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CHINA'S GREAT PROLETARIAN CULTURAL REVOLUTION: Master Narratives and Post-Mao Counternarratives. Edited by Woei Lien Chong. Lanham (Maryland), Boulder, New York, Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers Inc. 2002. xix, 410 pp. (Pictures.) US$34.95, paper. ISBN 0-7425-1874-4.
Billed as an attempt to "move away from the study of China's 'Cultural Revolution' as a purely political event," this collection of ten essays focuses on what the editor in her preface identifies as the "constructed 'master narrative'" of the CR-a narrative, she explains, with a content that "cannot be officially challenged without jeopardizing the legitimacy of the CCP itself (p. vii). The "post-Mao counternarratives" in the title of the collection are the actual discursive moves "away," as undertaken by the individual authors. As one savours some 400 pages of inquiries into demonological paradigms, changing features of Mao Zedong Thought, religious imagery and practices, literary conventions, philosophy and private narrative strategies, one develops a subjective "feel" for what the counternarratives are about. In the end, the problem becomes...