Zhiguang Yin | 2014 | ISBN: 9004281770 | English | 270 pages | PDF | 1 MB

Series: Ideas, History, and Modern China, 9

This book attempts to revisit the seemingly outdated question of 'revolution' as seen through the lens of the intellectuals of the Creation Society. To be more precise, this is a study of formation and transformation of intellectual discourses that took place while a nation was struggling to build itself and achieve self-awareness in an era of political upheaval and social transition. It was an era when, among intellectuals, the language of revolution ascended and puzzling self-doubt was pervasive. As we get a glimpse into this period, we also see the challenges that led to the discourse of enlightenment in the May Fourth New Cultural Movement between 1915 and 1921. It was out of this "theoretical struggle" (理論鬥爭) that some Chinese intellectuals began to systematically look into a set of ideas based on the dialectic principle of Marxism that would ultimately define a revolution. This intellectual activity was also associated with a wave of political engagement in the party politics of revolutionary China.

In Politics of Art Zhiguang Yin investigates the political engagement and theoretical contribution to ideological politics of the intellectuals from Creation Society in the1920s.