This dissertation examines how the complex relations between the problem of the “culture worker” (wenyi gongzuozhe) and the challenges of socialist political economy were articulated and navigated in the Chinese Revolution. The point of historical and conceptual departure for this dissertation is Mao’s Talks at the Yan’an Conference on Literature and Art in 1942. I argue that the Talks provided a conceptual vocabulary for the problem of cultural production that revolved around the problematic of “life” (shenghuo) as the site of possibility for the fashioning of the culture worker under socialism. The demand that intellectuals “enter into life” (shenru shenghuo) necessitated that writers spend long periods labouring amongst workers and peasants, a demand that sought to suspend an understanding of the masses as a reified abstraction. By the same token, this demand called for a transformation of the culture worker, as well, which was to be felt at the level of subjectivity and embodied experience. The goal was that cultural production might itself be able to intervene in the production of new kinds of social relations, above all relations of labour. The dissertation demonstrates that, across the sustained cultural and economic experiment that was Chinese socialism, the cultural itself became reconfigured as a site of labour as it frequently placed demands upon intellectuals to give up a privileged existence, in order that their bodies and pens might move to a new set of social rhythms and temporalities.

Ce travail s’intéresse au parcours d’une femme chinoise exceptionnelle, Yuding, née en 1928 en Chine. Il interroge la manière dont elle a pu assimiler des modèles de vie, de parenté, et d’alliance, totalement paradoxaux, en traversant des époques incroyablement contrastées – début de la République, guerre avec le Japon, guerre civile, période révolutionnaire, société socialiste, et aujourd’hui le temps de la mondialisation. Yuding, âgée aujourd’hui de 87 ans, a gardé sa foi dans l’aventure de la Chine maoïste, malgré au fond d’elle les blessures de cette période violente. Née dans une grande famille rompue à l’orthopraxie confucéenne (ritualité, morale, culte des ancêtres), elle subit ensuite l’influence d’un autre « formatage » : celui du maoïsme et de sa doctrine révolutionnaire. Très vite l’idéologie traditionnelle de « piété filiale » transmise par ses parents fait place à une autre forme de dévouement total au Parti communiste. Militante passionnée dès la Libération, elle mène une vie active au sein de la Fédération des Femmes. Interprète en langue française, elle est amenée à voyager tant en Europe qu’en Afrique, à une époque où bien peu de gens sortaient du territoire chinois. Pourtant, en tant qu’intellectuelle, elle est envoyée en 1968, dans un camp de travail « l’École du Sept mai » ce qui n’entame en rien son adhésion inconditionnelle à l’idéologie du Parti. Bientôt il n’y aura plus de personnes de sa génération, pionnières dans la construction de la République populaire de Chine, pour témoigner de cette époque. Sa biographie témoigne de ce vécu exceptionnel. / This work deals with the life of an exceptional Chinese woman, Yuding, who was born in 1928 in China. It questions the way she has taken up totally paradoxical ways of life, kinship, and union, while living through incredibly uneven times - the beginning of the Republican era, the Second Sino-Japanese war, the civil war, the revolutionary era, the socialist society, and the current globalization. Yuding, presently 87, has kept faith in the venture proposed by the Maoist China, despite underlying wounds left by this violent period. Born in a leading family broken in to Confucian orthopraxy (rituality, morality, worship of the ancestors), Yuding then undergoes the influence of another “formatting” this of Maoism and its revolutionary doctrine. Very quickly, the traditional ideology of “filial devotion” passed on by her parents makes way for complete devotion to the Communist Party. Passionate activist from the Liberation, she leads an active life within the Women's Federation. French interpreter, she is brought round to traveling as much in Europe as in Africa, at a period during which very few persons were going out China. Yet, being an intellectual, she is sent to a labour camp “School of the Seventh of May” in 1968, but she doesn't lose her unquestioning adherence to the Party ideology. There soon won't be anybody from her generation, who was pioneer in the building of the People's Republic of China, to give accounts of this era. Her biography is a testimony of this exceptional experience.

This research examined the Chinese National College Entrance Examination (NCEE) in mathematics before and after the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, specifically covering the periods 1952–1965 and 1977–1984. The central focus was on the organization, structure, and content of the examinations, as well as their influence on and interaction with Chinese people and society. A mixed methodology approach was employed, primarily comprising three steps: (1) scrutinizing the sources and coding the information into structured formats, (2) organizing the data and tracking trends and changes, and (3) synthesizing the findings to formulate conclusions. Key findings included: (1) An increase in the number of items from 1979 to 1984, attributed to the introduction of new question formats following international collaboration between China and the United States. (2) A shift in topic coverage from traditional to modern subjects after 1976, reflecting curriculum concerns raised by Chinese mathematicians who advocated for educational content to evolve with societal and human development. (3) A decrease in item difficulty during the post-war and post-revolutionary periods of 1952, 1953, and 1977, reflecting the education system’s recovery from disruption and generally lower quality of teachers and students. (4) A shift toward an exam-oriented approach in teaching and learning, with its negative ramifications leading to criticisms from Chinese society and the eventual abolition of the NCEE system in 1966.

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Liu Xiaobo first came to attention in mid 80s of the 20th century, as radical critic of Chinese culture and society. Due to his point of view he cannot be linked with any existing intellectual group. Therefore, it is not possible to point him as a typical representative of the intellectual circles of the time. This work brings closer his ideas and his perspective of the changing Chinese society of the 1980s. It follows chronologically important events in Liu Xiaobo's life and his involvement in the intellectual debates within the context of social and political situation in the People's Republic of China. It is based on the articles and books he published during the given period. In the end it brings the summary of his ideas and his vision about where should be Post-Mao China heading. Keywords Liu Xiaobo, China after the Cultural Revolution, China - modern history, intellectual debates

<p>Abstract</p> <p>In 1871, during the Franco-Prussian War, the Parisian workers revolted against the bourgeois government and established the Paris Commune. Extolling it as the first workers' government, classical Marxist writers took it as an exemplary--though embryonic-- model of the dictatorship of the proletariat. The principles of the Paris Commune, according to Marx, lay in that "the working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machinery, and wield it for its own purposes." General elections and the abolishment of a standing army were regarded by classical Marxist writers as defining features of the organ of power established in the Paris Commune. After the defeat of the Paris Commune, the Marxist interpretation of the Commune was widely propagated throughout the world, including in China.</p> <p>20th century China has been rich with experiences of Commune-type theories and practices. At the end of 1966 and the beginning of 1967, inspired by the Maoist theory of continuous revolution and the vision of a Commune-type state structure, the rebel workers in Shanghai, together with rebellious students and revolutionary party cadres and leaders, took the bold initiative to overthrow the old power structure from below. On Feb.5, 1967, the Shanghai workers established the Shanghai Commune modeled upon the Paris Commune. This became known as the January Storm. After Mao's death in 1976, the communist party and government in China has rewritten history, attacking the Cultural Revolution. And the Shanghai Commune has barely been mentioned in China, let alone careful evaluation and in-depth study. This dissertation attempts to recover this lost yet crucial history by exploring in historical detail the origin, development and supersession of the Shanghai Commune. Examining the role of different mass organizations during the January Storm in Shanghai, I attempt to offer a full picture of the Maoist mass movement based on the theory of continuous revolution. Disagreeing with some critics' arguments that the Shanghai Commune was a negation of the party-state, I argue that it neither negated the party nor the state. Instead, the Shanghai Commune embodied the seeds of a novel state structure that empowers the masses by relegating some of the state power to mass representatives and mass organs. Differing from the common narrative and most scholarship in the post-Mao era, I argue that the commune movement in the beginning of 1967 facilitated revolutionary changes in Chinese society and state structure. The Shanghai Commune and the Shanghai Revolutionary Committee developed as ruling bodies that did not hold general elections or abolish the standing army and in this way did not replicate the Paris Commune. But in contrast to the old Shanghai organs of power, they were largely in conformity with the principles of the Paris Commune by smashing the Old and establishing the New. Some of their creative measures, "socialist new things", anticipated the features of a communal state -a state that does not eradicate class struggle yet begins to initiate the long process of the withering away of the state itself.</p> / Dissertation

Cette thèse se consacrera à la question de construction d'une mémoire collective de la révolution culturelle (1966-1976) par le cinéma chinois contemporain de l'année 1979 à 2005. cette thèse n'est pas une étude esthétique du cinéma chinois ; son axe central consiste à faire une analyse et une interprétation socio-historique des films et à interroger le cinéma en tant qu'il offre un ensemble de représentations qui renvoie directement ou indirectement à la société réelle du passé. au lieu de mesurer des empreintes déposées dans la « mémoire nationale » des années de troubles par les images cinématographiques, je vais tenter de comprendre et faire comprendre comment l'histoire de la révolution culturelle avait été convoquée, figurée et réinventée par le cinéma chinois en fonction des enjeux du temps présent. la lecture historique et sociale des films qui abordent la question de la mémoire collective permettra d'atteindre à des zones non-visibles de la société chinoise pendant la révolution maoïste. elle permettra aussi de comprendre comment la mémoire d'un événement traumatisant pour la société est en permanence recomposée pour s'inscrire dans une identité collective en continuelle mutation. / This thesis is devoted to studying the collective memory of the Cultural Revolution through contemporary Chinese films (1979-2009). The central theme is to demonstrate how de ―seventh art‖ contributed to the vitality and diversity of the writing of the Cultural Revolution history. The Cultural Revolution had highly serious economic and social consequences for the Chinese society as a whole. My interest is to inquiry into the place and responsibility of the individuals in this history through the social-historical interpretation of the films which refers directly or indirectly to the Chinese society of the past. The film about the history and memory can be seen as an agent enhancing our understanding of the history. Reading films about the history and memory will not only provide the link between the past and present for a society, but also provide the guidance to its future. Furthermore, it also helps to understand how the memory of a traumatic event is continuously rewritten by the Chinese society in order to construct a national identity and to fight against forgetting. The question of the identity has also a political significance. Rewriting the history of the Cultural Revolution is also vital to the Chinese authorities who need to re-affirm the legitimacy of its power. Taking into account the place and responsibility of the individuals in the Cultural Revolution is a fundamental issue for writing this traumatic history, which constitute the center of this thesis.

Cette étude se situe dans le contexte des échanges culturels franco-chinois au temps de la Révolution culturelle (1966-1976). Nous nous proposons d‘étudier le lien entre les œuvres de Baudelaire et la poésie souterraine chinoise écrite à cette époque, dont la valeur est reconnue aujourd’hui‘hui par le monde littéraire. Alors que Baudelaire est exclu de la liste de diffusion de la littérature officielle chinoise par la censure, Les Fleurs du Mal sont traduites, lues, admirées et imitées par des jeunes auteurs souterrains. Dans la mesure où l‘art devient le meilleur moyen de révolte contre la dictature idéologique, la poésie de Baudelaire participe à l‘édification d‘un nouveau langage poétique qui revalorise l‘existence individuelle en rupture avec la langue de bois, dépositaire de l‘expérience collective. C‘est dans ce cadre que nous discutons, sur la base d‘une analyse textuelle, de l‘influence de Baudelaire sur une génération de poètes chinois. / This research is engaged in the context of Franco-Chinese cultural exchange taking place at the time of the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976). We propose to study the link between the works of Baudelaire and underground Chinese poetry whose value is recognized today by the literary world. While Baudelaire is excluded from the list of introduction by the official literature, Flowers of Evil is translated, read, admired and imitated by young underground writers. Due to art becoming the best way to revolt against ideological dictatorship, the poetry of Baudelaire is involved in the construction of a new poetic language that upgrades individual existence rupturing with the jargon, the depository of the collective experience. In this context we are discussing, on the basis of a textual analysis, Baudelaire‘s influence on a generation of Chinese poets.

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