The Making of Homo Socialist: The Discursive Analysis of the Ideological Production of Class in China, 1949–1976

Based on a critique of the history project titled “Oral History of Peasants’ Ordinary Life in the Revolutionary Era of China,” this article provides an analysis of class ideology production from Land Reform Movement to the Cultural Revolution in China. Thirty years of socialist construction in China was based on the craft of making the Homo Socialist. The focus here is on how personal experiences were transformed into state-endorsed conduct via the discourse of class and class struggle. Over the course of the sociopolitical transformations leading to the Cultural Revolution, “class” changed from a socioeconomic designation to a political behavioral metaphor, and in the end a purely symbolic gesture; personal experiences were transformed from hallmarks of class privilege to virtual identification with imagined class struggle. And the peasants went from being “owners of bitterness” to “debtors of bitterness” on the way to becoming “sinners of the revolution”—who gradually submitted themselves to the regime in the name of revolution, liberation, and redemption. These transformations were realized through discursive practices connecting personally embodied experiences with the abstract Marxist theory of class and class struggle. Examining the shifting nature of class ideology production helps to explain how the Chinese Communist Party understood the effects of its governance and how people found class ideology meaningful to them, even when it reached the point of absurdity.

Analysis of Existential Feminism Struggle of Women Online Drivers During the Covid-19 Pandemic

<p align="center"> </p><p><em>This article discusses the women's movement to sustain its existentialism in the COVID-19 pandemic by moving and taking high risks to become female online drivers. Based on research conducted by Simone De Beauvoir, who analyzed the film "The Second Sex" using existentialist feminism theory, women are often used as objects and men as subjects because of the man's masculinity and biological circumstances that are considered to support inter-subjective in men. The contribution of this research is the use of existentialist feminism as an anti-thesis of male masculinity by applying it to the empirical conditions of women. The study used feminist ethnographic methods that combine ethnographic interviews and participant observations. The focus of this study lies on the class struggle of women to maintain their existentialism despite having to take high job risks and the risk of contracting the COVID-19 virus due to high mobility. This research data analysis technique uses data reduction, data display, and data triangulation. The results showed that women worked as online drivers to become subjects for themselves and act as breadwinners and housewives in the conditions of the COVID-19 pandemic. Women's struggles in the COVID-19 pandemic undermine the social stigma of society that often makes them objects.</em></p><p>Artikel ini membahas tentang gerakan kaum perempuan untuk mempertahankan eksistensialnya di masa pandemi COVID-19 dengan bergerak dan mengambil resiko tinggi untuk menjadi driver online perempuan. Berdasarkan penelitian yang dilakukan oleh Simone De Beauvoir yang menganalisis film <em>“The Second Sex”</em>menggunakan teori feminisme eksistensialis, perempuan seringkali dijadikan sebagai objek dan laki-laki sebagai subjek karena maskunilitas dari seorang laki-laki dan keadaan biologis yang dianggap mendukung adanya inter-sebujektif pada laki-laki. Kontribusi penelitian ini adalah penggunakan feminisme eksistensialis sebagai <em>anti-thesis</em> maskulinitas laki-laki dengan menerapkan pada kondisi empiris perempuan. Penelitian ini menggunakan metode etnografi feminis yaitu menggabungkan <em>ethnographic interview </em>dan <em>participant observations. </em>Fokus penelitian ini terletak pada <em>class struggle</em><em> </em>kaum perempuan untuk mempertahankan eksistensialnya meskipun harus mengambil resiko pekerjaan yang tinggi dan resiko tertular virus COVID-19 akibat mobilitas yang tinggi. Teknik analisis data penelitian ini menggunakan reduksi data, <em>display </em>data, verifikasi data dan triangulasi data. Hasil menunjukkan bahwa kaum perempuan bekerja sebagai <em>driver online</em><em> </em>untuk menjadi subjek bagi dirinya sendiri sekaligus berperan sebagai pencari nafkah dan ibu rumah tangga dalam kondisi pandemi COVID-19. Perjuangan perempuan dalam pandemi COVID-19 meruntuhkan stigma sosial masyarakat yang seringkali menjadikan mereka sebagai objek.</p>

Instrumentation of Freud’s Psychoanalysis, Marxism, Semiotic, Iconic & Realism in context of Politics & Class Struggle in Modern Day Arts & Motion Pictures

This project-based research in the form of a visual essay along with reflective summary will gaze into the political aesthetics of art and history collaborated with its communicative approach and correlation in the global appearance. The motto of this essay is the representation of political aesthetics and class struggle through modern day arts, images and graphic from Psychoanalytic, semiotic, iconic, realism and Marxist viewpoint and their impacts on the communication and correlation. As images could be read from various perspectives, how the formalism and visual form of art alongside psychoanalytic and connoisseurship point of view could encounter the reflection as a limitation, would also be elaborated. In order to perform that and to achieve a concrete establishment according to the finding, thirteen images will be evaluated in relation to their political aesthetic to find out their influences, political aesthetics and class-struggle perspectives on global-scale appearances from Psychoanalytic, semiotic, iconic, symbolic, realism and Marxist viewpoint. Apart from the accomplishment of the evaluation of their nature of communication, this essay would also enlighten the theoretical dimension of arts and images in contrast to the point of interests.

Left Movements and the Army in Turkey (1961–71): The Case of the Yön-Devrim Movement

Turkey’s long sixties started with a military coup (May 27, 1960) and ended with another military coup (March 12, 1971). During this period, there was an explosion in the number of radical left and socialist movements in Turkey. One of the leading left movements of the period was the Yön-Devrim movement. The most distinctive feature of this movement was the special role it placed on the military in the transition to socialism. In this article, we will focus on the relationship between the military and left/socialist politics during this period. To this end, we will examine the Yön-Devrim movement, specifically their approach to the military. In particular, we will examine why this movement imposed a “progressive” mission on the military, what kind of a transition a possible military coup would provide for socialism, and what role they envisioned for the army, and the bureaucracy in general, in the class struggle.

Functions of Literature

Literature is an open concept and a creative art which expresses human history, experiences, imagination, observations, predictions and suggestions at a particular time in a given society. Either as fiction or non-fiction, literature can be rendered in both spoken and written words. It is often argued whether literature is for itself or the development of the society that produces it. This study, therefore, interrogates how the selected Francophone African novels, namely Sembène Ousmane’s Les bouts de bois de Dieu, Mariama Bâ’s Une si longue lettre, Ferdinand Oyono’s Le vieux nègre et la médaille, Aminata Sow Fall’s La grève des bàttu, Patrick Ilboudo’s Les vertiges du trône and Fatou Keïta’s Rebelle, depict the function of literature. The novelists are selected because of their inclination towards the social transformation paradigm. The purpose of this paper is to raise people’s awareness and mobilize them towards positive change. Based on close reading, the paper is built around Marxist theory which is interested in the class struggle as demonstrated in a literary text, with a view to deconstructing the existing capitalist tendencies in a given society. The findings reveal that the selected novels are focused on the poor conditions socio-politically, economically, culturally and psychologically that exist both during and after the colonial era. The paper concludes that literature helps readers to cope with the socio-cultural, political, economic, religious and other challenges of their immediate as well as remote environments through the process of self-discovery. As such, positive social change is possible through literature.

Character Constellations

Fiction has a major social impact, not least because it co-shapes the image that society has of various social groups. Drawing on a collection of 170 contemporary Dutch-language novels, Character Constellations presents a range of data-driven, statistical models to study depictions of characters in terms of gender, race, ethnicity, class, age, sexuality, and other identity categories. Incorporating the tools of network analysis, each chapter highlights an aspect of fictional social networks that affects the representation of social groups: their centrality, their communities, and their conflicts. While reading individual novels in light of emerging statistical patterns, combining the formal methods of social network analysis with the interpretive tools of narratology, this study shows how central societal themes such as (in)equality and emancipation, integration and segregation, and social mobility and class struggle are foregrounded, replicated, or distorted in the Dutch novel. Showcasing what character-based critiques of literary representation gain by integrating data-driven methods into the practice of critical close reading, Character Constellations contributes to societal debates on cultural representation and identity and the role fiction and art have in those debates.