Overview

How does emotion shape the landscape of public intellectual debate? In Sentimental Republic, Hang Tu proposes emotion as a new critical framework to approach a post-Mao cultural controversy. As it entered a period of market reform, China did not turn away from revolutionary sentiments. Rather, the post-Mao period experienced a surge of emotionally charged debates about red legacies, ranging from the anguished denunciations of Maoist violence to the elegiac remembrances of socialist egalitarianism. Sentimental Republic chronicles forty years (1978–2018) of bitter cultural wars about the Maoist past. It analyzes how the four major intellectual clusters in contemporary China-liberals, the Left, cultural conservatives, and nationalists-debated Mao's revolutionary legacies in light of the postsocialist transition. Should the Chinese condemn revolutionary violence and ""bid farewell to socialism""? Or would a return to revolution foster alternative visions of China's future path? Tu probes the nexus of literature, thought, and memory, bringing to light the dynamic moral sentiments and emotional excess at work in these post-Mao ideological contentions. By analyzing how rival intellectual camps stirred up melancholy, guilt, anger, and resentment, Tu argues that the polemics surrounding the country's past cannot be properly understood without reading the emotional trajectories of the post-Mao intelligentsia.

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Reviews

Sentimental Republic is a must-read for anyone seeking to understand the intellectual landscape of contemporary China. Plumbing the diversity and depth of emotions that have animated disagreements and debates among post-Mao philosophers, historians, and writers—from liberals and leftists to conservatives and nationalists—Hang Tu offers an innovative and insightful analysis of Chinese intellectuals’ continuing struggle with their revolutionary past. -- Elizabeth J. Perry, Harvard University Recent Chinese history is not just a matter of events, policies, or trade figures, but also a history of emotions. Hang Tu captures this elusive history of sentiment, showing the lability and transferability of emotions and their power to transform the domain of ideas. -- Haun Saussy, University of Chicago Sentimental Republic blends cultural history, political analysis, and sophisticated literary sensibility to illuminate the turbulent undercurrents of feeling. Hang Tu’s profound and empathetic understanding of individuals enables a rich portrayal of a society driven and riven by both radical and reactionary ideologies. -- Marshall Brown, University of Washington In this groundbreaking work, Hang Tu explores post-Mao intellectual and cultural dynamics through the lens of contested emotional articulations. Tu examines how intellectual debates find their most compelling manifestations in the nexus of feeling and affect, and how literature in the broad sense demonstrates the tension between thought and emotion. -- David Der-wei Wang, Harvard University

Author Information

Hang Tu is Assistant Professor of Chinese Studies at the National University of Singapore.

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