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Creating the Intellectual redefines how we understand
relations between intellectuals and the Chinese socialist
revolution of the last century. Under the Chinese Communist Party,
“the intellectual” was first and foremost a widening
classification of individuals based on Marxist thought. The party
turned revolutionaries and otherwise ordinary people into subjects
identified as usable but untrustworthy intellectuals, an
identification that profoundly affected patterns of domination,
interaction, and rupture within the revolutionary enterprise.
Drawing on a wide range of data, Eddy U takes the reader on a
journey that examines political discourses, revolutionary
strategies, rural activities, urban registrations, workplace
arrangements, organized protests, and theater productions. He lays
out in colorful detail the formation of new identities, forms of
organization, and associations in Chinese society. The outcome is a
compelling picture of the mutual constitution of the intellectual
and the Chinese socialist revolution, the legacy of which still
affects ways of seeing, thinking, acting, and feeling in what is
now a globalized China.