Resource and Resonance: Transformation of Official Memory in Post-Socialist China, 1978-2020

Zheng Zhang, University of WIsconsin-Madison

Third Front Construction (TFC) was a controversial industrial project undertaken by China from 1964 to 1978, when China launched its economic reform. The Chinese state remembers TFC distinctly in roughly three different periods: as a “leftist error” in the 1980s, and as a remarkable legacy today, and mixed in 1990-2010. To explain the changes of meanings of TFC in official memory works, I follow a processual and cultural approach. I argue that two factors determine in what way memory changes: (1) resonance between previous memory and present culture; (2) available new cultural resources for memory-making at present. I identify three models of transformative memory – reinterpretation, retrofitting, and downplaying – that are determined by different nexuses between the two. I conclude by discussing how cultural and processual views on memory work enhance our understanding of cultural transformation in unsettled times and the role that memory plays in this process, as well as the broader implications in different contexts, including post-authoritarian transitional justice and reconstruction of historical figures.

No extended abstract or paper available

 Presented in Session 51. History, Politics, and Memory I