Exhibiting the Past: Historical Memory and the Politics of Museums in Postsocialist China by Kirk A. Denton

Abstract

Reviewed by: Exhibiting the Past: Historical Memory and the Politics of Museums in Postsocialist China by Kirk A. Denton Hsiao-pei Yen (bio) Kirk A. Denton. Exhibiting the Past: Historical Memory and the Politics of Museums in Postsocialist China. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2014. viii, 350 pp. Hardcover $59.00, isbn 978-0-8248-3687-0. How is the past remembered when its ideological framework is at odds with values that are embraced in the present? This is the conundrum China is facing today. While insisting on “socialism with Chinese characteristics,” China’s contemporary prosperity and economic growth come primarily from participating in the global capitalist economy. A new national identity and continuity with the past and a desired future needs to be forged. In Exhibiting the Past, Kirk Denton takes us to Chinese museums and memorial sites to show how the past is being constructed [End Page 30] in these cultural spaces, which themselves have emerged in China since the 1980s as signs of a rapid growing market for cultural consumption. With the development of “new museology,” a term coined in the 1980s, contemporary scholars often connect the ways in which modern museums, as public and educational institutions, construct knowledge and historical memories of specific political contexts, such as imperialism, colonialism, or nationalism. In recent years, scholars have paid attention to China’s newly developed exhibitionary culture and its social, political, and economic implications. Exhibiting the Past is among three such monographs published in 2014 (the other two are Tracey L-D Lu, Museums in China: Power, Politics, and Identities [Routledge], and Marzia Varutti, Museums in China: The Politics of Representation after Mao [Boydell & Brewer]). By critically evaluating museum exhibitions through their visual, textual, and architectural representations, the new scholarship helps us decipher the new national identity in formation in postsocialist China today. The eleven chapters of Exhibiting the Past discuss a variety of museums and commemorations. At slight odds with the book’s title, some of these sites (ethnic theme parks or urban planning exhibition halls) are not easily categorized as historical. Yet, they all contribute in one way or another to understanding China’s new nationalism. While focusing on the most recent exhibits, Denton also traces the history of individual museums or sites to show the continuities and transformations of exhibitionary culture and how they reflect a changing national identity. Denton finds a stark contrast between Chinese museum representations of Chinese history today and those that existed in the Mao era. “Revolution” has legitimized the rule of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and therefore cannot be easily erased from the national narrative no matter how much that revolutionary heritage questions neoliberal economic practices and authoritarian political control. Revolution has to stay alive but in much tamed forms. Red tourism (hongse lüyou), initiated in 2004, is the most extreme state effort of depoliticizing revolution. Denton takes us to different red tourist sites that are officially dedicated to the revival of a patriotic education of revolutionary history. The “Disneyfication” of these original revolutionary bases strips away any radical and subversive aspects of revolution and only leaves a superficial replica of a revolutionary “atmosphere.” For example, people can “re-live” the experience of revolutionaries in Yan’an by dressing in Red Army uniforms and taking pictures in front of the assembly hall where communist heroes once gathered. Red tourism also promotes the consumption of revolution by selling Maoist memorabilia. Denton argues that what goes hand in hand with the depoliticization of revolution is the downplaying of class struggle, the promotion of a work ethic, and a reevaluation of the late Qing and Republican commercial activities. For example, Denton notices that the modern history exhibit at the Modern Chinese History Site Museum (or the Nanjing Presidential Palace) replaces the term “class” (jieji) [End Page 31] with shehui jieceng (p. 86). Unfortunately, he provides the Chinese term shehui jieceng without its English translation, “social stratification.” This represents a shift in interpretation from Marxism to Weber, a remarkable ideological transformation in how Chinese understand their society and social problems. The emphasis on the late Qing and the Republican period as the foundation for contemporary capitalist development is reflected in the...