2026-03-29
專題講座：權力之身——解讀毛澤東經典形象的藝術：一部由形象構成的傳記
時間﹕4月7日（二）下午16:10-18:00
地點﹕國立政治大學百年樓百中文系309會議室
講者﹕Barbara Mittler（梅嘉樂）
（德國海德堡大學漢學系教授暨亞洲與跨文化研究中心主任）
講題﹕權力之身——解讀毛澤東經典形象的藝術：一部由形象構成的傳記
Bodies of Power—The Art of Reading Iconic MAO: A Biography in Images（中文演講）
主持人﹕鄭文惠（國立政治大學中國文學系特聘教授）
報名網址：https://reurl.cc/2am1OE 本場次符合中文系研究所學術演講。
綱要
Bodies of Power—The Art of Reading Iconic MAO: A Biography in Images
（權力之身——解讀毛澤東經典形象的藝術：一部由形象構成的傳記）
In the competition for people’s eyes and ears since the 1940s and the making of Chinese Communist artistic politics, images of Mao are arguably the most important staple in the myriad transformations of cultural life in the People’s Republic of China, but also far beyond. In focusing on the power especially (but not only, showing its closeness to other types of image) of Mao’s image archive, this lecture is interested in how these proliferate, deliberating what these proliferations can tell us about what he was meant to mean and, in turn, what he has actually meant (and continues to mean) to people, in China and beyond. Deliberating the ideas behind acts of meaningful amplification and semantic loading, xieyi 寫意, I will show, on the one hand, how, in the hands of Party choreographers, the Mao photograph became a very specific type of image model (déjà-vu). At the same time, I will also consider how this model became a (more or less) successful image act and how that meant that Mao actually continually (re-)made history and thus continually mattered and matters, as a Figure of Thinking and Window to Heaven (pas-encore-vu) for everyone — even as China underwent great changes after his death — the reason why every contemporary politician will be measured in Mao’s terms.
In thus reading the multiple images of Mao,considering the force of déjà-vu, the question of popular affect that is at the heart of your enquiry will be foregrounded in this paper. I am probing into not only how Mao is enshrined, but more importantly, on how he is remembered, how he lives on in people’s minds and for what purposes. I argue that the proliferation of reuses of Mao’s photographic image are, at the same time, a memory of the past that determines not just the present but also how the future is being conceived. I will highlight how, in this process of constant re-imaging, Mao has become the model for continuous change and transformation — on the grand and all-important scale of the economic base, as well as in the superstructure — and how that would e/affect the most intimate spheres of every individual.
In doing so, I will consider how mechanisms of propaganda activities today bear similarities to those of the Mao period, how they are transformed in transition between different media and in adaptation to and for differentaudiences also probing their preferences and choices. In contending that Mao is one of the most dominant themes —a main melody, so to speak— to reverberate in propaganda put forth by different actors on different sides (not just above and below but also right and left, East and West, simian de) throughout the past seventy-five years and considering how his image has been, accordingly refracted and remade in and through the activities of individual and collective agents, I will also consider the changing position and perception of an artist and the notion of self-expression through art, as I highlight ever new kinds of dynamics in the development of these arts through particular choices and adaptive strategies. What does it mean, in other words, to “do things with art” — engaging in the image-act to address the people’s eyes and ears, or, in fact, all their senses.
