Abstract

In keeping with our policy of expanding political discourse, the first essay, “Subterranean Individualism,” combines a study of the increasing bankruptcy of Maoist social individualism with a discussion of the major problems of Chinese politics and society after Mao. Lee illustrates how the regime's attempt to force the internalization of Maoism resulted in the growth of skeptical private persons behind the masks of China's cheerful robots. Ultimately, then, the totalization of social duties under Mao concludes in rampant private individualism under Hua, which, at best, uses the “red” super-ego to win personal pay-offs and privileges from the modernizing improvements of the “experts.”