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Podcast: Exchanges: A Cambridge UP Podcast
Episode: Els van Dongen, "Realistic Revolution: Contesting Chinese History, Culture, and Politics after 1989" (Cambridge UP, 2019)
Description: What is the role of the intellectual? Is violence, not to mention radical change, necessary? Can there be a revolution without them? Realistic Revolution: Contesting Chinese History, Culture, and Politics after 1989 by Els van Dongen (Cambridge University Press, 2019) analyses a series of debates in the early 1990s between Chinese intellectuals as they discussed such questions. Grappling with China’s turbulent twentieth century, such intellectuals came to say goodbye to radicalism, and instead advocated for “realistic revolution” in the service of future modernization.Using journal articles, official newspapers, monographs, and edited volumes, as well as interviews conducted with the main...