This book is a comprehensive introduction to the relationship between communism (understood as an ideological, political, and social project) and culture, broadly defined as the field of aesthetic production. Communism was a global phenomenon, and the global civil war of the 20th century was, in more than one respect, a cultural war, which involved some of the most influential figures of the last century. The book highlights and explains the impact of political mythologies in the effiorts to transcend the "bourgeois" legacies and engage in a social, cultural, and anthropological revolution. The authors examine the interplay between utopian goals and cultural practices in fields such as literature, visual arts, film, and humanities in general
"Focusing on previously neglected cultural expressions of colonial-period Korean socialism such as Marxist philosophy, Marxist historiography, and travelogues by socialist writers, The Red Decades reveals Marxian socialism as a cultural phenomenon of colonial-age Korea. Providing an account of the social composition of the Communist milieu in 1920s and 1930s Korea and outlining the aims of the colonial-period Communist movement as formulated in programmic documents, this text offers a rich, nuanced description of the microcosm of Korean Communism--a setting of factional alignments, pilgrimages to Moscow, extended stays of the Korean revolutionaries as exiles in China and the Soviet Union, and a polylingual environment with Chinese, Japanese, English, and Russian being equally important as the idioms of socialist propagation and international networking. Placing the endeavors of colonial-age Communists within a global historical context allows for dissections of how Korean socialists' ideals interacted with the realities of the conservative turn taking place in the Soviet Union since the late 1920s, as well as considering the implication of Stalinism for Korean revolutionary culture. Yet this analysis also focuses on the individuals involved, especially on their persistent issue of factionalism in the Korean Communist movement and on the role of underground radicalism in shaping the subaltern subjectivities of the participants. The Red Decades discusses the world-historical place of "alternative modernity" that colonial-age socialists of Korea were pursuing. Based on a wealth of Japanese, Korean, Russian, and Chinese primary sources, including the Korea-related parts of the archives of Comintern, an under-utilized resource in Anglophone scholarship. The research also accommodates the achievements of the last decades, from South Korean, Japanese, Chinese, Anglophone and Russophone academic worlds. The breadth of this study situates the philosophical, historiographical, and political practices of Marxism of colonial Korea in the global historical perspective and simultaneously explores the long-lasting influences of the Communist movement in post-1945 North and South Korea"--
IN TESTING POLITICAL CULTURE THEORY IN COMMUNIST COUNTRIES IT IS USEFUL TO SORT THEM INTO THREE CATEGORIES: (1) THE SOVIET UNION ITSELF WHERE THE COMMUNIST "EXPERIMENT" BEGAN AND WAS CARRIED THROUGH BY AN INDIGENOUS COMMUNIST ELITE; (2) OTHER COUNTRIES SUCH AS YUGOSLAVIA, CHINA, CUBA, AND VIETNAM WHERE THE COMMUNIST REVOLUTION WAS IMPORTED AND CARRIED OUT BY INDIGENOUS ELITES; AND (3) COUNTRIES SUCH AS POLAND, HUNGARY, CZECHOSLOVAKIA, ROMANIA, AND EAST GERMANY WHERE COMMUNIST REGIMES WERE IMPOSED FROM THE OUTSIDE. FOR OUR PURPOSES IN THIS PAPER WE WILL EXAMINE BRIEFLY THE EXPERIENCE OF (1) THE SOVIET UNION, (2) YUGOSLAVIA AND CUBA, AND (3) POLAND, HUNGARY, AND CZECHOSLOVAKIA. IF POLITICAL CULTURE THEORY IS TO BE FALSIFIED, WE WOULD EXPECT TO SEE MAJOR CHANGE IN POLITICAL CULTURE IN THE DESIRED DIRECTION IN ALL THREE CATEGORIES AND TO A LARGER DEGREE IN THE CASE OF THE SOVIET UNION BECAUSE ITS REVOLUTION WAS INDIGENOUS AND HAS BEEN IN OPERATION MORE THAN SIXTY YEARS.
Beginning with Chekhov's Uncle Vanya, Passionate Amateurs tells a new story about modern theater: the story of a romantic attachment to theater's potential to produce surprising experiences of human community. Ridout argues that theater in modern capitalism can help us think afresh about notions of work, time, and freedom. Passionate Amateurs tells a new story about modern theater: the story of a romantic attachment to theater's potential to produce surprising experiences of human community. It begins with one of the first great plays of modern European theater—Chekhov's Uncle Vanya in Moscow—and then crosses the 20th and 21st centuries to look at how its story plays out in Weimar Republic Berlin, in the Paris of the 1960s, and in a spectrum of contemporary performance in Europe and the United States. This is a work of historical materialist theater scholarship, which combines a materialism grounded in a socialist tradition of cultural studies with some of the insights developed in recent years by theorists of affect, and addresses some fundamental questions about the social function and political potential of theater within modern capitalism. Passionate Amateurs argues that theater in modern capitalism can help us think afresh about notions of work, time, and freedom. Its title concept is a theoretical and historical figure, someone whose work in theater is undertaken within capitalism, but motivated by a love that desires something different. In addition to its theoretical originality, it offers a significant new reading of a major Chekhov play, the most sustained scholarly engagement to date with Benjamin's "Program for a Proletarian Children's Theatre," the first major consideration of Godard's La chinoise as a "theatrical" work, and the first chapter-length discussion of the work of The Nature Theatre of Oklahoma, an American company rapidly gaining a profile in the European theater scene. Passionate Amateurs contributes to the development of theater and performance studies in a way that moves beyond debates over the differences between theater and performance in order to tell a powerful, historically grounded story about what theater and performance are for in the modern world. "Reading a suggestively diverse set of modern performances, and setting those performances within a clear and well-defined theoretical/critical project, Ridout attempts to use the 'passionate amateur'—at once the spectator, the scholar, and to some extent the characters in the plays—as a critical category disrupting the otherwise fully commodified communication of leisure products . . . Passionate Amateurs is wholly original, intellectually and critically stimulating, and certain to develop not only discussion but also to lead to a series of important questions in contemporary theatre and performance studies scholarship." —W. B. Worthen, Alice Brady Pels Professor in the Arts, Barnard College, Columbia University Nicholas Ridout is Reader in Theatre and Performance Studies, Department of Drama, Queen Mary, University of London. This title was made Open Access by libraries from around the world through Knowledge Unlatched.--Provided by publisher. ; Includes bibliographical references and index. ; Beginning with Chekhov's Uncle Vanya, Passionate Amateurs tells a new story about modern theater: the story of a romantic attachment to theater's potential to produce surprising experiences of human community. Ridout argues that theater in modern capitalism can help us think afresh about notions of work, time, and freedom. Passionate Amateurs tells a new story about modern theater: the story of a romantic attachment to theater's potential to produce surprising experiences of human community. It begins with one of the first great plays of modern European theater—Chekhov's Uncle Vanya in Moscow—and then crosses the 20th and 21st centuries to look at how its story plays out in Weimar Republic Berlin, in the Paris of the 1960s, and in a spectrum of contemporary performance in Europe and the United States. This is a work of historical materialist theater scholarship, which combines a materialism grounded in a socialist tradition of cultural studies with some of the insights developed in recent years by theorists of affect, and addresses some fundamental questions about the social function and political potential of theater within modern capitalism. Passionate Amateurs argues that theater in modern capitalism can help us think afresh about notions of work, time, and freedom. Its title concept is a theoretical and historical figure, someone whose work in theater is undertaken within capitalism, but motivated by a love that desires something different. In addition to its theoretical originality, it offers a significant new reading of a major Chekhov play, the most sustained scholarly engagement to date with Benjamin's "Program for a Proletarian Children's Theatre," the first major consideration of Godard's La chinoise as a "theatrical" work, and the first chapter-length discussion of the work of The Nature Theatre of Oklahoma, an American company rapidly gaining a profile in the European theater scene. Passionate Amateurs contributes to the development of theater and performance studies in a way that moves beyond debates over the differences between theater and performance in order to tell a powerful, historically grounded story about what theater and performance are for in the modern world. "Reading a suggestively diverse set of modern performances, and setting those performances within a clear and well-defined theoretical/critical project, Ridout attempts to use the 'passionate amateur'—at once the spectator, the scholar, and to some extent the characters in the plays—as a critical category disrupting the otherwise fully commodified communication of leisure products . . . Passionate Amateurs is wholly original, intellectually and critically stimulating, and certain to develop not only discussion but also to lead to a series of important questions in contemporary theatre and performance studies scholarship." —W. B. Worthen, Alice Brady Pels Professor in the Arts, Barnard College, Columbia University Nicholas Ridout is Reader in Theatre and Performance Studies, Department of Drama, Queen Mary, University of London. This title was made Open Access by libraries from around the world through Knowledge Unlatched.--Provided by publisher. ; Mode of access: Internet. ; Description based on print version record.
IN AN ANALYSIS OF SOME CURRENT LITERATURE ON THE SUBJECT, THE ARTICLE EXAMINES THE QUESTION OF WHETHER IT IS BETTER TO VIEW POLITICAL CULTURE AS THE "SUBJECTIVE ORIENTATION TO POLITICS", OR AS THE "ATTITUDNAL AND BEHAVORIAL MATRIX WITHIN WHICH THE POLITICAL SYSTEM IS LOCATED." IT ALSO ANALYZES THE QUESTION OF USE. IT CONCLUDES THAT BOTH INTERPRETATIONS ARE VALID UNDER CERTAIN CIRCUMSTANCES AND THAT FURTHER DEBATE OVER DEFINITIONS IS NOT LIKELY TO BE OF GREAT UTILITY.
