zhang xudong : postmodernism and postsocialist society— historicizing the past

p400
Chinese postmodernism as a social discourse can therefore be considered as a revolt against the modernist and modernization ideology of the New Era (1979-1989); during this time modernism posed as a "new enlightenment" in opposition to Maoism as a form of Chinese feudalism, and thus sealed the legitimacy of Deng's China within the discourse of modernity. Modernity in the context of post-Mao Chinese history has its centrality in economic, bureaucratic, and social rationalization.

p405

But it is precisely in its resistance to the postmodern that the Chinese modern reveals itself not as a totality, but as a differentiated, fragmented, and contradictory experience. Its prolonged discursive and ideological uniformity is not a historical given, but a historical contingency made possible by the persistence of the truly "premodern" elements in Chinese society... and, more recently, by the continued and renewed rivalry between socialism and capitalism, that is,  between the two competing ideological claims on modernity in China in post-cold war years.....(postmodernism) disrupts the demystifies entrenched positions in an interestingly differentiated cultural and social sphere after the disintegration of the reformist consensus among the state, intellectuals, and the masses, and among elite intellectuals themselves.

P 408
(the) modernism-postmodernism turn offers the possibility of a new discursive and ideological framework by which to continue the search for an alternative to the classical blueprint of modernity, namely the free market and liberal democracy.

(my notes:   is it true in reality?   Post-1992 era  marked exactly the acceleration of free market and liberalism)




P 407 With respect to the dialectic between form and content, one may contend that Adorno's thesis, based on his study of European classic music, that each new artistic paradigm contains, in and only in its aesthetic solution of tensions created in the history of form, a solution— or what we call articulation— of the social-moral dilemma of its time, still holds true, although only on an expanded historical horizon, with an added appreciation of the radical Other.

Adorno   Philosophy of Modern Music