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Maoism and Postmodernism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2015

Alfred Hornung
Alfred Hornung*
Affiliation:
Department of English & Linguistics, Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz, Germany. E-mail: [email protected]
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Abstract

In this essay I discuss the emergence of the Mao cult during the Cultural Revolution in China and its appropriation in cultural revolutions in Europe and the United States to show how this image resonated with similar cults of popular icons in the West and lent itself to the formulation of theories and practices of postmodernism. The image quality of these cults facilitated the rise of the Mao-craze in the late 1980s and 1990s when political pop productions of Mao by Chinese artists emerged in New York and were then transplanted to China where they met with transfigurations of Mao’s legacy in the People’s Republic. The final stage of postmodern variations of Mao is reached with the presidency of Barack Obama in 2009 and the merging of the two leaders into Chairman Obamao or Comrade Maobama, which can be read as the end of ideological contrast between the two countries for the sake of creating a system of political interdependence for the 21st century, a postmodern prefiguration of a coming ChinAmerica.

Type
The Image of China in the West
Information
European Review , Volume 23 , Issue 2 , May 2015 , pp. 261 - 272
Copyright
© Academia Europaea 2015 

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References

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