Nostalgia for the Future: Cultural Revolution Memory in Two Transnational Chinese Narratives

Ming-Bao Yue

《The China Review An Interdisciplinary Journal on Greater China》 5卷2期 (2005/11) Pp. 43-63

摘要

This essay argues that the explosion of Cultural Revolution (CR) memory and nostalgia in China of the 1990s is the product of an ideological collusion between transnationalism and post-socialism, which constitute two crucial globalizing processes brought about by the post–Cold War era and the cultural logic of late capitalism. It thus argues for a definition of nostalgia that is embedded within a transnational context and reflective of a post-socialist consciousness longing, neither for the past nor the present, but instead for ＂the unfulfilled dreams＂ of a better future. This point is illustrated with the help of Svetlana Boym's two types of nostalgia, the restorative and the reflective, and a literary analysis of the cultural production of Cultural Revolution memory and nostalgia in two transnational Chinese texts, i.e. Anchee Min's Red Azalea and Liu Sola's Chaos and All That. Finally, this essay suggests that Slavoj Zizek's notion of ＂ideological fantasy＂ offers an approach to post-socialist agency and the question of enjoyment that provides tentative answers to ethico-political concerns about the role of individual participants and their enthusiastic involvement in a collective social frenzy.