Papers are invited for a special issue of Telos on the topic of Critical Theory, Market Society, and Culture in China.
Critical Theory developed during the first half of the last century as a response to the integration of the capitalist economy into the bureaucratic state, the experience of totalitarianism, and the encounter with new structures of culture: the "culture industry," alienation, and the erosion of liberal norms. Facing the apparently seamless conformism of the "totally administered society," Critical Theory sought out venues of resistance and political activism in the work of art, in memory and tradition, and in the public sphere of civil society. As China increasingly emerges from its socialist past and enters the international capitalist system, its political structure, cultural production, and social formations lend themselves to analysis and critique in terms inherited from Critical Theory. The marriage of capitalist development and political control produces a top-heavy state that manages the market, while shrinking the room for social criticism and political action. This imposed depoliticization from above makes critical reflection and an imaginary of action all the more urgent.
Can Critical Theory throw light on China's new developments? Do China's recent political, economic, and cultural profiles challenge or alter the familiar diagnoses about capitalism, liberal modernity, cultural industry, and the modern life-world? Although a motley mix of western critical-theoretical writers was eagerly read and deployed by Chinese intellectuals and provoked fruitful analyses, can critical reflections still keep pace with the fast-changing ideological, political, and cultural constellations of today's China?
Essay submissions on topics like the following are invited for the special issue of Telos on China and Critical Theory:
How did Critical Theory and the tradition of western Marxism read or misread China? How has Critical Theory been received in China? Is it approached as a chapter in intellectual history or as a toolbox to understand aspects of evolving Chinese society? Can we combine historical hermeneutics and contemporary interpretations? How have hybrid formations developed with Chinese intellectual traditions?
How should we theorize the Chinese state in relation to the market and to the social and public domain: an enclosed system of authoritarian capitalism, a neo-liberal developmentalism, or a market socialism bent on sustainable development, national sovereignty, social cohesion, and community? How is the neoliberal discourse related to the post-socialist state? What happens when the Communist Party is the vehicle of capitalist expansion?
What is the culture of the emergent middle class, with its increased power and cultural market, its triumphant self-representation, and its revived bourgeois, cosmopolitan taste? In what sense is Chinese contemporary culture caught up in the global circuit of spectacles and flows of cultural commodities?
What is the makeup of populist resistance to neo-liberalism? How do social tensions or emergent class polarities play into national consciousness? Does Chinese populism inherit the ideology of the historical Left and Maoism? And how does this populism challenge the role of China in processes of globalization?
China is in the forefront of digital communication: how does this tool impact on subjectivity, between democratic dispersal and state control? Do new technologies emancipate politics or do they enable the state to extend censorship and control?
How have the terms of critique and emancipation changed over the past two decades: from the appeals for civil rights and democratization at Tiananmen in 1989 to the fragmented landscape today of religious movements, ethnic irredentism, the new consumerism, populism, and Olympic fever?
Papers should be submitted by December 15, 2009, to the co-editors, Ban Wang (banwang@stanford.edu) and Russell Berman (berman@stanford.edu). Inquiries are welcome earlier. Papers should be no longer than 8500 words (including notes) and follow Chicago style.
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