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The American Cultural Revolution: A Shifting Landscape of Values and Identities
The phrase "American Cultural Revolution" might conjure images of barricades and street fighting, echoing the upheavals of other nations. However, the American experience is far more nuanced, a complex tapestry woven from decades of evolving social, political, and technological change. This isn't a singular event, but a series of interconnected shifts that have dramatically reshaped American identity and values. This post delves into the key elements of this ongoing cultural revolution, exploring its drivers, impacts, and lasting legacies. We'll examine pivotal moments, dissect the ongoing debates, and consider where this transformative journey might lead.
H2: The Seeds of Change: Precursors to the Modern Cultural Revolution
The seeds of the modern American cultural revolution were sown long before the widespread use of the term. The Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 60s, with its fight for racial equality, stands as a foundational pillar. This movement challenged deeply ingrained societal structures and norms, sparking a broader questioning of authority and traditional hierarchies. Simultaneously, the anti-war movement of the Vietnam era further fueled this questioning, creating a generation deeply skeptical of government narratives and power structures.
H3: The Rise of Counterculture and its Impact
The counterculture movement of the 1960s and 70s was a direct response to the perceived rigidity and hypocrisy of mainstream American society. This movement championed individualism, self-expression, and alternative lifestyles, challenging traditional notions of family, morality, and gender roles. From the hippie movement to the burgeoning feminist movement, counterculture pushed the boundaries of acceptable behavior and expression, leaving an indelible mark on American culture.
H4: The Role of Media and Technology
The media landscape played a pivotal role in amplifying the voices of these movements. Television, radio, and eventually the internet provided platforms for disseminating information, organizing protests, and fostering dialogue (and often conflict) across geographical boundaries. The rapid technological advancements of the latter half of the 20th century further accelerated the pace of cultural change, creating new forms of communication and fostering global interconnectedness.
H2: The Ongoing Revolution: Contemporary Cultural Shifts
The cultural shifts of the late 20th century continue to resonate today. The rise of the internet and social media has created unprecedented opportunities for individuals to connect, organize, and express themselves, further democratizing the flow of information and challenging established power structures. This has led to significant advancements in areas such as LGBTQ+ rights, environmental awareness, and social justice activism.
H3: Identity Politics and the Shifting Social Landscape
The concept of identity politics, while controversial, has played a significant role in shaping the ongoing cultural revolution. Marginalized groups have increasingly used their collective identities to advocate for their rights and challenge systemic inequalities. This has led to both progress and intense debate, highlighting the complexities of navigating a diverse and interconnected society.
H4: The Polarization of American Society
One undeniable consequence of the ongoing cultural revolution is the increasing polarization of American society. Deeply held beliefs about issues like race, gender, religion, and politics often clash, creating divisions that can be difficult to bridge. This polarization is amplified by the echo chambers created by social media algorithms, contributing to a fragmented and often contentious national discourse.
H2: The Future of the American Cultural Revolution
Predicting the future of the American cultural revolution is inherently speculative. However, several trends suggest that the process of social and cultural transformation will continue. The ongoing fight for social justice, the impact of technology on human interaction, and the ever-evolving understanding of identity will all continue to shape the American cultural landscape.
H3: Embracing the Complexity
Understanding the American cultural revolution requires acknowledging its complexity and avoiding simplistic narratives. It's a process marked by both progress and setbacks, cooperation and conflict. Embracing this complexity is crucial for navigating the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead.
Conclusion:
The American cultural revolution is not a finished product; it's an ongoing, dynamic process that continues to shape the nation's identity. By understanding its historical context, its key drivers, and its ongoing manifestations, we can better navigate the complexities of contemporary American society and work towards a more inclusive and just future. The ongoing dialogue and debate surrounding these issues are essential for the continued evolution of American culture.
FAQs:
1. What is the difference between the American Cultural Revolution and other historical revolutions? Unlike revolutions focused on violent overthrow of governments, the American Cultural Revolution is primarily a change in values, beliefs, and social norms, often achieved through social movements and legal challenges rather than armed conflict.
2. How has the American Cultural Revolution impacted the political landscape? The revolution has significantly impacted the political landscape by shifting political priorities, leading to the rise of new political movements, and altering the nature of political discourse.
3. What are some of the major criticisms of the American Cultural Revolution? Critics argue that aspects of the revolution have led to increased social division, cultural relativism, and the erosion of traditional values.
4. How has technology influenced the American Cultural Revolution? Technology has acted as both a catalyst and a tool, enabling faster communication, broader dissemination of information, and increased organization of social movements.
5. What role does generational change play in the American Cultural Revolution? Each generation brings new perspectives, values, and experiences, shaping the ongoing cultural evolution and creating both continuity and change.
| american cultural revolution: America's Cultural Revolution Christopher F. Rufo, 2023-07-18 AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES, USA TODAY, AND AMAZON BESTSELLER America’s most effective conservative intellectual proves once and for all that Marxist radicals have taken over our nation's institutions. In the 1960s, Mao launched China’s Cultural Revolution. Cities grew overcrowded. Technocrats demanded progress from above. Anyone opposed was sent to be “re-educated.” China’s revolution was bloody, fast, and a failure, but what if America started a revolution at the same time, based on the same bad ideas, and it’s just been slower, calmer, and more effective? In his powerful new book, Christopher F. Rufo uncovers the hidden history of left-wing intellectuals and activists who systematically took control of America’s institutions to undermine them from within. America’s Cultural Revolution finally answers so many of the questions normal Americans have, such as: • Why is nearly every major corporation bending the knee to a far-left agenda? • How did DEI suddenly become the department no institution can continue without? • Why is race the main thing America’s rich, white elite wants to talk about? • When did the left adopt all this doublespeak, saying progress is a lack of progress, equality is not equality, speech is violence, and violence is speech? • Has the goal of the left, for a century, actually been the destruction of every Western institution? Readers may not know the names of Herbert Marcuse, Angela Davis, Paulo Freire, and Derrick Bell, but they will recognize the ideas they spread. How their radical, destructive ideology slowly worked its way from prisons to academia to classrooms to your human resources department will come as a shock. Failing to act soon, Rufo warns, could allow the radical left to achieve their ultimate objective: replacing constitutional equality with a race-based redistribution system overseen by bureaucratic ‘diversity and inclusion’ officials. Most Americans don’t want this, but most Americans are no longer in control of our institutions. If the mainstream media’s depiction of a failing dystopia in need of a fresh start never sounded right to you, this expose and call to arms is the book you’ve been looking for. |
| american cultural revolution: The Plot to Change America Mike Gonzalez, 2022-06-14 The Plot to Change America exposes the myths that help identity politics perpetuate itself. This book reveals what has really happened, explains why it is urgent to change course, and offers a strategy to do so. Though we should not fool ourselves into thinking that it will be easy to eliminate identity politics, we should not overthink it, either. Identity politics relies on the creation of groups and then on giving people incentives to adhere to them. If we eliminate group making and the enticements, we can get rid of identity politics. The first myth that this book exposes is that identity politics is a grassroots movement, when from the beginning it has been, and continues to be, an elite project. For too long, we have lived with the fairy tale that America has organically grown into a nation gripped by victimhood and identitarian division; that it is all the result of legitimate demands by minorities for recognition or restitutions for past wrongs. The second myth is that identity politics is a response to the demographic change this country has undergone since immigration laws were radically changed in 1965. Another myth we are told is that to fight these changes is as depraved as it is futile, since by 2040, America will be a minority-majority country, anyway. This book helps to explain that none of these things are necessarily true. |
| american cultural revolution: Peaceful Revolution Maxwell Bloomfield, 2000-09-15 Few Americans understand the Constitution’s workings. Its real importance for the average citizen is as an enduring reminder of the moral vision that shaped the nation's founding. Maxwell Bloomfield looks at the broader appeal that constitutional idealism has always made to the American imagination through publications and films. |
| american cultural revolution: Camelot and the cultural revolution James Piereson, 2007-07-01 Citing the assassination of John F. Kennedy as a major turning point in American history, evaluates how the tragedy reshaped the president's character and changed the American public's faith in the nation's institutions and way of life. |
| american cultural revolution: The Cultural Revolution Frank Dikötter, 2016-05-05 Acclaimed by the Daily Mail as 'definitive and harrowing' , this is the final volume of 'The People's Trilogy', begun by the Samuel Johnson prize-winning Mao's Great Famine. After the economic disaster of the Great Leap Forward that claimed tens of millions of lives between 1958 and 1962, an ageing Mao launched an ambitious scheme to shore up his reputation and eliminate those he viewed as a threat to his legacy. The stated goal of the Cultural Revolution was to purge the country of bourgeois, capitalist elements he claimed were threatening genuine communist ideology. But the Chairman also used the Cultural Revolution to turn on his colleagues, some of them longstanding comrades-in-arms, subjecting them to public humiliation, imprisonment and torture. Young students formed Red Guards, vowing to defend the Chairman to the death, but soon rival factions started fighting each other in the streets with semi-automatic weapons in the name of revolutionary purity. As the country descended into chaos, the military intervened, turning China into a garrison state marked by bloody purges that crushed as many as one in fifty people. When the army itself fell victim to the Cultural Revolution, ordinary people used the political chaos to resurrect the marked and hollow out the party's ideology. In short, they buried Maoism. In-depth interviews and archival research at last give voice to the people and the complex choices they faced, undermining the picture of conformity that is often understood to have characterised the last years of Mao's regime. By demonstrating that decollectivisation from below was an unintended consequence of a decade of violent purges and entrenched fear, Frank Dikotter casts China's most tumultuous era in a wholly new light. Written with unprecedented access to previously classified party documents from secret police reports to unexpurgated versions of leadership speeches, this third chapter in Frank Dikotter's extraordinarily lucid and ground-breaking 'People's Trilogy' is a devastating reassessment of the history of the People's Republic of China. |
| american cultural revolution: Mao's Little Red Book Alexander C. Cook, 2014-03-06 On the fiftieth anniversary of Quotations from Chairman Mao, this pioneering volume examines the book as a global historical phenomenon. |
| american cultural revolution: Pragmatism and the Political Economy of Cultural Revolution, 1850-1940 James Livingston, 1997 The rise of corporate capitalism was a cultural revolution as well as an economic event, according to James Livingston. That revolution resides, he argues, in the fundamental reconstruction of selfhood, or subjectivity, that attends the advent of an age |
| american cultural revolution: Culture and Liberty in the Age of the American Revolution Michal Jan Rozbicki, 2011-02-01 In his new book, Michal Jan Rozbicki undertakes to bridge the gap between the political and the cultural histories of the American Revolution. Through a careful examination of liberty as both the ideological axis and the central metaphor of the age, he is able to offer a fresh model for interpreting the Revolution. By establishing systemic linkages between the histories of the free and the unfree, and between the factual and the symbolic, this framework points to a fundamental reassessment of the ways we think about the American Founding. Rozbicki moves beyond the two dominant interpretations of Revolutionary liberty—one assuming the Founders invested it with a modern meaning that has in essence continued to the present day, the other highlighting its apparent betrayal by their commitment to inequality. Through a consistent focus on the interplay between culture and power, Rozbicki demonstrates that liberty existed as an intricate fusion of political practices and symbolic forms. His deeply historicized reconstruction of its contemporary meanings makes it clear that liberty was still understood as a set of privileges distributed according to social rank rather than a universal right. In fact, it was because the Founders considered this assumption self-evident that they felt confident in publicizing a highly liberal, symbolic narrative of equal liberty to represent the Revolutionary endeavor. The uncontainable success of this narrative went far beyond the circumstances that gave birth to it because it put new cultural capital—a conceptual arsenal of rights and freedoms—at the disposal of ordinary people as well as political factions competing for their support, providing priceless legitimacy to all those who would insist that its nominal inclusiveness include them in fact. |
| american cultural revolution: The Cultural Revolution on Trial Alexander C. Cook, 2016-11-07 Introduction -- Indictment -- Monsters -- Testimony -- Emotions -- Verdict -- Vanity -- Conclusion -- Index of Chinese terms |
| american cultural revolution: Walker Percy and the Politics of the Wayfarer Brian A. Smith, 2017-08-04 Walker Percy is one of America’s great novelists, and he ought to be known as a political thinker as well. In Walker Percy and the Politics of the Wayfarer, Brian A. Smith makes the case that we should understand Percy’s novels and essays together as a guide to living in a complex world. Percy cultivated a philosophical and literary approach that revealed the fault lines in the modern mind. He portrayed man as a wayfarer: peristantly unsatisfied and wandering in search of a perfectly complete solution to life’s dilemmas. His writing captures the restlessness of the human heart and allows us to comprehend our temptation to escape our sense of alienation and longing. Drawing ideas from philosophy, psychology, linguistics, and literature, Percy’s multidimensional account of American political life shows the ways that today’s approaches to life often fall short and leave us more unsatisfied with ourselves and others than ever. Percy hoped we would evade the temptations to escape the life of the wayfarer and accept our misplaced longings, alienation, depression, and anxiety as part of the human condition. Failing to do this might lead us to accept ever more extreme political and social ideas as the basis for life. The promise of embracing Percy’s political teaching is that we might then be able to accept ourselves as we really are in order to join with others in authentic community. |
| american cultural revolution: Cultural Revolution and Revolutionary Culture Alessandro Russo, 2020-08-28 In Cultural Revolution and Revolutionary Culture, Alessandro Russo presents a dramatic new reading of China's Cultural Revolution as a mass political experiment aimed at thoroughly reexamining the tenets of communism. Russo explores four critical phases of the Cultural Revolution, each with its own reworking of communist political subjectivity: the historical-theatrical “prologue” of 1965; Mao's attempts to shape the Cultural Revolution in 1965 and 1966; the movements and organizing between 1966 and 1968 and the factional divides that ended them; and the mass study campaigns from 1973 to 1976 and the unfinished attempt to evaluate the inadequacies of the political decade that brought the Revolution to a close. Among other topics, Russo shows how the dispute around the play Hai Rui Dismissed from Office was not the result of a Maoist conspiracy, but rather a series of intense and unresolved political and intellectual controversies. He also examines the Shanghai January Storm and the problematic foundation of the short-lived Shanghai Commune. By exploring these and other political-cultural moments of Chinese confrontations with communist principles, Russo overturns conventional wisdom about the Cultural Revolution. |
| american cultural revolution: The World Turned Upside Down Yang Jisheng, 2021-01-19 Yang Jisheng’s The World Turned Upside Down is the definitive history of the Cultural Revolution, in withering and heartbreaking detail. As a major political event and a crucial turning point in the history of the People’s Republic of China, the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (1966–1976) marked the zenith as well as the nadir of Mao Zedong’s ultra-leftist politics. Reacting in part to the Soviet Union’s revisionism that he regarded as a threat to the future of socialism, Mao mobilized the masses in a battle against what he called bourgeois forces within the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). This ten-year-long class struggle on a massive scale devastated traditional Chinese culture as well as the nation’s economy. Following his groundbreaking and award-winning history of the Great Famine, Tombstone, Yang Jisheng here presents the only history of the Cultural Revolution by an independent scholar based in mainland China, and makes a crucial contribution to understanding those years' lasting influence today. The World Turned Upside Down puts every political incident, major and minor, of those ten years under extraordinary and withering scrutiny, and arrives in English at a moment when contemporary Chinese governance is leaning once more toward a highly centralized power structure and Mao-style cult of personality. |
| american cultural revolution: The Cultural Revolution Michel Oksenberg, Carl Riskin, Ezra F. Vogel, 2021-01-19 The Chinese Communist system was from its very inception based on an inherent contradiction and tension, and the Cultural Revolution is the latest and most violent manifestation of that contradiction. Built into the very structure of the system was an inner conflict between the desiderata, the imperatives, and the requirements that technocratic modernization on the one hand and Maoist values and strategy on the other. The Cultural Revolution collects four papers prepared for a research conference on the topic convened by the University of Michigan Center for Chinese Studies in March 1968. Michel Oksenberg opens the volume by examining the impact of the Cultural Revolution on occupational groups including peasants, industrial managers and workers, intellectuals, students, party and government officials, and the military. Carl Riskin is concerned with the economic effects of the revolution, taking up production trends in agriculture and industry, movements in foreign trade, and implications of Masoist economic policies for China’s economic growth. Robert A. Scalapino turns to China’s foreign policy behavior during this period, arguing that Chinese Communists in general, and Mao in particular, formed foreign policy with a curious combination of cosmic, utopian internationalism and practical ethnocentrism rooted both in Chinese tradition and Communist experience. Ezra F. Vogel closes the volume by exploring the structure of the conflict, the struggles between factions, and the character of those factions. |
| american cultural revolution: The Origins of the Cultural Revolution Roderick MacFarquhar, 1983 The second volume in a trilogy which examines the politics, economics, culture and international relations of Chines from the mid-1950s to he mid-1960s, this volume tells the story of the Great Leap Forward--Mao's utopian attempt to propel China economically and socially into the twenty-fist century by mobilizing his nation's greatest asset: its disciplined, manpower. The effort produced economic disaster and political dissension, and helped to precipitate the Sino-Soviet split. Today's leaders point to it as the beginning of two decades of national trauma, which ended only after the death of Mao and the purge of the Gang of Four. Those leaders have recently authorized the release of a mass of new documentation in the form of political reminiscences, economic statistics, and leaders' speeches. This volume is the first scholarly work to use the new material comprehensively, weaving it into the narrative along with the contemporary record and the revelations published in Red Guard newspapers during the cultural revolution. The result is the most detailed account and analysis to date of what went wrong and why. |
| american cultural revolution: Brainwashed! America's Cultural Revolution Barry Minkin, 2021-01-22 The astonishing premise of this most important and timely book is that a large percentage of the U.S. population has been as brainwashed as the Red Guard during Mao's Cultural Revolution, and an American Cultural Revolution is already underway. This Revolution will be devastating to the lives of our children. Our public schools were traditionally the cornerstone of our country's values, teaching students how to think, not what to think. Now extremist educators indoctrinate their students and recruit them to political movements steeped in critical race theory and social justice. They promote hatred of law enforcement and the rejection of traditional American values. Our country's youngest generations have been brainwashed to believe the United States is evil and racist and can only be saved by Marxism. With accurate predictions in writing in eight books, Minkin's proven to be very credible. Moreover, over five decades as a futurist, professional speaker, author, world affairs expert, and Senior Management Consultant at Stanford Research Institute; I've developed a reputation for tell it like it is objectivity. I've debated the global economy on Larry King Live with the late Robert Bartley; the editor of the Wall Street Journal called me the most influential person in journalism.To prove the controversial brainwashing claim, he dispels dangerous politically correct myths using facts. This book blasts apart such lies as: systemic racism, the cause of George Floyd's death, illegal immigration does more good than harm, there is no voter fraud, police target Blacks, and many more bubbameisters. The book is packed full with facts and unique insights including: -How corrupt Civil Rights leaders created the Great Con and developed it into a multibillion-dollar victimization and divisity business-How slogans and myths were used to brainwash the public-How radicals metastasized throughout our universities and brainwash students-Why the EEOC is a very dangerous organization -Who funds the radical Left-How and why almost every sector of society bought into the myths, reinforcing rather than dispelling them-Why Google and a monolithic media now serve as a propaganda arm of the Left, reinforcing brainwashing using Third World type censorship-How BLM is using billions to destroy America-Why selection by color and sex over merit goes against the Civil Rights Act -How brainwashed Americans gave Biden a win-How America's Cultural Revolution will destroy our economy, security, race relations, constitution, and values -Why anti-Semitic/Zionism is on the rise. -Who is abusing our judicial system-What are the immigration facts and myths |
| american cultural revolution: Born Red Yuan Gao, 1987-06-01 Born Red is an artistically wrought personal account, written very much from inside the experience, of the years 1966-1969, when the author was a young teenager at middle school. It was in the middle schools that much of the fury of the Cultural Revolution and Red Guard movement was spent, and Gao was caught up in very dramatic events, which he recounts as he understood them at the time. Gao's father was a county political official who was in and out of trouble during those years, and the intense interplay between father and son and the differing perceptions and impact of the Cultural Revolution for the two generations provide both an unusual perspective and some extraordinary moving moments. He also makes deft use of traditional mythology and proverbial wisdom to link, sometimes ironically, past and present. Gao relates in vivid fashion how students-turned-Red Guards held mass rallies against 'capitalist roader' teachers and administrators, marching them through the streets to the accompaniment of chants and jeers and driving some of them to suicide. Eventually the students divided into two factions, and school and town became armed camps. Gao tells of the exhilaration that he and his comrades experienced at their initial victories, of their deepening disillusionment as they utter defeat as the tumultuous first phase of the Cultural Revolution came to a close. The portraits of the persons to whom Gao introduces us - classmates, teachers, family members - gain weight and density as the story unfolds, so that in the end we see how they all became victims of the dynamics of a mass movement out of control. |
| american cultural revolution: Cultural Revolution Norman Wong, 1995-09-19 POWERFUL...STRIKING...In a series of sharp, spare stories, Norman Wong chronicles a family's escape from China to Macao, Hong Kong and, eventually, Hawaii. --The New York Times Book Review With rich images and subtle, beautiful prose, Cultural Revolution tells a classic story of immigrant family ties and coming of age in a unique new voice: that of a gay Chinese-American man. In eleven linked stories, Norman Wong observes the fragile world of the resilient Lau family through the eyes of their number one son, Michael, who must bear the weight of the family name while hiding his desire for white men. Bold and evocative, Cultural Revolution heralds the arrival of a major new voice in American fiction. A MOVING COLLECTION by a gifted new writer with the wit and sympathy to make four generations of family experience all sound like his own...[Cultural Revolution] recalls a number of fine debut volumes from writers like Maxine Hong Kingston, Gish Jen, Cynthia Kadohata, and David Wong Louie. --The Village Voice COMPELLING...COMPASSIONATE...Wong has a strong, distinct, storyteller's voice, he has a vision, and a real point of view. --Hungry Mind Review A UNIQUE VIEW of a world that is both distant and remarkably close to our own. Norman Wong writes with an affecting directness, and with vigor. --Oscar Hijuelos SAD, HONEST, TOUCHING, FUNNY...Wong speaks of universal experiences in Cultural Revolution...It's a book that anybody could relate to and everybody should read. --The Advocate |
| american cultural revolution: Petersburg, Crucible of Cultural Revolution Katerina Clark, 1995 One of the most creative periods of Russian culture and the most energized period of the Revolution coincided in 1913-1931. Clark focuses on the complex negotiations among the environment of a revolution, the utopian striving of politicians and intellectuals, the local culture system, and the arena of contemporary European and American culture. |
| american cultural revolution: Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-Tung Mao Tse-Tung, Mao Zedong, 2013-04-16 Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-Tung' is a volume of selected statements taken from the speeches and writings by Mao Mao Tse-Tung, published from 1964 to 1976. It was often printed in small editions that could be easily carried and that were bound in bright red covers, which led to its western moniker of the 'Little Red Book'. It is one of the most printed books in history, and will be of considerable value to those with an interest in Mao Tse-Tung and in the history of the Communist Party of China. The chapters of this book include: 'The Communist Party', 'Classes and Class Struggle', 'Socialism and Communism', 'The Correct Handling of Contradictions Among The People', 'War and Peace', 'Imperialism and All Reactionaries ad Paper Tigers', 'Dare to Struggle and Dare to Win', et cetera. We are republishing this antiquarian volume now complete with a new prefatory biography of Mao Tse-Tung. |
| american cultural revolution: The Chinese Cultural Revolution Paul Clark, 2008-03-24 This book analyzes the Cultural Revolution through the conflict between innovation and a top-down enforcement of modernity. |
| american cultural revolution: Cultural Revolutions Leora Auslander, 2009 Auslander's emphasis on the power of 'things' as a motor of historical change permits her to present a refreshingly new set of arguments about well known historical events.--Denise Z. Davidson, author of France After Revolution: Urban Life, Gender, and the New Social Order This lucidly written book brilliantly merges material culture firmly into political history, and enriches both. Leora Auslander's original interpretation of changing gender relations in the age of the democratic revolutions offers fresh ways to understand the emotional and political work that has shaped national identity and persists into our own time. A remarkable accomplishment.--Linda K. Kerber, author of No Constitutional Right to Be Ladies: Women and the Obligations of Citizenship |
| american cultural revolution: Little Green Chun Yu, 2015-04-07 In China in 1966, Chun Yu was born as the Great Cultural Revolution began under Chairman Mao. Here, she recalls her childhood as a witness to a country in turmoil and struggle--the only life she knew. |
| american cultural revolution: The Age of Rock Jonathan Eisen, 1969 |
| american cultural revolution: The Revolution Will Not Be Theorized Errol A. Henderson, 2019-07-01 The study of the impact of Black Power Movement (BPM) activists and organizations in the 1960s through ʼ70s has largely been confined to their role as proponents of social change; but they were also theorists of the change they sought. In The Revolution Will Not Be Theorized Errol A. Henderson explains this theoretical contribution and places it within a broader social theory of black revolution in the United States dating back to nineteenth-century black intellectuals. These include black nationalists, feminists, and anti-imperialists; activists and artists of the Harlem Renaissance; and early Cold War–era black revolutionists. The book first elaborates W. E. B. Du Bois's thesis of the General Strike during the Civil War, Alain Locke's thesis relating black culture to political and economic change, Harold Cruse's work on black cultural revolution, and Malcolm X's advocacy of black cultural and political revolution in the United States. Henderson then critically examines BPM revolutionists' theorizing regarding cultural and political revolution and the relationship between them in order to realize their revolutionary objectives. Focused more on importing theory from third world contexts that were dramatically different from the United States, BPM revolutionists largely ignored the theoretical template for black revolution most salient to their case, which undermined their ability to theorize a successful black revolution in the United States. This book is freely available in an open access edition thanks to TOME (Toward an Open Monograph Ecosystem)—a collaboration of the Association of American Universities, the Association of University Presses, and the Association of Research Libraries—and the generous support of The Pennsylvania State University. Learn more at the TOME website, available at: openmonographs.org, and access the book online at http://muse.jhu.edu/book/67098. It is also available through the SUNY Open Access Repository at http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12648/1704. |
| american cultural revolution: One Nation, Two Cultures Gertrude Himmelfarb, 2001-01-30 From one of today's most respected historians and cultural critics comes a new book examining the gulf in American society--a division that cuts across class, racial, ethnic, political and sexual lines. One side originated in the tradition of republican virtue, the other in the counterculture of the late 1960s. Himmelfarb argues that, while the latter generated the dominant culture of today-particularly in universities, journalism, television, and film--a dissident culture continues to promote the values of family, a civil society, sexual morality, privacy, and patriotism. Proposing democratic remedies for our moral and cultural diseases, Himmelfarb concludes that it is a tribute to Americans that we remain one nation even as we are divided into two cultures. |
| american cultural revolution: Historical Dictionary of the Chinese Cultural Revolution Guo Jian, Yongyi Song, Yuan Zhou, 2015-07-23 As the world’s only English-language historical dictionary of the Chinese Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), this book offers a comprehensive coverage of major historical figures, events, political terms, and other matters relevant to this unique period of modern Chinese history that had profound influence on social and cultural movements of the world in the 1960s and 1970s. This second edition of Historical Dictionary of the Chinese Cultural Revolution covers its history through a chronology, an introductory essay, glossary, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 400 cross-referenced entries on important personalities, politics, economy, foreign relations, religion, and culture. This book is an excellent access point for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about this important period in Chinese history. |
| american cultural revolution: The Long March Roger Kimball, 2000 How the cultural revolution of the 1960s changed America. |
| american cultural revolution: American Foodie Dwight Furrow, 2016-01-14 As nutrition, food is essential, but in today’s world of excess, a good portion of the world has taken food beyond its functional definition to fine art status. From celebrity chefs to amateur food bloggers, individuals take ownership of the food they eat as a creative expression of personality, heritage, and ingenuity. Dwight Furrow examines the contemporary fascination with food and culinary arts not only as global spectacle, but also as an expression of control, authenticity, and playful creation for individuals in a homogenized, and increasingly public, world. |
| american cultural revolution: The Culture of Power Qiu Jin, 1999 In 1971, Lin Biao, Mao Zedong's closest comrade-in-arms and chosen successor, was killed in a mysterious plane crash in Mongolia. This book challenges the official explanation that Lin was fleeing to the Soviet Union after an unsuccessful coup attempt. |
| american cultural revolution: The Chinese Cultural Revolution as History Joseph Esherick, Paul Pickowicz, Andrew George Walder, 2006 Publisher description |
| american cultural revolution: The American Revolution Robert J. Allison, 2015 Between 1760 and 1800, the people of the United States created a new nation, based on the idea that all people have the right to govern themselves. This Very Short Introduction recreates the experiences that led to the Revolution; the experience of war; and the post-war creation of a new political society. |
| american cultural revolution: The Socialist Temptation Iain Murray, 2020-07-28 IT'S BACK! Just thirty years ago, socialism seemed utterly discredited. An economic, moral, and political failure, socialism had rightly been thrown on the ash heap of history after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Unfortunately, bad ideas never truly go away—and socialism has come back with a vengeance. A generation of young people who don’t remember the misery that socialism inflicted on Russia and Eastern Europe is embracing it all over again. Oblivious to the unexampled prosperity capitalism has showered upon them, they are demanding utopia. In his provocative new book, The Socialist Temptation, Iain Murray of the Competitive Enterprise Institute explains: Why the socialist temptation is suddenly so powerful among young people That even when socialism doesn’t usher in a bloody tyranny (as, for example, in the Soviet Union, China, and Venezuela), it still makes everyone poor and miserable Why under the relatively benign democractic socialism of Murray's youth in pre-Thatcher Britain, he had to do his homework by candlelight That the Scandinavian economies are not really socialist at all The inconsistencies in socialist thought that prevent it from ever working in practice How we can show young people the sorry truth about socialism and turn the tide of history against this destructive pipe dream Sprightly, convincing, and original, The Socialist Temptation is a powerful warning that the resurgence of socialism could rob us of our freedom and prosperity. |
| american cultural revolution: Mao's Last Revolution Roderick MACFARQUHAR, Michael Schoenhals, 2009-06-30 Explains why Mao launched the Cultural Revolution, and shows his Machiavellian role in masterminding it. This book documents the Hobbesian state that ensued. Power struggles raged among Lin Biao, Zhou Enlai, Deng Xiaoping, and Jiang Qing - Mao's wife and leader of the Gang of Four - while Mao often played one against the other. |
| american cultural revolution: The Black Book of the American Left David Horowitz, 2016-04-05 David Horowitz spent the first part of his life in the world of the Communist-progressive left, a politics he inherited from his mother and father, and later in the New Left as one of its founders. When the wreckage he and his comrades had created became clear to him in the mid-1970s, he left. Three decades of second thoughts then made him this movement’s principal intellectual antagonist. “For better or worse,” as Horowitz writes in the preface, “I have been condemned to spend the rest of my days attempting to understand how the left pursues the agendas from which I have separated myself, and why.” When Horowitz began his odyssey, the left had already escaped the political ghetto to which his parents’ generation and his own had been confined. Today, it has become the dominant force in America’s academic and media cultures, electing a president and achieving a position from which it can shape America’s future. How it achieved its present success and what that success portends are the overarching subjects of Horowitz’s conservative writings. Through the unflinching focus of one singularly engaged witness, the identity of a destructive movement that constantly morphs itself in order to conceal its identity and mission becomes disturbingly clear. Horowitz reflects on the years he spent at war with his own country, collaborating with and confronting radical figures like Huey Newton, Tom Hayden and Billy Ayers, as he made his transition from what the writer Paul Berman described as the American left’s “most important theorist” to its most determined enemy. |
| american cultural revolution: The Fabulous Carousels John L. Nelson, 2014-07-28 The Fabulous Carousels is a historical novel based on a true story. You will love this book if you ever played in a garage band and dreamed of going on the road. Children of the 60s, JFK conspiracy theorist, historians, psychologists, and open-minded readers who enjoy a fast-moving picaresque novel with a good laugh and cry will also be rewarded. This edgy comedy/tragedy is spun by saint and sinner Rocky Strong, leader of the Carousels. Rocky chronicles youthful dreams, free love, easy drugs, the American Mafia, CIA black ops, JFKs assassination, tectonic cultural shifts, and, finally, a path to self-actualization. Join the Fabulous Carousels, The Pride of Dixie, as they chase dreams of becoming celebrity heroes in the early 60sstruggling to keep time with changing times in America. |
| american cultural revolution: The Cowshed Ji Xianlin, 2016-03-08 The Chinese Cultural Revolution began in 1966 and led to a ten-year-long reign of Maoist terror throughout China, in which millions died or were sent to labor camps in the country or subjected to other forms of extreme discipline and humiliation. Ji Xianlin was one of them. The Cowshed is Ji’s harrowing account of his imprisonment in 1968 on the campus of Peking University and his subsequent disillusionment with the cult of Mao. As the campus spirals into a political frenzy, Ji, a professor of Eastern languages, is persecuted by lecturers and students from his own department. His home is raided, his most treasured possessions are destroyed, and Ji himself must endure hours of humiliation at brutal “struggle sessions.” He is forced to construct a cowshed (a makeshift prison for intellectuals who were labeled class enemies) in which he is then housed with other former colleagues. His eyewitness account of this excruciating experience is full of sharp irony, empathy, and remarkable insights into a central event in Chinese history. In contemporary China, the Cultural Revolution remains a delicate topic, little discussed, but if a Chinese citizen has read one book on the subject, it is likely to be Ji’s memoir. When The Cowshed was published in China in 1998, it quickly became a bestseller. The Cultural Revolution had nearly disappeared from the collective memory. Prominent intellectuals rarely spoke openly about the revolution, and books on the subject were almost nonexistent. By the time of Ji’s death in 2009, little had changed, and despite its popularity, The Cowshed remains one of the only testimonies of its kind. As Zha Jianying writes in the introduction, “The book has sold well and stayed in print. But authorities also quietly took steps to restrict public discussion of the memoir, as its subject continues to be treated as sensitive. The present English edition, skillfully translated by Chenxin Jiang, is hence a welcome, valuable addition to the small body of work in this genre. It makes an important contribution to our understanding of that period.” |
| american cultural revolution: Global 1968 A. James McAdams, Anthony P. Monta, 2021-06-01 Global 1968 is a unique study of the similarities and differences in the 1968 cultural revolutions in Europe and Latin America. The late 1960s was a time of revolutionary ferment throughout the world. Yet so much was in flux during these years that it is often difficult to make sense of the period. In this volume, distinguished historians, filmmakers, musicologists, literary scholars, and novelists address this challenge by exploring a specific issue—the extent to which the period that we associate with the year 1968 constituted a cultural revolution. They approach this topic by comparing the different manifestations of this transformational era in Europe and Latin America. The contributors show in vivid detail how new social mores, innovative forms of artistic expression, and cultural, religious, and political resistance were debated and tested on both sides of the Atlantic. In some cases, the desire to confront traditional beliefs and conventions had been percolating under the surface for years. Yet they also find that the impulse to overturn the status quo was fueled by the interplay of a host of factors that converged at the end of the 1960s and accelerated the transition from one generation to the next. These factors included new thinking about education and work, dramatic changes in the self-presentation of the Roman Catholic Church, government repression in both the Soviet Bloc and Latin America, and universal disillusionment with the United States. The contributors demonstrate that the short- and long-term effects of the cultural revolution of 1968 varied from country to country, but the period’s defining legacy was a lasting shift in values, beliefs, lifestyles, and artistic sensibilities. Contributors: A. James McAdams, Volker Schlöndorff, Massimo De Giuseppe, Eric Drott, Eric Zolov, William Collins Donahue, Valeria Manzano, Timothy W. Ryback, Vania Markarian, Belinda Davis, J. Patrice McSherry, Michael Seidman, Willem Melching, Jaime M. Pensado, Patrick Barr-Melej, Carmen-Helena Téllez, Alonso Cueto, and Ignacio Walker. |
| american cultural revolution: Cultural Revolution Cookbook Sasha Gong, Scott D. Seligman, 2022-04-25 Ten years ago, Sasha Gong and Scott D. Seligman collaborated on a groundbreaking cookbook that told the story of China's chaotic Cultural Revolution (1966-76) through its cuisine. During that period, approximately 17 million city youth were sent down to the countryside to learn from the peasants, and they discovered that toil in the communes was arduous and food was scarce. But many also learned that remarkably tasty and healthy dishes could be prepared with the fresh, wholesome ingredients available down on the farm. They learned to coax peak flavors and maximum nourishment out of unprocessed foods, fresh from the fields, ponds and streams and devoid of artificial preservatives. The Cultural Revolution Cookbook, which told their stories, immediately became the best-selling Chinese cookbook on Amazon.com and quickly sold out its first print run. The authors were not prepared for the incredible success it has enjoyed since then. Now, in a Tenth Anniversary Edition, the authors have taken suggestions from readers and added new material. The recipes are all entirely authentic and easy to prepare in an American kitchen. Many are vegetarian, and none of them requires exotic ingredients. You can find everything you need in a well-stocked grocery store. The step-by-step instructions are easy to follow, and short cuts and substitutions are suggested. Readers are also treated to many inspirational stories - about Chinese food, about the Cultural Revolution and about living in the Chinese countryside - bringing the wonderful recipes, and that extraordinary era, to life. |
| american cultural revolution: New Perspectives on the Cultural Revolution William A. Joseph, Christine Wong, David Zweig, 1991 Since the Cultural Revolution, data have been uncovered to illuminate that tumultuous decade. In this volume 13 scholars examine the gap between the ideology of the Revolution and the harsh and contradictory reality of its outcome. They focus particularly on the violence, coercion, and constant tension between the need for centralization to enforce policies and the need for decentralizing decision-making if those goals were to be achieved. |
| american cultural revolution: Art, Global Maoism and the Chinese Cultural Revolution Jacopo Galimberti, Noemi de Haro García, Victoria H. F. Scott, 2019-11-18 This is the first book to explore the global influence of Maoism on modern and contemporary art. Featuring eighteen original essays written by established and emerging scholars from around the world, and illustrated with fascinating images not widely known in the west, the volume demonstrates the significance of visuality in understanding the protean nature of this powerful worldwide revolutionary movement. Contributions address regions as diverse as Singapore, Madrid, Lima and Maputo, moving beyond stereotypes and misconceptions of Mao Zedong Thought's influence on art to deliver a survey of the social and political contexts of this international phenomenon. At the same time, the book attends to the the similarities and differences between each case study. It demonstrates that the chameleonic appearances of global Maoism deserve a more prominent place in the art history of both the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. |
American Cultural Revolution (book) - netsec.csuci.edu
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