Periodic Reporting for period 4 - READCHINA (The Politics of Reading in the People’s Republic of China)
Reporting period: 2022-12-01 to 2023-11-30
READCHINA is the first broad investigation into the politics and practices of reading in the People’s Republic of China (PRC), their interpretation and their impact on social and intellectual change. The main objective of the study is a reinvestigation of literary history and cultural policy of the PRC from the perspective of the ordinary reader. This grassroots approach is innovative in the writing of Chinese literary history as it means turning away from the established focus on authors and the political context. Instead, READCHINA will investigate the social conditions under which texts were read, what influences this had on the lives of individuals, on social, intellectual and literary change in China, and on the modes of production, distribution and consumption of literature. READCHINA considers the reading of literature as part of a wider web of reading materials, including different media and non-fictional texts. Primary sources will consist among others of archival material, field work interviews, autobiographies, marketing materials, statements by fans in online forums, and literary texts. Combining literary analysis with historical and ethnographical inquiry, as well as methods from the digital humanities, READCHINA will contribute to the fields of literary history and literary sociology. Moreover, in combining close readings of texts with distant reading methods, READCHINA will also foster our understanding of the meaning and impact of popular literature in China and of literary theories on reading. READCHINA will thus bring 20th and 21st century China into the global history of reading – especially so, as practices of reading in China have been shaped by different institutions than in the ‘West’: a Socialist State eager to reform its citizens by means of cultural policies, a centralized bureaucratic system regulating distribution and access to reading matters, and a highly efficient system of media control.
We have gained better understanding of the impact of reading practices on Chinese society, past and present; we have also contributed to theoretical explorations on mechanisms related to reading by developing the the concept of the reading act (https://readchina.github.io/interventions/What_is.html(opens in new window)) and by implementing this as a data model in the ReadAct database (https://readchina.github.io/readact.html(opens in new window)). With our research, we show that reading practices are multifaceted, often undertaken seemingly unconsciously (both by readers and by their environment), but just as often mobilized for political (or other) ends. Close observation and analysis of concrete reading situations, in turn, provides insights into how a society (in our case, the Chinese) functions.
Within the scope of WP1, ReadChina saw the publication of a book (Cultural Revolution Manuscripts, Palgrave Macmillan 2021) and several chapters and papers, focusing on fictional reading acts in on Chinese Science Fiction. Fictional reading acts turn out to be a powerful narrative tool to propel the action and characterize fictional characters. Moreover, they may be read as indicators of which texts were relevant (and how) at their respective time of publication. These reading acts thus expand concepts of intertextuality and thus can serve as are more or less subtle indicators of literary, cultural, ideological, and social changes in China (and beyond).
Within the scope of WP2, a book manuscript on woodblock culture during the Maoist era and the elite readers who were the target of these books has been submitted for publication and is now under peer review. In the meantime, research project on early online second-hand book reading communities was conducted. This contributes to the understanding of reading practices in the contemporary and digitalized cultures where the media, the material, the habits and the organization of reading and readers are experiencing fundamentally historical changes.
Within the scope of WP3, the focus was on preparing a book manuscript about Maoist and early post-Maoist collective reading practices as a social-political activity, showing that (1) collective reading practices were integral to the party-state’s system of political communication and propaganda; (2) activities were partly reclaimed by the readers themselves as a routine aspect of their daily lives; (3) collective reading practices were equally prevalent during the Reform Era and until today.
Similarly, WP4 concentrated on the preparation of a manuscript on contemporary bookstores, their readers and their activities, revealing among others the extension of urbanization and China’s changing urban-rural relations manifested in the cultural field.
For WP5 with the departure of Duncan Paterson to a permanent position as head China librarian for the German National Library, the book manuscript will not be completed. A dataset on online reading has been collected for future research. Moreover, WP5 conceptualized the project’s digital infrastructure, including ReadAct and DUST databases, a critical edition of a Cultural Revolution Manuscript and the publication of comics translations.
There is a slight delay in the completion of the book manuscripts, due to the pandemic related hiatus, but all monograph projects are getting to a close. ReadChina has produced three edited volumes submitted for peer review: Practices of Reading in China, Chinese Comics and their Readers: How Readers Set Images in Motion and Make Sequential Art and The Materiality of Reading in the People’s Republic of China.
All (or several) project members have collaborated on a number of projects, including the ReadAct database, the organization of lecture series, workshops and conferences, and online publications on our webpage. The project will have an enduring impact on the field not only with the publications which are scheduled for publication in the near future, but also with the establishment of a book series with Amsterdam University Press, which will be a forum for the topic to prosper over the next years. Reading Practices in China have become a vibrant field of research and of scholarly exchanges, and will continue to remain vibrant.
Within the scope of WP1, ReadChina saw the publication of a book (Cultural Revolution Manuscripts, Palgrave Macmillan 2021) and several chapters and papers, focusing on fictional reading acts in on Chinese Science Fiction. Fictional reading acts turn out to be a powerful narrative tool to propel the action and characterize fictional characters. Moreover, they may be read as indicators of which texts were relevant (and how) at their respective time of publication. These reading acts thus expand concepts of intertextuality and thus can serve as are more or less subtle indicators of literary, cultural, ideological, and social changes in China (and beyond).
Within the scope of WP2, a book manuscript on woodblock culture during the Maoist era and the elite readers who were the target of these books has been submitted for publication and is now under peer review. In the meantime, research project on early online second-hand book reading communities was conducted. This contributes to the understanding of reading practices in the contemporary and digitalized cultures where the media, the material, the habits and the organization of reading and readers are experiencing fundamentally historical changes.
Within the scope of WP3, the focus was on preparing a book manuscript about Maoist and early post-Maoist collective reading practices as a social-political activity, showing that (1) collective reading practices were integral to the party-state’s system of political communication and propaganda; (2) activities were partly reclaimed by the readers themselves as a routine aspect of their daily lives; (3) collective reading practices were equally prevalent during the Reform Era and until today.
Similarly, WP4 concentrated on the preparation of a manuscript on contemporary bookstores, their readers and their activities, revealing among others the extension of urbanization and China’s changing urban-rural relations manifested in the cultural field.
For WP5 with the departure of Duncan Paterson to a permanent position as head China librarian for the German National Library, the book manuscript will not be completed. A dataset on online reading has been collected for future research. Moreover, WP5 conceptualized the project’s digital infrastructure, including ReadAct and DUST databases, a critical edition of a Cultural Revolution Manuscript and the publication of comics translations.
There is a slight delay in the completion of the book manuscripts, due to the pandemic related hiatus, but all monograph projects are getting to a close. ReadChina has produced three edited volumes submitted for peer review: Practices of Reading in China, Chinese Comics and their Readers: How Readers Set Images in Motion and Make Sequential Art and The Materiality of Reading in the People’s Republic of China.
All (or several) project members have collaborated on a number of projects, including the ReadAct database, the organization of lecture series, workshops and conferences, and online publications on our webpage. The project will have an enduring impact on the field not only with the publications which are scheduled for publication in the near future, but also with the establishment of a book series with Amsterdam University Press, which will be a forum for the topic to prosper over the next years. Reading Practices in China have become a vibrant field of research and of scholarly exchanges, and will continue to remain vibrant.
Our conceptualization of reading and reading acts is core to READCHINA: our research demonstrates that reading is best conceptualized as a broad category involving different activities including borrowing or buying books, reciting texts from memory, or even adapting it into new circumstances. Reading thus turns from solitary contemplation into a social experience. This can be captured by what we define as reading acts. We define a reading act not as an abstract category as the acts of reading (Iser) in literary theory, but as concrete actions of real, imagined or fictional readers or textual artefacts which have impact on the social realities that they live in. As a consequence, we are thus also very attentive to material conditions of the textual artefacts, be they second hand books, hand-copied manuscripts or digital representations of books.