Remembering red: Memory and nostalgia for the cultural revolution in late 1990's China

This dissertation examines exhibitions, publications, and other activities organized, attended and read by former “educated youth,” or zhiqing, at the 30th anniversary in 1998 of the Cultural Revolution (1969–1976) movement that sent them down to China's countryside and border regions beginning in 1968. Described as “nostalgic” by many Chinese commentators and Western scholars of China, these activities have aroused ambivalence as to their social and historical significance.; Ethnographic attention to the socio-economic and political contexts in which these activities emerge illustrate the manner in which the “nostalgic” activities of the zhiqing provide opportunities for public visibility and a framework for memory. Examinations of displays, travel to the countryside, old photography, publishing, autobiography, and exhibitions illustrate the means by which groups of zhiqing negotiate state history and popular social memory of the Cultural Revolution.; Drawing together linguistic approaches, theories of everyday practice and recent research on memory, this dissertation examines memories and their meanings as emergent in social contexts. It illustrates the ways in which memories of the Cultural Revolution among the groups of former zhiqing articulate economic and class distinctions and critique contemporary Chinese social life. This dissertation argues that activities glossed as “nostalgic” are often involved in a complex dialogue with the ongoing socio-economic and political transformations of contemporary China.