Social Suffering and Political Confession

Suku in Modern China

This book closely examines one relatively small but significant political phenomenon — Suku in Revolutionary China through a matrix of western social theory: Freud, Marcuse, Arendt, and Ricoeur. Suku is the practice of confessing individual suffering in a political context and in a collective public forum. By interpreting Suku from the joint perspectives of political identity and subjective psychological identity, the aim of the book is to postulate a new paradigm for discussing social suffering and collective confession in a political context that represents the radical transformation in China's modern history. This book presents an analysis of the transformation of identity from the traditional to the modern, both for the individual peasant and for the state of China.

Contents:

• When Revolution Met Rural China
• Suku: Beyond a Political Instrument
• On Social Neurosis
• On Social Suffering
• Suku and Power
• Suku, Modern China, and Beyond

Readership: Undergraduates, graduates, researchers who are interested in Suku phenomenon China's modern history and the western social theories.
Key Features:

• The first work that focuses on the Suku movement in the English Academic world
• The analysis of the primary materials that were originally used during the Land Reform Movement and the synthesis of the current study on Suku in China
• More than a simple description of the Suku movement, the author tries to interpret the Suku phenomenon with the help of western social theories in order to give a thorough understanding of the paradox of the modern transformation of China's culture and society