The Maoist peasant figure and its affective importance in contemporary visual culture

Abstract

The peasant was one of the Maoist period’s most important class figures, and was part of the class triad of worker-peasant-soldier that was believed to destroy the old world and create a new socialist utopia. The peasant was a figure to be emulated, and during the Cultural Revolution youth from the cities were ‘sent down’ to the countryside to learn from these noble class models. In this presentation, I examine the Maoist model class figure of the peasant in contemporary Chinese visual culture and its new incarnation as the rural-to-urban migrant worker. After summarizing its iconographic importance, I then turn to Confucian and Maoist theories of how model class figures of the worker-peasant-soldier were believed to operate on the viewers’ conscious and subconscious, in the belief that they could inspire emulation in the viewer. I combine these notions with contemporary theories on affect and iconicity and argue that the model figures produce an aesthetic experience that fuses the cognitive and the affective. I contrast the figure’s ironic or ‘kitsch’ representations found in the ‘Mao Pop’ and ‘Political Pop’art movements with its more somber representation in contemporary Chinese art and film, specifically the paintings of migrant workers by artists such as Liu Xiaodong and the films of Jia Zhangke, and argue that the figure still retains its lingering affective importance; thus, it is not only symbolically significant but still retains its affective power in Chinese visual culture by evoking the emotions and feelings associated with the past.

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ORCID for Corey Kai Nelson Schultz: orcid.org/0000-0001-7866-2264

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