Utopian Ruins - A Memorial Museum of the Mao Era (Hardcover)

In Utopian Ruins Jie Li traces the creation, preservation, and elision of memories about China's Mao era by envisioning a virtual museum that reckons with both its utopian yearnings and its cataclysmic reverberations. Li proposes a critical framework for understanding the documentation and transmission of the socialist past that mediates between nostalgia and trauma, anticipation and retrospection, propaganda and testimony. Assembling each chapter like a memorial exhibit, Li explores how corporeal traces, archival documents, camera images, and material relics serve as commemorative media. Prison writings and police files reveal the infrastructure of state surveillance and testify to revolutionary ideals and violence, victimhood and complicity. Photojournalism from the Great Leap Forward and documentaries from the Cultural Revolution promoted faith in communist miracles while excluding darker realities, whereas Mao memorabilia collections, factory ruins, and memorials at trauma sites remind audiences of the Chinese Revolution's unrealized dreams and staggering losses.

General

Imprint:	Duke University Press
Country of origin:	United States
Series:	Sinotheory
Release date:	December 2020
First published:	2020
Authors:	Jie Li
Dimensions:	229 x 152mm (L x W)
Format:	Hardcover - Cloth over boards
Pages:	384
ISBN-13:	978-1-4780-1018-0
Categories:	Books > Reference & Interdisciplinary > Museums & museology Books > Humanities > History > Asian / Middle Eastern history > General Books > History > Asian / Middle Eastern history > General Promotions
LSN:	1-4780-1018-5
Barcode:	9781478010180

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