Suchergebnisse

Aus US-amerikanischer Sicht

In Chinese Communist literature, men and women are primarily seen in their likeness as workers rather than in their sexual and emotional unlikeness as human beings. Women, as much as men, are praised for their socialist zeal and heroic capacity for work and condemned for being socialist sluggards indifferent to production. But despite its repudiation of "human interest" as a symptom of capitalist or revisionist decadence, even this supremely practical literature cannot begin to exist without some superficial attention to personal problems, and these problems, inevitably, attest to the persistence of biological instincts and immemorial habits of human civilisation. Until the techniques, Communist or otherwise, for dehumanisation are perfected, men and women will remain subject to irrational passions, and if circumstances permit, they will fall in love, get married, bring up children, and in other devious ways contrive for pleasure and happiness. In tracing the lot of Chinese women under Communism, I will therefore take for granted that the primary purpose of their earthly existence is to contribute to and assist in production and examine rather their residual personal problems in the context of the overriding importance of socialist construction. The results of niy investigation, if my women characters, drawn invariably from short stories, are at all typical, will show, not surprisingly, the pathetic adjustment of their feminine instincts and interests to the jealous demands of Party and state. The exceptions that I will take notice of—sympathetic victims and challengers of the impersonal Communist bureaucracy—are all heroines of revisionist fiction that has been subject to vehement attack by the press.

Abstract
This article discusses the motivations that led Malayan women to join and fight for the Malayan Communist Party (mcp) via memoirs by the survivors as well as interviews conducted with them. While male mcp members tend to emphasize the glory and righteousness of the Party's struggle by portraying themselves as willing but passive participants, memoirs of female Party members instead reveal their reasons for becoming fighters to be largely circumstantial. Their reminiscences also tend to be more introspective when recounting their past as a communist guerrilla but were largely unapologetic for their past actions. At the same time, like their male comrades, these women were staunch supporters of the Marxist cause, and some had even worked their way up to leadership positions. Nevertheless, they rarely identify themselves as Marxists, preferring to see themselves as nationalists fighting to establish a just and progressive Malayan nation.

Women's involvement in the Malayan Communist Party (MCP) since its establishment in 1930 until they laid down their arms in 1989 contributed much to the strength of the party. Women in the MCP have been presented largely as nurses, cooks, seamstresses, couriers, and wireless/radio operators, but they went through hardship and danger and fought the same battles as the male guerrillas. A few even climbed to the top party posts through hard work, intelligence and personal sacrifice. This paper recovers the role of women in the Malayan communist movement during the Second World War, the Emergency and after by tracing the careers and lives of party heroines / female role models as well as some ordinary cadres. Major questions include the motivations of women who joined the MCP and the challenges they faced in their roles as propagandists, comrades, guerrilla fighters and in the communist villages. This investigation provides more insight into how the revolutionary struggle transformed these Malayan women. (J Southeast Asian Stud/GIGA)