Duke University Press Newborn Socialist Things: Materiality in Maoist China

Contemporary China is seen as a place of widespread commodification and consumerism, while the preceeding Maoist Cultural Revolution is typically understood as a time when goods were scarce and the state criticized what little consumption was possible. Indeed, with the exception of the likeness and words of Mao Zedong, both the media and material culture of the Cultural Revolution are often characterized as a void out of which the postsocialist world of commodity consumption miraculously sprang fully formed. In Newborn Socialist Things, Laurence Coderre explores the material culture of the Cultural Revolution to show how it paved the way for commodification in contemporary China. Examining objects ranging from retail counters and porcelain statuettes to textbooks and vanity mirrors, she shows how the project of building socialism in China has always been intimately bound up with consumption. By focusing on these objects―or “newborn socialist things”―along with the Cultural Revolution’s media environment, discourses of materiality, and political economy, Coderre reconfigures understandings of the origins of present-day China. Review "Laurence Coderre's serious engagement with theories of materiality rooted in deeply historicized practices, relations, and things provides a politically powerful rethinking of Marxism, culture, and materiality. This superb book will be of immense interest not only to scholars in Chinese studies and Asian studies, but also to those in cultural studies, visual and material culture, sound studies, comparative socialism, Cold War studies, and Marxism."--Tina Mai Chen, coeditor of "The Material of World History" "Laurence Coderre takes ordinary objects from everyday life to create extraordinary insights into the Mao era and China today. Her book is a true tour de force in contemporary Chinese studies."--Paul Clark, author of "Youth Culture in China: From Red Guards to Netizens" About the Author Laurence Coderre is Assistant Professor of East Asian Studies at New York University.