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Sparks : China's underground historians and their battle for the future / Ian Johnson.

By: Contributor(s): Material type: TextTextPublisher: New York, NY : Oxford University Press, [2023]Description: xv, 381 pages : illustrations, maps ; 25 cmContent type:
  • text
  • still image
Media type:
  • unmediated
Carrier type:
  • volume
ISBN:
  • 9780197575505
  • 0197575501
Other title:
  • China's underground historians and their battle for the future
Subject(s):
Contents:
Preface -- I. The past. Introduction: The landscape of memory -- Memory: The hexi corridor -- The ditch -- Memory: Facing walls -- The sacrifice -- Memory: Bamboo slips -- Spark -- Memory: Etchings -- History as weapon -- Memory: How the red sun rose -- History as myth -- Memory: National Museum of China -- II. The present. The limits of amnesia -- Memory: A landlord's mansion -- The lost city -- Memory: Snow's visit -- The gateway -- Memory: Bloodlines -- Remembrance -- Memory: Tie Liu's cafe -- Lay down your butcher's knife -- Memory: Videoing China's village -- III. The future. Virus -- Memory: Soft burial -- Empire -- Memory: the lost warehouses -- The land of hermits -- Conclusion: Learning to walk underground -- Appendix: Exploring China's underground history.
Summary: "A vital account of how some of China's most important writers, filmmakers, and artists haver overcome crackdowns and censorship to challenge the Chinese Communist Party on its most sacred ground, its monopoly on history" -- publisher's description.Summary: "The tectonic plates that form China have left it a checkerboard of mountains and rivers and memories. From the south, the Indian plate pushes up into the Eurasian, creating the Himalayas and the vast Tibetan plateau that almost cuts the country off from the rest of the continent. Rippling outward are smaller mountain ranges that ebb and flow toward the Pacific Ocean, like deep swells heaving through the land"-- Provided by publisher.
Holdings
Item type Home library Collection Shelving location Call number Materials specified Status Date due Barcode Item holds
Adult Book Adult Book Main Library NonFiction New 907.202 J67 Available 33111011189525
Total holds: 0

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Using history to challenge Communist Party rule. Sparks: China's Underground Historians and their Battle for the Future describes how some of China's best-known writers, filmmakers, and artists have overcome crackdowns and censorship to forge a nationwide movement that challenges the Communist Party on its most hallowed ground: its control of history. The past is a battleground in many countries, but in China it is crucial to political power. In traditional China, dynasties rewrote history to justify their rule by proving that their predecessors were unworthy of holding power. Marxism gave this a modern gloss, describing history as an unstoppable force heading toward Communism's triumph. The Chinese Communist Party builds on these ideas to whitewash its misdeeds and glorify its rule. Indeed, one of Xi Jinping's signature policies is the control of history, which he equates with the party's survival. But in recent years, a network of independent writers, artists, and filmmakers have begun challenging this state-led disremembering. Using digital technologies to bypass China's legendary surveillance state, their samizdat journals, guerilla media posts, and underground films document a regular pattern of disasters: from famines and purges of years past to ethnic clashes and virus outbreaks of the present--powerful and inspiring accounts that have underpinned recent protests in China against Xi Jinping's strongman rule. Based on years of first-hand research in Xi Jinping's China, Sparks challenges stereotypes of a China where the state has quashed all free thought, revealing instead a country engaged in one of humanity's great struggles of memory against forgetting--a battle that will shape the China that emerges in the mid-21st century.

"A Council on Foreign Relations book" -- title page.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

"A vital account of how some of China's most important writers, filmmakers, and artists haver overcome crackdowns and censorship to challenge the Chinese Communist Party on its most sacred ground, its monopoly on history" -- publisher's description.

"The tectonic plates that form China have left it a checkerboard of mountains and rivers and memories. From the south, the Indian plate pushes up into the Eurasian, creating the Himalayas and the vast Tibetan plateau that almost cuts the country off from the rest of the continent. Rippling outward are smaller mountain ranges that ebb and flow toward the Pacific Ocean, like deep swells heaving through the land"-- Provided by publisher.

Preface -- I. The past. Introduction: The landscape of memory -- Memory: The hexi corridor -- The ditch -- Memory: Facing walls -- The sacrifice -- Memory: Bamboo slips -- Spark -- Memory: Etchings -- History as weapon -- Memory: How the red sun rose -- History as myth -- Memory: National Museum of China -- II. The present. The limits of amnesia -- Memory: A landlord's mansion -- The lost city -- Memory: Snow's visit -- The gateway -- Memory: Bloodlines -- Remembrance -- Memory: Tie Liu's cafe -- Lay down your butcher's knife -- Memory: Videoing China's village -- III. The future. Virus -- Memory: Soft burial -- Empire -- Memory: the lost warehouses -- The land of hermits -- Conclusion: Learning to walk underground -- Appendix: Exploring China's underground history.

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