This presentation examines the role of mirrors, adorned with images of revolutionary heroes from the ‘model works’ (yangbanxi), in the production of Cultural Revolution (1966-76) subjectivities. I argue that these mirrors inscribe the gazer within a system of remediation—and, by extension, an economy of signification—that renders her body alienable and consumable. A testament to the dream of a unitary, communist subject, the model in the mirror paradoxically facilitates a kind of body snatching that gives the lie to the fantasy of inalienability.
Laurence Coderre is a postdoctoral fellow in the study of China at the University of Michigan’s Lieberthal-Rogel Center for Chinese Studies. She received a Ph.D. in Modern Chinese Literature from the University of California, Berkeley in 2015. Her research focuses primarily on the literature and material culture of the Mao and post-Mao periods. She is currently revising a book manuscript on remediation and socialist commodity production in the Cultural Revolution (1966-76). Her recent articles have appeared in Modern Chinese Literature and Culture and Journal of Chinese Cinemas. Additional research interests include socialist realism, postsocialism, and disability studies.
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Laurence Coderre, LRCCS Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Michigan
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