Susanne Weigelin-Schwiedrzik - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by Susanne Weigelin-Schwiedrzik

Research paper thumbnail of Reflections on the Hong Kong Discourse on Human Rights

Palgrave Macmillan UK eBooks, 2000

The question of human rights in Hong Kong has been a focus of attention since 4 June 1989. Follow... more The question of human rights in Hong Kong has been a focus of attention since 4 June 1989. Following the mass demonstrations in Hong Kong in support of the Beijing students’ movement and in protest against its bloody suppression by the Chinese government, people inside and outside Hong Kong were to become more aware of the human rights issue and to regard it as one of the main problems to be solved during the transition process.

Research paper thumbnail of Responsivität nach unten, Gehorsam nach oben. Grenzen und Möglichkeiten dezentraler Handlungsautonomie im Kontext des Umgangs mit Minderheiten in den chinesischen Grenzgebieten

Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft mbH & Co. KG eBooks, 2014

Research paper thumbnail of 13 Reappraising the Nanjing Decade (1927–1937): Modernizing China during the World Economic Crisis

Berghahn Books, Dec 31, 2022

Research paper thumbnail of Chinese Historical Writing since 1949

Oxford University Press eBooks, Jan 18, 2018

This chapter studies how in China—divided by civil war into mainland China and Taiwan—two opposin... more This chapter studies how in China—divided by civil war into mainland China and Taiwan—two opposing political camps instrumentalized the writing of history for political purposes. With the beginning of the end of the Cold War in East Asia around 1975–6, the writing of history on both sides of the Taiwan Straits underwent major changes. In Taiwan, questions of national identity became increasingly important, and it is no surprise that Taiwanese history grew in popularity. On the mainland, academic history-writing became gradually marginalized in the wake of a thorough commercialization of the historical field. The dominant discourse now turned anti-revolutionary, leaving the Communist Party in a difficult position as it faced the paradox that its legitimacy depended on the very revolutionary discourse now being attacked by a reformist paradigm that it needed to adopt in order to modernize the country.

Research paper thumbnail of Mao Zedong and China in the Twentieth-Century World, by Rebecca E. Karl. Durham: Duke University Press, 2010. xii + 200 pp. US$74.95 (hardcover). US$12.95 (paperback)

China Journal, 2012

Review(s) of: Mao Zedong and China in the twentieth-century world, by Rebecca E. Karl. Durham: Du... more Review(s) of: Mao Zedong and China in the twentieth-century world, by Rebecca E. Karl. Durham: Duke University Press, 2010. xii + 200 pp. US$74.95 (hardcover). US$12.95 (paperback).

Research paper thumbnail of Book Review: Mary G. Mazur, Wu Han, Historian: Son of China’s Times. Plymouth, UK: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2009. xiii + 514 pp., with illustrations, appendix, notes, and index. ISBN: 978-0-7391-2456-7 (hc). Price: US$80.00

China Information, Mar 1, 2010

Research paper thumbnail of Tombstone: The Great Chinese Famine, 1958–1962. Yang Jisheng Transl. by Stacy Mosher and Guo Jian. Edited by Edward Friedman, Guo Jian and Stacy Mosher. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2012. xxvi + 629 pp. $35.00. ISBN 978-0-374-27793-2

The China Quarterly, Sep 1, 2013

Research paper thumbnail of Book Review: Kathryn EDGERTON-TARPLEY, Tears from Iron: Cultural Responses to Famine in Nineteenth-Century China. Berkeley, LA, and London: University of California Press, 2008. 332 pp., with index. ISBN: 978-0-520-25302-5 (hc). Price: £23.95

China Information, Jun 19, 2009

the mobilization of capital but provides little detail on how such networks worked, nor do we lea... more the mobilization of capital but provides little detail on how such networks worked, nor do we learn who owned and controlled the companies at different points in time. Yet such shortcomings are inevitable in a study that deals with huge, complex, and secretive organizations which are in constant flux. Chen is to be applauded for shedding light on this important yet neglected topic and for doing so in a fair, balanced, and highly readable manner. JACOB EYFERTH, Chinese History, East Asian Languages and Civilizations, University of Chicago, USA

Research paper thumbnail of Whodunnit? Memory and Politics before the 50th Anniversary of the Cultural Revolution

The China Quarterly, Sep 1, 2016

Song Binbin, the daughter of prominent CCP politician Song Renqiong, has long been accused of hav... more Song Binbin, the daughter of prominent CCP politician Song Renqiong, has long been accused of having played a role in the death of Bian Zhongyun which took place at the Girls' Middle School in Beijing Normal University on 5 August 1966. In January 2014, she publicly apologized for the violence that occurred at her school during the summer of 1966. However, instead of applauding her act of contrition, rebel participants of the Cultural Revolution used the opportunity to criticize the sons and daughters of high-ranking cadres and to try to overturn the 1981 official evaluation of the Cultural Revolution by promoting a positive view of that period in Chinese history. This paper analyses the background, consequences and implications of Song Binbin's apology from a political science cum memory studies perspective. It argues, against the background of a changing political landscape in the People's Republic of China, that the memory of the Cultural Revolution remains a battlefield of divergent memory groups and multiple narratives. In the memory of today, the struggles of the Cultural Revolution have still not come to an end.

Research paper thumbnail of Denkt Asien anders? : reflexionen zu Buddhismus und Konfuzianismus in Indien, Tibet, China und Japan

V&R unipress eBooks, 2009

Research paper thumbnail of World history and Chinese history : 20th century chinese historiography between universality and particularity

Research paper thumbnail of Parteigeschichtsschreibung in der VR China. Typen, Methoden und Funktionen

Verfassung und Recht in Übersee, 1985

Research paper thumbnail of Book Review: Maos langer Schatten: Chinas Umgang mit der Vergangenheit by Daniel Leese

China Information, Nov 1, 2021

Research paper thumbnail of Book review: Yuan Shikai: A Reappraisal

China Information, Jul 1, 2020

Research paper thumbnail of Deng Xiaoping: At the Centre of post-1949 China?

Pacific Affairs, Mar 1, 2012

Research paper thumbnail of Ostasien 1600-1900 : Geschichte und Gesellschaft

Research paper thumbnail of In Search of a Master Narrative for 20th-Century Chinese History

BRILL eBooks, 2017

Since the Yan'an Rectification Campaign the Communist Party of China has dominated the interpreta... more Since the Yan'an Rectification Campaign the Communist Party of China has dominated the interpretation of modern Chinese history. With its 1981 resolution it renewed its claim, but a close look at official and unofficial publications on 20th-century Chinese history reveals its loss of control. There is no longer a CCP-designed master narrative of modern Chinese history. This article uses the case of the Cultural Revolution to show how much post-1949 history is contested in mainland China today. It argues that the CCP is unable to impose its interpretation of the``ten years of chaos'' on society. Instead many divergent and highly fragmentized views circulate in society, and there is no overwhelmingly acceptable view on this period of post-1949 history. While this is a positive sign of diversification, it leaves unsatisfied both inside and outside observers who hope that the Chinese people might eventually come to terms with their own troublesome history.

Research paper thumbnail of In Memoriam Arif Dirlik (1940–2017)

China Information, Mar 1, 2018

On 1 December 2017, Arif Dirlik, a great scholar and unorthodox thinker, passed away at the age o... more On 1 December 2017, Arif Dirlik, a great scholar and unorthodox thinker, passed away at the age of 77 at his home in Oregon, USA. A distinguished researcher and scholar of Chinese and global intellectual history with a compassion for revolutionary and critical thought, Dirlik ventured into many new fields of inquiry. He published more than 20 book-length studies which were translated into many languages and innumerable articles in a myriad of academic journals. He gave many lectures and interviews, trained numerous young scholars, and inspired even more. We will miss him, and this is true not only for those of us who were his close colleagues, but also for those who did not share his opinions and assessments. Dirlik was among the very few to push his colleagues and younger generations of scholars and students alike into unknown territory. The theories and perspectives he introduced to the field of Chinese studies were compelling, disturbing and subversive, yet fruitful, innovative and ingenious. Born in Mersin, Turkey, Dirlik obtained a BSc in electrical engineering from Robert College, Istanbul, in 1964. First trained as an engineer, he was later awarded a Fulbright scholarship and switched to the humanities, earning a PhD in history at the University of Rochester in 1973.

Research paper thumbnail of Book review: Die chinesische Kulturrevolution, 1966–1976 (The Chinese Cultural Revolution, 1966–1976)

China Information, Nov 1, 2016

draws inspiration from Chinese theatre and Confucianism, emphasizing cinema’s ability to make pre... more draws inspiration from Chinese theatre and Confucianism, emphasizing cinema’s ability to make present an absence in order to allow life to manifest itself. In this way, Fei provides an alternative theory about the relationship between the cinematographic image and reality. The last chapter focuses on theorizing early Cantonese sound film as a genre that has been marginalized in both political and scholarly discourses. Fan demonstrates that the distinctive aesthetics of Cantonese sound film is intimately connected with the concepts of ideation (写意) and play or game (戏) embedded in Cantonese theatrical traditions. Thus he suggests another version of cinematic ontology that highlights the process of ideation as a way to map the distance between cinema and reality. In his Conclusion, Fan uses approaching reality to address new theoretical and ontological questions that have arisen in the digital age. This brief discussion opens up a new window for further exploration. In short, this book makes a significant contribution in constructing an edifice of Chinese film theory, not by adding Chinese works to the Euro-American canon, but by creating conceptual dialogues between Chinese and Euro-American thought on cinema. In this way, this book opens up new possibilities of theorizing cinema as a global discourse. The theoretical depth of the book might have been further strengthened if some key concepts had been further historicized. For example, the key concept of approaching reality was also embedded in broader intellectual and social discourses on medicine, science, new journalism, and new approaches associated with literary and artistic creations in late Qing and early Republican China. Linking film theory to these discourses could shed even more light on the dynamics of Chinese understandings of cinema in terms of China’s own historical temporalities. The book is marginally flawed by some factual errors. For example, Spring in a Small Town was released in 1948 (not 1946, p. 11). The New Life Movement was officially launched in 1934 (not in the late 1920s), and the new women question had been discussed long before the New Life Movement (pp. 46–7). The Sing-Song Girl Red Peony (歌女红牡丹) was not produced by Lianhua Film Company, but by Mingxing Film Company (p. 157). Minor flaws notwithstanding, the book will become essential reading for scholars and students interested in early Chinese film culture and film theory as a general global discourse.

Research paper thumbnail of Ländliche Unternehmen in der Volksrepublik China

Duncker & Humblot eBooks, 1999

Research paper thumbnail of Reflections on the Hong Kong Discourse on Human Rights

Palgrave Macmillan UK eBooks, 2000

The question of human rights in Hong Kong has been a focus of attention since 4 June 1989. Follow... more The question of human rights in Hong Kong has been a focus of attention since 4 June 1989. Following the mass demonstrations in Hong Kong in support of the Beijing students’ movement and in protest against its bloody suppression by the Chinese government, people inside and outside Hong Kong were to become more aware of the human rights issue and to regard it as one of the main problems to be solved during the transition process.

Research paper thumbnail of Responsivität nach unten, Gehorsam nach oben. Grenzen und Möglichkeiten dezentraler Handlungsautonomie im Kontext des Umgangs mit Minderheiten in den chinesischen Grenzgebieten

Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft mbH & Co. KG eBooks, 2014

Research paper thumbnail of 13 Reappraising the Nanjing Decade (1927–1937): Modernizing China during the World Economic Crisis

Berghahn Books, Dec 31, 2022

Research paper thumbnail of Chinese Historical Writing since 1949

Oxford University Press eBooks, Jan 18, 2018

This chapter studies how in China—divided by civil war into mainland China and Taiwan—two opposin... more This chapter studies how in China—divided by civil war into mainland China and Taiwan—two opposing political camps instrumentalized the writing of history for political purposes. With the beginning of the end of the Cold War in East Asia around 1975–6, the writing of history on both sides of the Taiwan Straits underwent major changes. In Taiwan, questions of national identity became increasingly important, and it is no surprise that Taiwanese history grew in popularity. On the mainland, academic history-writing became gradually marginalized in the wake of a thorough commercialization of the historical field. The dominant discourse now turned anti-revolutionary, leaving the Communist Party in a difficult position as it faced the paradox that its legitimacy depended on the very revolutionary discourse now being attacked by a reformist paradigm that it needed to adopt in order to modernize the country.

Research paper thumbnail of Mao Zedong and China in the Twentieth-Century World, by Rebecca E. Karl. Durham: Duke University Press, 2010. xii + 200 pp. US$74.95 (hardcover). US$12.95 (paperback)

China Journal, 2012

Review(s) of: Mao Zedong and China in the twentieth-century world, by Rebecca E. Karl. Durham: Du... more Review(s) of: Mao Zedong and China in the twentieth-century world, by Rebecca E. Karl. Durham: Duke University Press, 2010. xii + 200 pp. US$74.95 (hardcover). US$12.95 (paperback).

Research paper thumbnail of Book Review: Mary G. Mazur, Wu Han, Historian: Son of China’s Times. Plymouth, UK: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2009. xiii + 514 pp., with illustrations, appendix, notes, and index. ISBN: 978-0-7391-2456-7 (hc). Price: US$80.00

China Information, Mar 1, 2010

Research paper thumbnail of Tombstone: The Great Chinese Famine, 1958–1962. Yang Jisheng Transl. by Stacy Mosher and Guo Jian. Edited by Edward Friedman, Guo Jian and Stacy Mosher. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2012. xxvi + 629 pp. $35.00. ISBN 978-0-374-27793-2

The China Quarterly, Sep 1, 2013

Research paper thumbnail of Book Review: Kathryn EDGERTON-TARPLEY, Tears from Iron: Cultural Responses to Famine in Nineteenth-Century China. Berkeley, LA, and London: University of California Press, 2008. 332 pp., with index. ISBN: 978-0-520-25302-5 (hc). Price: £23.95

China Information, Jun 19, 2009

the mobilization of capital but provides little detail on how such networks worked, nor do we lea... more the mobilization of capital but provides little detail on how such networks worked, nor do we learn who owned and controlled the companies at different points in time. Yet such shortcomings are inevitable in a study that deals with huge, complex, and secretive organizations which are in constant flux. Chen is to be applauded for shedding light on this important yet neglected topic and for doing so in a fair, balanced, and highly readable manner. JACOB EYFERTH, Chinese History, East Asian Languages and Civilizations, University of Chicago, USA

Research paper thumbnail of Whodunnit? Memory and Politics before the 50th Anniversary of the Cultural Revolution

The China Quarterly, Sep 1, 2016

Song Binbin, the daughter of prominent CCP politician Song Renqiong, has long been accused of hav... more Song Binbin, the daughter of prominent CCP politician Song Renqiong, has long been accused of having played a role in the death of Bian Zhongyun which took place at the Girls' Middle School in Beijing Normal University on 5 August 1966. In January 2014, she publicly apologized for the violence that occurred at her school during the summer of 1966. However, instead of applauding her act of contrition, rebel participants of the Cultural Revolution used the opportunity to criticize the sons and daughters of high-ranking cadres and to try to overturn the 1981 official evaluation of the Cultural Revolution by promoting a positive view of that period in Chinese history. This paper analyses the background, consequences and implications of Song Binbin's apology from a political science cum memory studies perspective. It argues, against the background of a changing political landscape in the People's Republic of China, that the memory of the Cultural Revolution remains a battlefield of divergent memory groups and multiple narratives. In the memory of today, the struggles of the Cultural Revolution have still not come to an end.

Research paper thumbnail of Denkt Asien anders? : reflexionen zu Buddhismus und Konfuzianismus in Indien, Tibet, China und Japan

V&R unipress eBooks, 2009

Research paper thumbnail of World history and Chinese history : 20th century chinese historiography between universality and particularity

Research paper thumbnail of Parteigeschichtsschreibung in der VR China. Typen, Methoden und Funktionen

Verfassung und Recht in Übersee, 1985

Research paper thumbnail of Book Review: Maos langer Schatten: Chinas Umgang mit der Vergangenheit by Daniel Leese

China Information, Nov 1, 2021

Research paper thumbnail of Book review: Yuan Shikai: A Reappraisal

China Information, Jul 1, 2020

Research paper thumbnail of Deng Xiaoping: At the Centre of post-1949 China?

Pacific Affairs, Mar 1, 2012

Research paper thumbnail of Ostasien 1600-1900 : Geschichte und Gesellschaft

Research paper thumbnail of In Search of a Master Narrative for 20th-Century Chinese History

BRILL eBooks, 2017

Since the Yan'an Rectification Campaign the Communist Party of China has dominated the interpreta... more Since the Yan'an Rectification Campaign the Communist Party of China has dominated the interpretation of modern Chinese history. With its 1981 resolution it renewed its claim, but a close look at official and unofficial publications on 20th-century Chinese history reveals its loss of control. There is no longer a CCP-designed master narrative of modern Chinese history. This article uses the case of the Cultural Revolution to show how much post-1949 history is contested in mainland China today. It argues that the CCP is unable to impose its interpretation of the``ten years of chaos'' on society. Instead many divergent and highly fragmentized views circulate in society, and there is no overwhelmingly acceptable view on this period of post-1949 history. While this is a positive sign of diversification, it leaves unsatisfied both inside and outside observers who hope that the Chinese people might eventually come to terms with their own troublesome history.

Research paper thumbnail of In Memoriam Arif Dirlik (1940–2017)

China Information, Mar 1, 2018

On 1 December 2017, Arif Dirlik, a great scholar and unorthodox thinker, passed away at the age o... more On 1 December 2017, Arif Dirlik, a great scholar and unorthodox thinker, passed away at the age of 77 at his home in Oregon, USA. A distinguished researcher and scholar of Chinese and global intellectual history with a compassion for revolutionary and critical thought, Dirlik ventured into many new fields of inquiry. He published more than 20 book-length studies which were translated into many languages and innumerable articles in a myriad of academic journals. He gave many lectures and interviews, trained numerous young scholars, and inspired even more. We will miss him, and this is true not only for those of us who were his close colleagues, but also for those who did not share his opinions and assessments. Dirlik was among the very few to push his colleagues and younger generations of scholars and students alike into unknown territory. The theories and perspectives he introduced to the field of Chinese studies were compelling, disturbing and subversive, yet fruitful, innovative and ingenious. Born in Mersin, Turkey, Dirlik obtained a BSc in electrical engineering from Robert College, Istanbul, in 1964. First trained as an engineer, he was later awarded a Fulbright scholarship and switched to the humanities, earning a PhD in history at the University of Rochester in 1973.

Research paper thumbnail of Book review: Die chinesische Kulturrevolution, 1966–1976 (The Chinese Cultural Revolution, 1966–1976)

China Information, Nov 1, 2016

draws inspiration from Chinese theatre and Confucianism, emphasizing cinema’s ability to make pre... more draws inspiration from Chinese theatre and Confucianism, emphasizing cinema’s ability to make present an absence in order to allow life to manifest itself. In this way, Fei provides an alternative theory about the relationship between the cinematographic image and reality. The last chapter focuses on theorizing early Cantonese sound film as a genre that has been marginalized in both political and scholarly discourses. Fan demonstrates that the distinctive aesthetics of Cantonese sound film is intimately connected with the concepts of ideation (写意) and play or game (戏) embedded in Cantonese theatrical traditions. Thus he suggests another version of cinematic ontology that highlights the process of ideation as a way to map the distance between cinema and reality. In his Conclusion, Fan uses approaching reality to address new theoretical and ontological questions that have arisen in the digital age. This brief discussion opens up a new window for further exploration. In short, this book makes a significant contribution in constructing an edifice of Chinese film theory, not by adding Chinese works to the Euro-American canon, but by creating conceptual dialogues between Chinese and Euro-American thought on cinema. In this way, this book opens up new possibilities of theorizing cinema as a global discourse. The theoretical depth of the book might have been further strengthened if some key concepts had been further historicized. For example, the key concept of approaching reality was also embedded in broader intellectual and social discourses on medicine, science, new journalism, and new approaches associated with literary and artistic creations in late Qing and early Republican China. Linking film theory to these discourses could shed even more light on the dynamics of Chinese understandings of cinema in terms of China’s own historical temporalities. The book is marginally flawed by some factual errors. For example, Spring in a Small Town was released in 1948 (not 1946, p. 11). The New Life Movement was officially launched in 1934 (not in the late 1920s), and the new women question had been discussed long before the New Life Movement (pp. 46–7). The Sing-Song Girl Red Peony (歌女红牡丹) was not produced by Lianhua Film Company, but by Mingxing Film Company (p. 157). Minor flaws notwithstanding, the book will become essential reading for scholars and students interested in early Chinese film culture and film theory as a general global discourse.

Research paper thumbnail of Ländliche Unternehmen in der Volksrepublik China

Duncker & Humblot eBooks, 1999