Exhibiting the Past : : Historical Memory and the Politics of Museums in Postsocialist China / / Kirk A. Denton.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Asian Studies Backlist (2000-2014) eBook Package
• VerfasserIn: Denton, Kirk A.,
• Place / Publishing House: Honolulu : : University of Hawaii Press, , [2013]; ©2013
• Year of Publication: 2013
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (360 p.) :; 75 illustrations, 2 maps

During the Mao era, China's museums served an explicit and uniform propaganda function, underlining official Party history, eulogizing revolutionary heroes, and contributing to nation building and socialist construction. With the implementation of the post-Mao modernization program in the late 1970s and 1980s and the advent of globalization and market reforms in the 1990s, China underwent a radical social and economic transformation that has led to a vastly more heterogeneous culture and polity. Yet China is dominated by a single Leninist party that continues to rely heavily on its revolutionary heritage to generate political legitimacy. With its messages of collectivism, self-sacrifice, and class struggle, that heritage is increasingly at odds with Chinese society and with the state's own neoliberal ideology of rapid-paced development, glorification of the market, and entrepreneurship. In this ambiguous political environment, museums and their curators must negotiate between revolutionary ideology and new kinds of historical narratives that reflect and highlight a neoliberal present. In Exhibiting the Past, Kirk Denton analyzes types of museums and exhibitionary spaces, from revolutionary history museums, military museums, and memorials to martyrs to museums dedicated to literature, ethnic minorities, and local history. He discusses red tourism-a state sponsored program developed in 2003 as a new form of patriotic education designed to make revolutionary history come alive-and urban planning exhibition halls, which project utopian visions of China's future that are rooted in new conceptions of the past. Denton's method is narratological in the sense that he analyzes the stories museums tell about the past and the political and ideological implications of those stories. Focusing on "official" exhibitionary culture rather than alternative or counter memory, Denton reinserts the state back into the discussion of postsocialist culture because of its centrality to that culture and to show that state discourse in China is neither monolithic nor unchanging. The book considers the variety of ways state museums are responding to the dramatic social, technological, and cultural changes China has experienced over the past three decades.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Preface and Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- Chapter 1. National Origins and Local Identity Museums of Premodern History -- Chapter 2. Exhibiting the Revolution The Museum of the Chinese Revolution -- Chapter 3. Commodification and Nostalgia Revolutionary History in the Era of the Market Economy -- Chapter 4. Martyrdom and Memory Monuments, Memorials, and Museums for Dead Heroes -- Chapter 5. Martial Glory and the Power of the State Military Museums -- Chapter 6. Heroic Resistance and Victims of Atrocity Negotiating the Memory of Japanese Imperialism -- Chapter 7. Heroic Models and Exemplary Leaders Memorial Halls -- Chapter 8. Literary Politics and Cultural Heritage Modern Literature Museums -- Chapter 9. Ethnic Minorities and the Construction of National Identity Ethnographic Museums -- Chapter 10. Revolutionary Memory and National Landscape Red Tourism -- Chapter 11. Museums of the Future Municipal Urban Planning Exhibition Halls -- Conclusion -- Notes -- Glossary -- Bibliography -- Index -- About the Author