[Oct 30] Book Talk: Writing to the Rhythm of Labor: Cultural Politics of the Chinese Revolution, 1942-1976

Date: October 30, 2025 (Thu)

Time: 4:30-6:00pm

Venue: KB132 (1/F Knowles Building, Main Campus, HKU)

Speaker: Prof. Benjamin Kindler | Assistant Professor, Department of Cultural Studies, Lingnan University

Moderator: Prof. Edwin Michielsen | Assistant Professor, Department of Japanese Studies, The University of Hong Kong

Speakers Bio:

Benjamin Kindler is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Cultural Studies at Lingnan University. His research area is in Modern Chinese Literature, specifically the cultural legacies of the Chinese Revolution. His work has been published across Modern Chinese Literature and Culture and Modern China, amongst other venues. He is preparing a second project on the crisis of the revolutionary subject as it emerged in the 1960s, and its afterlives in the literature of zhiqing writers in the 1980s.

Abstract:

What does it mean to write in a socialist revolution? What defines labour in a communist society? In revolutionary China, writers were regularly dispatched to the countryside or factories with the expectation that, through immersion in the life of workers and peasants, they would be remade as “culture workers” whose writing could serve the communist project. Their cultural labour would not merely reflect or represent the process of building socialism—it would actively participate in it by excavating the contradictions and challenges of the ongoing reorganization of social relations. Writing to the Rhythm of Labor investigates these and other challenges through the complex intersections between literary texts, theories of writing and political economy in revolutionary China. The experiment of Chinese socialism - from Yan’an through to its defeat at the end of the Cultural Revolution - offers an unparalleled example of the struggle to overcome the division between mental and manual labour.

All are welcome. No registration is required. For enquiries, please contact Prof. Edwin Michielsen at emich@hku.hk.