Abstract
This article situates the extraordinary events of 1989 within the symbolic and politicoeconomic context of Reform-era China. It sees 1989 as a threshold moment for the political culture and a turning point for the collective ethos. The article argues that the vitalistic 1980s made for an ethical existence for the demos, culminating in the “poetics” of 1989, while the post-1989 era witnessed a homogenization of the Chinese ethical imaginary. The latter is the very exigency that drives this study. Drawing on the ethical understandings of Deleuze and Burke, the article calls for the return and fusion of the ethical and the political, and points to a reason for pietas toward the world and the demos. The article is informed by a genealogical understanding of history and a ritualistic-dramatistic understanding of political life. Its central concern is the retransformation of the soul of the Chinese people in the here and now.
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