Pierre Fuller - Modern Erasures: Revolution, the Civilizing Mission, and the Shaping of Chinas Past

Modern Erasures

Modern Erasures is an ambitious and innovative study of the acts of epistemic violence behind China s transformation from a semicolonized republic to a Communist state over the twentieth century. Pierre Fuller charts the pedigree of Maoist thought and practice between the May Fourth movement of 1919 and the peak of the Cultural Revolution in 1969 to shed light on the relationship between epistemic and physical violence, book burning and bloodletting, during China s revolutions. Focusing on communities in remote Gansu province and the wider region over half a century, Fuller argues that in order to justify the human cost of revolution and the building of the national party-state, a form of revolutionary memory developed in China on the nature of social relations and civic affairs in the recent past. Through careful analysis of intellectual and cultural responses to, and memories of, earthquakes, famine and other disaster events in China, this book shows how the Maoist evocation of the old society earmarked for destruction was only the most extreme phase of a transnational, colonial-era conversation on the backwardness of rural communities.

Pierre Fuller teaches history at Sciences Po Paris. He is the author of Famine Relief in Warlord China (2019).

Modern Erasures

Revolution, the Civilizing Mission, and the Shaping of China s Past

Pierre Fuller

Sciences Po, Paris

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DOI: 10.1017/9781009026512

Pierre Fuller 2022

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First published 2022

A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Fuller, Pierre, author.

Title: Modern erasures : revolution, the civilizing mission, and the shaping of China s past / Pierre Fuller, Monash University, Victoria.

Other titles: Revolution, the civilizing mission, and the shaping of China s past

Description: Cambridge ; New York, NY : Cambridge University Press, 2022. Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2021056167 (print) | LCCN 2021056168 (ebook) | ISBN 9781316515723 (hardback) | ISBN 9781009012935 (paperback) | ISBN 9781009026512 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: China History 20th century Historiography. | Collective memory China. | Communism China History 20th century. | Revolutions China History 20th century. | China Rural conditions. | Mao, Zedong, 1893 1976 Influence.

Classification: LCC DS773.94 F85 2022 (print) | LCC DS773.94 (ebook) | DDC 951.04072 dc23/eng/20220112

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