Hao Ran and the Cultural Revolution

This chapter offers a close reading of several works by Liang Jinguang, better known as Hao Ran, contextualizing his work within a tradition of Maoist “cultural revolution” that led up to the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution that began in 1966. Although Hao Ran’s works might appear to be replete with socialist ideology, this chapter argues that the socialist content in his works is actually complicated by the literary tropes and images he uses. On a surface level, revolution sublimates and normalizes every wayward impulse; on an underlying level, however, every wayward impulse continues to seek gratification without ever bothering to justify itself, because it is always already disguised under the normalizing discourse of the revolution.