The 1957-1958 Anti-Rightist Campaign in China: History and Memory (1978-2014)

Abstract

See also: • « Yu xin zhengquan jiemeng de zhishifenzi: Zhonghua renmin gongheguo chuqi de ji ge ceying, 1949-1952 » 与新政权结盟的知识分子: 中华人民共和国初期的几个侧影 (The intellectuals Rallied to the New Regime: Facets of the Early Years of the PRC, 1949-1952), Zhongguo dangdai shi yanjiu, n°3, 2011, p. 72-90.• « Shanghai entre guerre et révolution (1937-1949) » in Nicolas Idier (dir.), Shanghai. Histoire, promenades, anthologie et dictionnaire, Paris, Robert Laffont, coll. « Bouquins », 2010, p. 60-96.• « Histoire et mémoire des Cent fleurs et de la répression antidroitière en Chine, 1978-2008 », Revue Espaces Marx, n°26, 2009, p. 74-88.• « D'un régime à l'autre : les intellectuels ralliés au pouvoir communiste, 1948-1952 », Études chinoises, vol. XXVII, 2008, p. 42-86. ; The end of the Mao Era was accompanied neither by a full and complete rehabilitation of the victims of the Anti-Rightist Campaign of 1957, nor by a true historiographical revolution. Thus, the " return " of history's " forgotten ones " first occurred through literature and investigative journalism, which was the main relay for the memory of the victims in the 1980s, before testimony emerged in the following decade. Since then, however, the " historian's territory " has expanded. This article places the questions about the relationship between history and memory within the specific context of the People's Republic of China, where the Party in power claims the right to a monopoly over the interpretation of the past, in order to show how a plural memory is being constructed today, and how a history which " works " with this memory is being written. C.C.J. Occasional Papers