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McMaster University
Anthropology Colloquium Series
December 1, 3:30-5
Dynamic Inheritance: Maoist Alternatives to the 'Invention of Tradition'
A talk by Dr. Emily Wilcox, University of Michigan
Using modern Chinese‐Mongol folk dance as a case study, this paper examines the creation and imagining
of cultural heritage in socialist and post‐socialist China. I argue that in contrast to the “invented tradition”
model of national culture—in which the potency of tradition is predicated on the masking of its
inventedness—Maoist and post‐Maoist strategies for the creation of national culture foreground an openly
constructivist approach to heritage that highlights both the agency of the individual inheritor and the
dynamism of tradition itself. In China’s Maoist and post‐Maoist cultural systems, individual artists were/are
called upon to continuously reinterpret their own cultural heritage, using a prescribed method that draws
some of its language and techniques from anthropological research. The method instructs artists to conduct
field research in which they “excavate” and “collect” “raw materials” from the “folk,” then use these
materials as the basis for new artist “creation,” in which they “develop,” “adapt,” and “promote” their own
cultural heritage. This method and the cultural imaginary it produces is what I call the “dynamic
inheritance” approach to national culture under Chinese state socialism.
Dr. Emily Wilcox is assistant professor of modern Chinese studies in the Department of Asian
Languages and Cultures at the University of Michigan. Her current book project, National
Movements: Socialist Postcoloniality and the Making of Chinese Dance, was the recipient of a
2014‐15 American Council of Learned Societies national research fellowship. Past publications
appear in Asian Theatre Journal, TDR, CHINOPERL, and other venues. |
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发表于 2015-12-1 00:52:37
