Re-evaluating Political Performatives of the PRC: Maoist Discourse -- The Historical Trajectory of the Laosanpian.

摘要

The onset of the reform PRC was met with a global anticipation for the dawn of a new era but the discourse that is expected to accompany the adoption of market economy is still absent. There seem to be still a strong reliance upon Maoist discourse for articulating the guidelines for implementing the PRC reform policies. This dissertation will investigate the continued impact of Maoist discourse in reform policies implementation focusing on the Laosanpian texts which consist of Mao's early essays, "In Memory of Norman Bethune" (1939), "Serve the People" (1944) and "The Foolish Old Man who Removed Mountains" (1945), compiled in the early 1960s and reaching fame at the height of the Cultural Revolution (1966 to 1976). The above examination of Maoist discourse is coupled with that of agents deemed responsible for the staying power and transmission of the pre-reform political performatives to the reform PRC.;In the past, Maoist discourse was commonly known as a homogenous political unit. The present study, however, argues that the Laosanpian, unlike the majority of revolutionary texts serves as an extension of traditional Chinese concepts as represented by xiao (filial piety) and zhong (loyalty) deemed by the present study as central to the inculcation and manifestation of the PRC individuals' habitus. Using the concepts from performative and practice theories focusing on Butler and Bourdieu's notions of insurrectionary acts and habitus respectively, this dissertation analyzes the impact of chengyu (four-character idioms), xiao (filial piety) and zhong (loyalty) on transmitting the Chinese value system from one generation to the next focusing on the texts of the Laosanpian. The above analyses are completed with interviews from two field studies conducted from the years 2010 to 2011 examining the sustaining and consumption of the pre-reform political texts in the reform PRC.;The preliminary study into the texts under review revealed standard patterns underlying the production and consumption processes of political performatives in the PRC. The manifestation of the revealed patterns are named antipodal structures by the present study, represented by pairs of opposite lexical units as in shan/e (good/bad), gong/si (public/private) and nei/wai (inside/outside). The discovery of antipodal structures has provided a platform for showing that complementary dualism as represented in the manifestation of the yin/yang has a counterpart in ethical dualism responsible for structuring the major expressions of traditional Chinese concepts which serve as the roadmap for individuals of the PRC.;This study will argue that although the state shows reluctance to relinquish its control of the symbol producing domains, the new players, both national and foreign seeking to position themselves in the newly created market spaces do impact on the production and consumption of political performatives. One of the questions answered by this study is how the above observation plays out under the conditions where the 'social utility criterion' as represented by the maxim "Serve the People" continues to inform the implementation of the reform policies while sustaining the symbolic capital of the Yan'an simulacrum.