MCLC: Ideas and History in China's Independent Cinema

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Ideas and History in China’s Independent Cinema
I'm pleased to announce publication of my book Postsocialist Conditions: Ideas and History in China’s “Independent Cinema,” 1988-2008 (472 pp.) by Brill. This book offers a comprehensive survey and trenchant critique of China’s “Independent Cinema” by the sixth-generation auteurs. By showing the multi-valence of the postsocialist conditions in contemporary Chinese society, their films articulate a new cultural-political logic in postsocialist China, which is also the logic of the market in this era of neoliberal transformation, brought about by the forces of marketization since the late 1980s. The directors laudably show the spirits of humanism and the humanitarian concerns of the underclass, yet the shortage and repudiation of class analysis prohibits the artists from exploring the social contradictions and the cause of class restructuration.--Xiaoping Wang <wxping75 at 163.com>
Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION
Articulating the Logic of China’s Post-Socialist Society in the Era of Neo-liberal Transformation
PART 1
China in Transition: Jia Zhangke’s “Hometown Trilogy”
Postmodern Anomie or Postsocialist Alienation?
PART 2 
Problematic Narration of the Historical Experience of Working Class
Portraying the Abject and the Sublime of the Subaltern
Exhibiting the Confusion and Melancholy of Artists
Women’s Changing Destiny in the Post-revolutionary Fantasyland
PART 3
In the Name of Love: Ideology of the Elite Class
Wither China? Wang Chao’s “China Trilogy”
CONCLUSION
On the Historicity of the Sixth Generation Auteurs and China’s “Independent    Cinema”
 
For some blurbs:
This outstanding study of the Chinese "Independent Cinema" is theoretically informed, and meticulously researched work on the subject. It will be an invaluable guide to the complex cultural production of China today, where politics of the Maoist past mingles with the craze for material wealth. The book sheds light on China's ideological labyrinth, in which the so-called Chinese Sixth Generation independent cinema may revel as well as reveal. -----Liu Kang, Professor of Chinese Studies, Duke University, USA, Member of the Academy of Europe
Postsocialist Conditions reevaluates China’s “Sixth Generation” directors’ relentless efforts in repositioning artistic subjectivity and cultural production vis-à-vis a rapidly changing landscape of neoliberal market transformation. Xiaoping Wang is commended for providing stimulating, nuanced readings of key auteurs and fi lms to highlight the dilemma of contemporary Chinese filmmakers caught between their aesthetic visions and ethical concerns for social underclasses, between a nostalgia for bygone socialist values and anxieties over contemporary moral degradation, and between material abundance and emotional, spiritual emptiness.—Yingjin ZHANG, Distinguished Professor and Chair of the Department of Literature, University of California, San Diego
Postsocialist Conditions is a critical and detailed extension of the scholarship on this subject. By viewing the actions of directors in the context of China’s post-socialist conditions, the manuscript brings different perspectives and theoretical conceptions to a fresh reading of fi lms made by the “sixth generation of fi lm directors.” In a call for the “re-politicization” of both social politics and cinematic productions, the author invites readers to engage in a political way of thinking and stake a critical position towards an “independent cinema.”—Shuqin CUI, Professor of Asian Studies and Film Studies, Bowdoin College
This original and ground-breaking study ushers in a different approach to the cinematic field by organically integrating Marxist political hermeneutics, social analysis, and textual analysis. Ideological analysis combined with class analysis represents the book’s effort in repoliticizing “the natural.” Through using denaturalization to combat depoliticization, this work demonstrates an eloquent and timely critique of the depoliticized discourse of “human nature” and “love.” This repoliticization effort helps critics go beyond the “naturalized” discourse of modernization, urbanization, globalization, commercialization, to describe social transformation in postcolonial China.—Zhen ZHANG, Associate Professor of Chinese, Union College
For more information, click: https://brill.com/abstract/title/36094
Xiaoping Wang <wxping75 at 163.com>
by denton.2 at osu.edu on September 6, 2018
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