China and New Left Visions

The first English anthology on China’s New Left in a global context, this book presents the history, background, and the focuses of the most critical force in contemporary China. Well-versed in Chinese history and its global connections, the writers provide well documented and insightful perspectives on China’s pursuit of a path radically different from capitalist globalization.

Ban Wang is the William Haas Professor in Chinese Studies at Stanford University and the Yangtze River Chair Professor at East China Normal University in Shanghai. He is the author of Illuminations from the Past: Trauma, Memory, and History in Modern Cinema (2004), and The Sublime Figure of History: Aesthetics and Politics in Twentieth Century China (1997). He edited Words and Their Stories: Essays on the Language of the Chinese Revolution (2010) and co-edited The Image of China in the American Classroom: Personal Reflections by Chinese Scholars in the US (2006), and Trauma and Cinema: Cross-Cultural Explorations (2004). He has published numerous articles in the fields of Chinese literature and film, aesthetics and comparative literature. Jie Lu is professor of Chinese studies & film studies at the University of the Pacific. She is the author of Dismantling Time: Chinese Literature in the Age of Globalization (2005) and has edited: China's Literature and Cultural Scenes at the Turn of the 21st Century (2008); "Writing against Spectacular Reality: Cultural Intervention in China and Taiwan," Journal of Contemporary China (2008); "New Literary and Culture Scene in Contemporary China," Journal of Contemporary China (2003 & 2004); and "Chinese Literature in the Post-Mao China," American Journal of Chinese Studies (1998).

Acknowledgments Introduction: China and New Left Critique by Ban Wang and Jie Lu Part I: Geopolitics and New Left Perspectives 1. Back to the Future: Contemporary China in the Perspective of Its Past, Circa 1980 by Arif Dirlik 2. The Geopolitics of the New Left in China by Lisa Rofel 3. The Battle for Chinese Discourse and the Rise of the Chinese New Left: Toward a Postcolonial Politics of Knowledge by Daniel Vukovich 4. What Is Political Theater?: A Critique of Performance Studies by Ban Wang Part II: New Left Literature in China 5. Internationale as Specter: Na'er, "Subaltern Literature," and Contemporary China's "Left Bank" by Xueping Zhong 6. Constructing Agency: Challenges and Possibilities in Chinese New Left Literature by Jie Lu 7. Toward a New Leftist Ecocriticism in Postsocialist China: Reading the "Poetry of Migrant Workers" as Ecopoetry by Haomin Gong 8. The Rise of the Short-short Genre by Aili Mu Part III: Rethinking Socialism and Market Reform 9. The Road to Revival: A "Red" Classic or a "Black" Revisionist Epic in Praise of a Postsocialist China by Xiaomei Chen 10. A New Narrative of Development in Chinese Television Media Representations of Africa 11. Redistribution of the Sensible in Neoliberal China: Real Estate, Cinema, and Aesthetics by Hai Ren