Continuous Revolution

"Cultural Revolution Culture is often denigrated as mere propaganda. Yet it was not only liked in its heyday but continues to be enjoyed today. This book sets out to explain this legacy. By considering Cultural Revolution propaganda art--music, stage works, prints and posters, comics, and literature--from the point of view of its longue durée, Barbara Mittler suggests that it was able to build on a tradition of earlier art works. This in turn allowed for its sedimentation in cultural memory and its proliferation in contemporary China. Taking the aesthetic experience of the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) as her base, Mittler combines close readings and analyses of cultural products from the period with insights gained from a series of personal interviews conducted in the early 2000s with Chinese from diverse class and generational backgrounds. By including testimony from these original voices, Mittler illustrates the extremely multifaceted and contradictory nature of the Cultural Revolution in artistic production and as cultural experience."