Twentieth-Century China

Inspired by well-known author Ba Jin's idea of a memorial museum for learning about the causes and consequences of mass violence, Jie Li's new book curates exhibits of textual archives, audiovisual records, and material remains from the Mao era (1949–1976). It focuses on traumatic periods, spanning the Anti-Rightist campaign (1957) that criminalized intellectuals for their dissident voices, the Great Leap Forward (1959–1961) that induced famine claiming millions of rural lives, and the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976) that threw the country into turmoil. Analyzing the traces of the past as "externalized" memories (7), this book highlights the technological, media, and historical conditions of memory inscription, preservation, and transmission. All the traces this book examines have been brought to public awareness during the twenty-first century via digital, cinematic, and museum remediation. Unveiling the processes of memory-making and resurrection, this book reveals the "palimpsest" of memory formation (3) featuring nonlinear diachronic interactions between the past, present, and future.

Utopian Ruins presents multilayered, pluralistic interpretations and representations of the Mao era. It reminds the reader of the idealistic visions of prosperity, equality, and collectivity that had inspired mass participation in the Chinese Revolution as well as the violence and mass suffering underwriting this zealous pursuit. This study thus challenges both the official master narrative in China that plays down traumatic experiences and the Western master narrative that epitomizes the Maoist years as the so-called "dark ages" (17). It instead stresses the "interconnection between idealism and violence, victimhood and complicity" (20) and nuances the dichotomous debates—"elite trauma" vs. "grassroots nostalgia" (6)—in previous discussions about the multivalent memories of the Mao era.

The interconnection between utopian ideals and human costs is first exhibited via government dossiers of two intellectuals, Lin Zhao (林昭 1932–1968) and Nie Gannu (聂绀弩 1903–1986). Both were revolutionaries and were later accused of counter-revolutionary crimes. Chapter 1 focuses on Lin Zhao's writings in prison. Being denied stationery, Lin inscribed memory using her own blood. Deprived of any public communication channels, Lin utilized the state surveillance apparatus for her memory storage and transmission. The materiality of her blood writing, its circumstance of production, and its heart-wrenching messages embodied both the suffering and idealism of this period. Whereas Lin died a martyr, Nie Gannu survived. Scrutinizing the production, forms, and genres of this celebrated poet's police file, chapter 2 sheds light on record-keeping practices under the "archival regime of memory" (70). During this period, the masses served—voluntarily or coerced by the sense of fear—as eyes and ears of state surveillance. At the same time, they were acutely aware of the potential for their own sayings and writings to be archived. In composing confession and self-criticism, people living in Maoist China struggled to claim authorship over their own thoughts, words, and actions against others' interpretations. Once a disciplinary force, the police files of Lin and Nie gained public afterlives via a 2004 hagiographic documentary and via 2009 cyber forums, respectively. Later generations' remediation has revived these past-made memories to evoke subversive remembrance against official historiography. [End Page E-9]

Turning to images, chapters 3 and 4 advance our knowledge about the evolving visual conventions and audiovisual ecology that conditioned memory-making during and after the Mao era. Rather than simply dismissing propaganda photos as fake or deception, chapter 3 excavates their evidential values by unveiling the theoretical rationales behind their production. The author points out that since the 1930s Chinese photojournalists, in their patriotic endeavors to rectify Western photographers' imperialist gaze, had embraced both the "testimonial qualities" and "propagandistic function" of photography (110). But what photographs testify changed from "reality as it is" to "reality as it should be" during the Great Leap Forward (105). Narrowing the visual conventions to merely witness socialist miracles largely excluded famine and catastrophes from photographic documentation. The two documentaries by European filmmakers...