title: Sources of Authority: Quotational Practice in Chinese Communist Propaganda
creator: May, Jennifer
subject: 950
subject: 950 General history of Asia Far East
description: The main objective of this work is the relationship between innovation and imitation as seen in the quotational use made of a canon. My interest is the seemingly contradictory relation between a canon that is fixed in wording and sometimes even in the way it is to be interpreted on the one hand, and on the other the volatility and ambiguity that is implied in what Garber terms the “quotable quote” (Garber 2003:17). I see quotation as the most important tool in bridging the gap between a static canon and a changing world. Without quotation the canon cannot and will not survive. Bridging the gap, however, entails changes to the quotation. Those changes, i.e. the different techniques used to accommodate an extant formulation into a new textual creation, are the objects of analysis of this work. By changing the interpretation or context, but also by ‘discovering’ the ‘true’ origin of a quotation, the meaning thereof can be redefined. Thus, neither the quotation nor its meaning is stable. However, although all parts constituting the definition of a quotation (formulation, author, source text or context) are prone to manipulation, yet quotations (and especially canonical quotations) possess authority. This authority, this power of persuasion quite paradoxically rises with every instance of quotation, though each instance of quoting might have changed the ‘original’, even if only a bit. Where, then, does this authority derive from? How does quotation affect the authority of the canon as a whole and of each article therein? I argue that quotation ‘classics’ are not made, they are quoted: It is the quoter and not the author of a text who wields the (democratic) power of choosing the ‘quotable’. The prescribed canon becomes the chosen classic. The focus of my dissertation is on the propagandistic use of (Mao) quotations in newspaper articles of People’s Daily since the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949. In five case studies I illuminate the reciprocal influence between quotation and canon, between innovation and imitation in modern China. In a first chapter, I assay to situate my case studies in an historical, institutional and theoretical framework. The second chapter of my thesis comprises three shorter case studies analysing different lifecycles of quotations: the lifecycle of “Seek truth from facts (shishi qiushi)”, a Han dynasty quotation revived and successfully popularised by successive leaders of the Chinese Communist Party; the lifecycle of “Smash the Confucian shop (dadao kongjiadian)”, an ‘invented’ May Fourth quotation, and the lifecycle of “The working class has to lead everything (gongren jieji bixu lingdao yiqie)”, a short-lived Cultural Revolution quotation star. In these three case studies I ask how quotations are ‘made’, introduced into the discourse, repeated, duplicated, recycled, reconstructed, and extinguished. What differing meanings are given to the same quotation by usage in different contexts? I chose the image of a lifecycle, because I believe that quotations are not only used, manipulated, or stigmatised, but that they (can) possess a life of their own in people’s memory that is not easily altered or wiped out, but forces itself back into public discourse at unexpected moments in history. In Chapter 3, I discuss in detail how one single text of the canon, namely a 1941 speech of Mao Zedong entitled “Reform Our Study (gaizao women de xuexi)”, is excavated for quotations. This study may provide insights into the ‘selling’ or ‘popularisation’ of a canonical text. What sentences or sentence parts are chosen for later quotation? What policies can be and are legitimised by reference to the same authoritative source text? The fifth case study takes yet another perspective: it has been repeatedly claimed that anniversary articles of People’s Daily are interchangeable, that is they read the same every year. In respect of quotations, this statement implies that the choice of quotations when writing anniversary articles is at least limited. Hence, in my last study I attempt a close reading of May Fourth anniversary articles. How is the story of this movement – canonised in a 1939 article and enclosed in the Selected Works of Mao Zedong – retold every ten years? How are quotations employed to bridge the gap between the original movement of 1919, the normative history thereof written in 1939, and each subsequent ‘present’? How does the narrative and thus the canon change over time?
date: 2008
type: Dissertation
type: info:eu-repo/semantics/doctoralThesis
type: NonPeerReviewed
format: application/pdf
identifier: https://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/volltextserverhttps://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/volltextserver/11081/1/May_Sources_Of_Authority.pdf
identifier: DOI:10.11588/heidok.00011081
identifier: urn:nbn:de:bsz:16-opus-110813
identifier:   May, Jennifer  (2008) Sources of Authority: Quotational Practice in Chinese Communist Propaganda.  [Dissertation]     
relation: https://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/volltextserver/11081/
rights: info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess
rights: http://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/volltextserver/help/license_urhg.html
language: eng