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Lu Xun, Cultural Internationalism, Leftist Periodicals and Literary Translation in the 1930s

Shuang Shen

in China Abroad: Travels, Subjects, Spaces

This chapter focuses only on the translation projects related to the political history of internationalism, because, through practices such as collaboration and reprinting, the anglophone ... More

This chapter focuses only on the translation projects related to the political history of internationalism, because, through practices such as collaboration and reprinting, the anglophone internationalist journals present a perfect case for the study of transnational circulation and movement of literary materials for a certain political agenda although both the left and the non-left conducted translation projects of modern Chinese literature in the 1930s. The editors of leftist magazines such as China Forum and China Today tried hard to establish close contact with important Chinese literary figures such as Lu Xun and Mao Dun, and succeeded to a certain extent to integrate the Chinese Leftist Writers' League into internationalist alliances. Although Lu Xun did not know English well enough to compose articles in English, some of his essays were intentionally written for such English-language magazines. They were translated into English by other leftist activists including the well-known Agnes Smedley.Less

Return to the Brush: The Polarization of the Chinese and Japanese Literary Communities in the 1930s

Christopher T. Keaveney

in Beyond Brushtalk: Sino-Japanese Literary Exchange in the Interwar Period

This chapter classifies the choices that each of the writers made in the face of the tensions in the late thirties that led to outright war. The paths that writers trod in the late 1930s, ranging ... More

This chapter classifies the choices that each of the writers made in the face of the tensions in the late thirties that led to outright war. The paths that writers trod in the late 1930s, ranging from political activism and collaboration to silence and withdrawal into the relative safety of aesthetics and political disengagement, correspond to the exigencies of that turbulent age. For a brief space of time, during a terrible period of enmity between the two nations, Chinese and Japanese writers succeeded in carving out a charmed space in which they could negotiate questions of modernity, the creation of a new literature, and the role of the writer in the new society. The chapter specifically addresses the breakdown in Sino-Japanese relations that may appear more symbolic than substantive. Topics covered include the League of Leftist Writers, the death of Lu Xun and its significance for Sino-Japanese literary relations, and writers' activities during the war.Less

Introduction to the Original Text

Jane Marcus

Jean Mills (ed.)

in Nancy Cunard: Perfect Stranger

Jane Marcus outlines her methodology and focus on Nancy Cunard as a poet, contextualizing Cunard’s involvement in the poetry scene with canonical figures of modernism, such as T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, ... More

Jane Marcus outlines her methodology and focus on Nancy Cunard as a poet, contextualizing Cunard’s involvement in the poetry scene with canonical figures of modernism, such as T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, and Stephen Spender, and pointing to the ways in which she rejected the dominant aesthetic of her age. She also explores Cunard’s concern with whiteness through the influence of father figures, George Moore and Norman Douglas, from her childhood and young adulthood. Cunard’s engagement with Black culture, the compilation of the Negro Anthology, and her journalism devoted to anti-fascism and leftist political activism as a reporter during the Spanish Civil War and for the African American Associated Press are also considered here.Less

Revolutionaries, Rebels, and Activists

Janja A. Lalich

in Bounded Choice: True Believers and Charismatic Cults

This chapter provides a brief description and discussion of the leftist milieu of the early 1970s, the period when the Democratic Workers Party (DWP) was formed as a part of the New Communist ... More

This chapter provides a brief description and discussion of the leftist milieu of the early 1970s, the period when the Democratic Workers Party (DWP) was formed as a part of the New Communist Movement (NCM). Throughout most of its existence, the DWP was a highly controversial organization. A feature that distinguished it from other leftist groups at the time was its proudly feminist origins, as it was founded and led by women. However, the membership included both men and women. The DWP's origins and evolution are discussed in detail by explaining the roots of the NCM and its social milieu. The NCM was a product of specific sociopolitical developments in the United States, as well as a direct by-product of the student movements of the 1960s. The Marxist-Leninist organizational model calling for cadre elite, complete with secrecy, democratic centralism, and sectarianism, became the norm in the NCM, and therefore the DWP, milieu. The overall mission was to create a revolutionary vanguard party with rebels and activists that would lead the fight for socialism in the United States.Less

Luo Tuosheng and Manchukuo Literature: The Literary Endeavours of a Manchukuo Student in Imperial Japan

Ōkubo Akio

in Manchukuo Perspectives: Transnational Approaches to Literary Production

This chapter utilizes newly discovered historical records and literary materials from China and Japan to investigate questions about Luo Tuosheng, a Manchukuo overseas student in imperial Japan, ... More

This chapter utilizes newly discovered historical records and literary materials from China and Japan to investigate questions about Luo Tuosheng, a Manchukuo overseas student in imperial Japan, examining his identity, literary activities in Japan, and imprisonment. Luo played a central role in launching the influential "Mobei wenxue qingnian-hui" (Mobei Literary Youth Association) often overlooked by scholars, and thus provides a glimpse into Manchukuo overseas student engagement in Japan. The establishment and setbacks of this association will also be clarified.Less

China’s Arrival in Latin America

David B. H. Denoon

in China, The United States, and the Future of Latin America: U.S.-China Relations, Volume III

This chapter lays out the basic themes of the book and examines the commercial and strategic interests of U.S. and China in Latin America. China has become the largest trading partner for more than ... More

This chapter lays out the basic themes of the book and examines the commercial and strategic interests of U.S. and China in Latin America. China has become the largest trading partner for more than half of the Latin American countries, while the U.S. has sought to be the preeminent power in Latin America and the Caribbean since 1823 and the announcement of Monroe Doctrine. China does not pose a direct military threat to the U.S. or its Latin interests, but it does represent serious competition in the economic and diplomatic arenas. In the past decade, a clear East-West split has developed among the Latin American states. Venezuela, Brazil, and Argentina became more nationalistic and anti-U.S., while Chile, Columbia, and Peru have tended to be more market-oriented and comfortable working with U.S. power. The U.S. currently benefits from disarray on the Left in Argentina, Brazil, and Venezuela. Newly developed institutions, e.g., UNASUR, the New Development Bank, and TPP, may also change the U.S.’s and China’s influence in the region. Less

The Immediatism of Everyday Life

John D. French

in Lula and His Politics of Cunning: From Metalworker to President of Brazil

This chapter highlights elements of Lula’s background and personality, including soccer, while using his experience between the ages of eighteen and twenty-three to explore the complexities of ... More

This chapter highlights elements of Lula’s background and personality, including soccer, while using his experience between the ages of eighteen and twenty-three to explore the complexities of individual consciousness. In doing so, it distinguishes between socialization, personal dispositions, and truths so well established that they stand as simple “facts” of working-class life, including hunger, unemployment, and deeply despotic authority. Tracing the sources of an inchoate discontent, this chapter explains how this nonactivist worker first glimpsed perceived injustice but was untouched by leftist labor leaders and activists’ diagnosis of workers’ problems as derived from a system of exploitation (capitalism) backed by an antilabor dictatorship with powerful foreign patrons.Less

The Awakening: Guerrilla Comandantes before the Civil War

Erik Ching

in Stories of Civil War in El Salvador: A Battle over Memory

This chapter looks at the third of four memory communities that dominate the public discourse of collective memory about the civil war in El Salvador. This third group, comprised of former guerrilla ... More

This chapter looks at the third of four memory communities that dominate the public discourse of collective memory about the civil war in El Salvador. This third group, comprised of former guerrilla commanders (comandantes), is defined by a common narrative of the war that emerges from the comandantes’ life story narrations, either self-written memoirs, or autobiographical interviews that have been published. This chapter covers the comandantes’ lives up to the start of war in 1980/81. The narrators focus on their youth, their decision to join the guerrillas and their efforts to build their militant organizations. They unfold a series of expositions and complications, including factionalism within the left, fear of detention, the joys of collective action and their relationship with their rank-and-file combatants. Their narrations are unified by a description of El Salvador as needing revolutionary change, which they, as vanguardists, see as their duty to lead.Less

Why Documentary Filmmakers Keep Trying to Change the World, or Why People Changing the World Keep Making Documentaries (1984)

Thomas Waugh

in The Right to Play Oneself: Looking Back on Documentary Film

This chapter introduces the works of Soviet film director Dziga Vertov, a pioneer in early cinema whose works influenced the cinéma vérité style of documentary filmmaking. Ever since Vertov first ... More

This chapter introduces the works of Soviet film director Dziga Vertov, a pioneer in early cinema whose works influenced the cinéma vérité style of documentary filmmaking. Ever since Vertov first entered the Soviet newsreel initiative, Leftist activists have continuously used the documentary medium to challenge the inherited structures of social domination. The chapter looks into how these documentary films speak to specific publics to bring about political goals. They occupy virtually all the gradations possible on the left side of the political spectrum, from the social democratic through the Marxist-Leninist to the Left-libertarian. Documentary relies no less than any other filmic genre on its own systems of codes, conventions, and cultural assumptions and mediations. An obvious corollary of this insight is that a documentary does not subscribe to the aesthetic prescriptions of what has come to be known as “political modernism.”.Less

Baldwin’s Life on the Left: From New York Intellectual to Disturber of the Peace

Douglas Field

in All Those Strangers: The Art and Lives of James Baldwin

Chapter 1 examines Baldwin’s early book reviews in magazines associated with the New York Intellectuals (Nation, Commentary, and New Leader) in order to argue that his early work and dalliance with ... More

Chapter 1 examines Baldwin’s early book reviews in magazines associated with the New York Intellectuals (Nation, Commentary, and New Leader) in order to argue that his early work and dalliance with the Young People’s Socialist League not only illuminate his early career, giving us a better sense of how he developed as a writer, but also his political views add to an understanding of leftist literary culture of the mid-1940s. The chapter then focuses on the reception of Baldwin’s second novel Giovanni’s Room in order to examine how this short novel feeds into and explores key Cold War anxieties about race and homosexuality. As a novel written by an African American featuring no black characters, Giovanni’s Room inflamed white concerns that black culture might assimilate into white American culture, and its treatment of homosexuality fed into concerns that “deviant” sexuality was a threat to American national security.Less