Organizer: Shelley Drake Hawks, Brown University
Chair: Jerome B. Grieder, Brown University
Discussant: Timothy C. Cheek, Colorado College
Inspired by the debates over Jurgen Habermas’ notion of "public sphere," this panel will take a next step—the inductive consideration of Chinese public space, rather than a procrustean testing of Chinese experience against Western standards. We will argue that intellectual and artistic life in Shanghai during the forties, and Beijing during the fifties and early sixties, has been dismissed, too readily, as barren, unable to function in any way like a "public sphere." Only by observing in detail the agency and authority wielded by influential humanist intellectuals can we begin to construct a sounder image of the public arena in Chinese society.
Central to the premise of our panel is an in-depth consideration of the ambivalent position of "establishment intellectuals," particularly those concerned with communicating to a public audience or readership. The panel’s chairman, Jerome Grieder, informed by his expertise on Hu Shi and Liang Qichao, will add historical perspective to the presenters’ discussions of Chinese intellectuals at mid-century. The panel’s discussant, Timothy Cheek, is the author of a recent book on Deng Tuo and editor of two influential volumes addressing the parameters of intellectual service under State Socialism in China. In his paper, Poshek Fu will analyze subtle expressions of dissent within Shanghai’s film community to refute the notion common in historiography that the public sphere under conditions of occupation was completely controlled by the Japanese. Mary G. Mazur will discuss the publishing projects, essays, and historical-writing of Beijing municipal official Wu Han as an illustration of the autonomy he exercised in public space prior to the Cultural Revolution. Shelley Drake Hawks will highlight the contributions of painters Feng Zikai, Shi Lu, and Li Keran to a public, national discussion on artistic creation prior to the Cultural Revolution, focusing on those instances in their published speeches and writings when they revealed "their own voice" rather than simply echoing the Party’s. Panelists will invite discussion from the audience on what models and tools these expressions of public space leave for contemporary participants in China’s public spaces.
Dissent in Disguise: The Politics of Film Culture in Occupied Shanghai
Poshek Fu, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Conventional Historiography and popular narrative since the end of World War II have represented occupied Shanghai as a virtual "prison" in which the public sphere was completely controlled by the Japanese. No resistance was possible in this absolute situation. Thus all people living under the Occupation were invariably traitors.
My paper will explore the politics of film culture in occupied Shanghai. The occupation cinema has been represented in official and popular discourses as traitorous because it was part of the ideological machinery of the Japanese. My paper challenges this view by arguing that Shanghai cinema was never a homogenous site of cultural production. To illustrate my argument, I will discuss the shifting conditions of production and distribution in Shanghai cinema and, at the same time, analyze the narrative strategies employed by some important films (such as Opium War and Begonia) to express dissent, subtle as they were, against the hegemony. My aim is to complicate our understanding of the Japanese control of the public sphere in occupied areas, and demonstrate that it was far from complete.
Autonomous or Not? Historian and Official in Pre-Cultural Revolution Public Space
Mary G. Mazur, University of Washington
This paper will propose the presence of public space in the pre-Cultural Revolution People’s Republic. Within this space those elite included in the orthodox political culture were able to act with a significant degree of autonomy. Individuals acted according to the participant’s consciousness of the existence of space and the degree of inclusion afforded to him. It will be argued that the individual’s consciousness was shaped by his own personal and professional identity, by his value system and by his experience prior to the establishment of the new Party-state, as well as by his perception of the need in society for active discussion and by the limitations placed on him by the strictures of ideology and the Party-state. This approach will be in contradistinction to past assumptions that no opportunity for autonomy existed in post-1949 China and that anyone who attempted to act autonomously was a dissenter. It will also argue against the assumption that the establishment of the People’s Republic government represented a great divide with the past.
These premises and their limitations will be explored through examining the situation of Wu Han (1909–1969) using some of the post-1949 period projects and writings of this historian and Beijing municipal government official and drawing on my published biographical study of him in the pre-1949 years. A publishing project of popularized history, his historical writings on biography and historiography, essays on moral values, his encouragement of new dramatic writing, will be among those works used as illustrations of the autonomy exercised by Wu in public space, and of the circumscribing of that public space.
Authenticity Within a Constrained Public Space: Published Writings about Art and Life by Feng Zikai Prior to the Cultural Revolution
Shelley Drake Hawks, Brown University
After 1949, outside observers familiar with the cartoonist and essayist Feng Zikai (1898–1975) were disturbed by the apparent transformation of this formerly independent thinker, and others like him, into a mouthpiece of the Party-state. It was assumed that either his way of thinking had indeed been completely "remolded," or that he was no longer at liberty to use "his own voice" to express long-cherished opinions within a public setting. Yet closer scrutiny of the historical record reveals that in certain publications and during periods of loosened political controls, Feng Zikai found ways to revisit themes characteristic of earlier writings, and to do so without surrendering the personal flair or penetrating insight that had been his trademark prior to 1949. The thoughtful narrative voice contained in these select writings suggests that the canned "new man" persona he assumed on occasion was largely a calculated response to political pressure, and that Feng Zikai continued to hold on to earlier convictions and preoccupations despite ostensible disavowals.
Feng Zikai was among a select group of senior-generation non-party intellectuals considered progressive enough to be afforded a public platform during the post-1949 era. This paper will refute the commonly held assumption that establishment intellectuals in the P.R.C. functioned simply as mouthpieces of a pre-programmed agenda. By focusing on examples of his authentic voice in writings and images published prior to the Cultural Revolution, this paper will demonstrate the ways that Feng Zikai made use of the public arena to reveal his own personal predilections and to exert influence on art policy.