백원담-차오정루(曺征路) 대담 ― 『민주수업』의 문화대혁명 성찰과 그 후

Abstract

This conversation between Chinese novelist Cao Zhenglu, who pioneered the “netherworld” literature with works such as Lessons in Democracy and There, and Asian modern thoughts scholar Paik Wondam focuses upon the novel Lessons in Democracy. The story suggests a solution to the difficulties China has faced after the Reform and Opening Up by reflecting them from a perspective of the Cultural Revolution. The writer looks squarely at the reality in which the senior party officials who were purged in the Cultural Revolution returned to vilify it for their interests, and studies of the Cultural Revolution becomes yet another academic topic and pedantry. Cao questions, “What is revolution for? What did people get from it?” He argues that revolution is meaningless when people fail to become masters, and ridiculed by a handful of ruling class. He concludes that the Cultural Revolution was a great lesson in democracy, and explains how he represented it in the family and social relationships of the Red Guards. Paik notes how Cao understood the main goal of the Cultural Revolution was to defeat the capitalism-leaning senior party officials in intraparty class struggle, and reconstructed it in the everyday experience of a school girl and her family. Here, an entirely new vision of the Cultural Revolution opens up. She particularly praises his profound understanding of the Cultural Revolution as the question of “popular democracy” and remarkable skills in portraying it in consciousness and practices of the Red Guards of the time. She contends that the Cultural Revolution should be understood as a world historical event appropriated across national borders rather than just a past history of China.