In: Dialectical anthropology: an independent international journal in the critical tradition committed to the transformation of our society and the humane union of theory and practice, Band 16, Heft 3-4, S. 209-232
Existing research on Chinese intellectuals naturalizes the category, which is a social construction whose membership, attributes and political significance stem from state and society interactions. Recounting an urban registration campaign for unemployed intellectuals, this article describes the critical moment in which the Communist Party institutionalized its definition of zhishifenzi and local tensions appeared between officials and intellectuals. Due to high unemployment, state specifications and administrative disorganization, the campaign absorbed former Kuomingtang agents, expelled state employees, non-specialists, housewives, social deviants and legally unqualified individuals into the intellectual category. It reinforced longstanding Communist prejudices that intellectuals were politically, morally and professionally suspicious. The article suggests that research on Chinese intellectuals may break new ground, theoretically and empirically, by focusing upon social practices that reproduce the intellectual category beyond the elite level.
This book offers a new analysis of the intellectual and the Chinese socialist revolution. Under the Chinese Communist Party, the intellectual was never simply an outspoken scholar, a browbeaten artist, a supportive official, or any kind of person facing an increasingly powerful political regime. The intellectual was first and foremost a widening classification of people based on Marxist thought. As the party turned revolutionaries and otherwise perfectly ordinary people into subjects identified locally as intellectuals, their appearance profoundly affected the political thinking of the party elites and how they organized the revolution, as well as postrevolutionary Chinese society. Drawing on a wide range of data, Eddy U takes the reader on a fascinating journey that examines political discourses, revolutionary strategies, rural activities, official registrations, organized protests, work organizations, and theater productions. The book lays out in colorful details the formation of new identities and new patterns of organization, association, and calculus. The outcome is a compelling picture of the mutual constitution of the intellectual and the Chinese socialist revolution, the impact of which is still visible in globalized China.
AbstractThrough analysing the early 1950s Thought Reform campaign, this article suggests a new approach to studying Chinese intellectuals. I highlight the reification of this social category under Communist Party rule. The campaign universalized zhishifenzi (知识分子) as a social classification, absorbed a diversity of people into the category and established within it multiple subject positions. This reification of the Chinese intellectual, which persisted after Thought Reform, had serious impacts on central policies, local organization and individual behaviour. My analytical perspective can further the understanding of CCP rule, state–intellectual relations and the experience of so-called Chinese intellectuals.