cultural Revolution on overseas Chinese politics in the 1960s.

scholarly journals Cultural Revolution as Method

2016 ◽  
Vol 227 ◽  
pp. 718-733 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Dutton
Keyword(s):  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Cultural Revolution ◽  
The Political ◽  
Affective Dimension ◽  
Art Practices ◽  
Chinese Cultural Revolution ◽  
The Way ◽  
The Cultural Revolution

AbstractThis paper treats the Chinese Cultural Revolution as a means by which to open on to a more affective approach to the question of the political. It examines one piece of art-technology of that period and shows the way it intuitively worked within the fluidity of power to produce political intensity. This one technology is a microcosm of the Cultural Revolution notion of the political that was built around an attempt to channel and harness affective power towards revolutionary ends. Both because it attempts to direct the political through the affective dimension and because its methods of doing so resembled contemporary art practices, this paper opens on to the possibilities of a method based on an art rather than a science of the political.

scholarly journals Class, Culture and Principles: Evaluating the Chinese Cultural Revolution on the Basis of its Aims and Strategies

2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-11
Author(s):  
Dharma Bahadur Thapa
Keyword(s):  
Communist Party ◽  
Cultural Revolution ◽  
Primary Sources ◽  
Communist Party Of China ◽  
Class Culture ◽  
The Past ◽  
Unconscious Process ◽  
Chinese Cultural Revolution ◽  
Classless Society ◽  
The Cultural Revolution

Culture in any society is inherited from the past as a form of tradition. It is an automatic and unconscious process. It is usually taken as supra-class unifying category which binds a community. China during Mao proclaimed that old culture serves the interests of the exploiting class and therefore the proletariat as an emerging class should struggle against it and impose its own culture. On this premise ‘the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution’ was launched. Its aim was to ‘prevent the restoration of capitalism’ by revolutionizing people’s thinking to realize the communist goal of classless society. It lasted from 1966 to 1976, however, debates still continue regarding its aims, principles and practices and achievements or the damages it caused. This article attempts to explore what it actually wanted to accomplish and what strategies and measures were employed to materialize these aims. For this purpose it uses the documents published by the Communist Party of China during that period as the primary sources and judges them on the basis of Marxist socialist principles. The paper reaches to the conclusion that the Cultural Revolution adopted principles, policies and methods which accord with Marxism.

The Cultural Revolution in the Foreign Ministry of China. By Ma Jisen. [Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press, 2004. 466 pp. Hard cover $39.00, ISBN 962-996-149-0; paperback $25.00, ISBN 962-996-202-0.]

2004 ◽  
Vol 180 ◽  
pp. 1097-1098
Author(s):  
Michael Schoenhals
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Revolution ◽  
Foreign Minister ◽  
The West ◽  
Good Person ◽  
Chen Yi ◽  
Chinese University ◽  
History Of ◽  
Foreign Ministry ◽  
Hard Cover ◽  
The Cultural Revolution

This superb history of the Cultural Revolution inside China's foreign ministry is a carefully documented account by a participant whose overriding concern is with the factual record and with setting it straight. Ma Jisen, who worked in the West European Department between 1952 and 1969, asserts that on a number of crucial points popular understanding of Mao's assault on revisionism remains shaped by what are really little more than “dramatically oversimplified… [and] brazenly distorted…cartoonized rumour accounts" (pp. 403–404). In support of this assertion, she adduces much new and powerful evidence, especially from the first years of the Cultural Revolution. The end result is a book that may well prompt many readers to seriously reconsider much of our accepted knowledge about what happened – and why – in those tumultuous years when the British Mission in Beijing was set ablaze, Chinese students waving the Little Red Book were roughed up by the KGB in Red Square, and Mao turned from obsessing about American imperialist paper tigers to describing (in conversation with Edgar Snow in December 1970) that country's Republican president, Richard M. Nixon, as “a good person (haoren), the number one good person in the world!” The author is not out to replace old myths with new ones. She finds no simple answers and, in fact, does not even seem to seek them. Much of the value of her work lies in the subtle way it brings to the fore the absurdity of the Cultural Revolution. On occasion, her raw data, her carefully selected illustrations from contemporary texts, speak only too well for themselves: “If you want peace, the revisionists will not let you have peace,” she quotes Foreign Minister Chen Yi as saying in June 1966 – then, a few lines later, she has him denouncing, in the very same speech, the revisionist fallacy of seeking peaceful co-existence (pp. 13–14).

The World According to the Maestro

Dearest Lenny ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 169-176
Author(s):  
Mari Yoshihara
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Revolution ◽  
National Endowment ◽  
Leonard Bernstein ◽  
The West ◽  
The Arts ◽  
The Us ◽  
The World ◽  
Us Government ◽  
Aids Crisis ◽  
The Cultural Revolution

In the mid-1980s, as Leonard Bernstein looked ahead at what he wanted to accomplish in his remaining years, his artistic and professional priorities became clear. Along with his continued commitments as a composer and a conductor, Bernstein decided to prioritize education as his mission. He also continued his activism to address the AIDS crisis. His defiance of the US government took another phase in November 1989, when he rejected the National Medal for the Arts in protest of the National Endowment for the Arts’ withdrawal of funding for an art show dealing with the theme of AIDS. In the meantime, the end of the Cultural Revolution and the opening of China’s door to the West led many musicians to seek artistic exchanges, and Amberson began to explore the possibility of the maestro’s visit to China.

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