Children of the Middle Class (1960s and Cultural Leadership)

Author: Cheng Wei
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-06-01
Features: This book presents a novel theme and unique methodology, representing a bold attempt at "cultural studies" concerning the cultural movement of the 1960s. The author takes the Cultural Revolution as the subject, demonstrating fresh perspectives in cultural studies at the intersection of political economy and semiotics of language, proposing an effective interdisciplinary explanatory framework. His most challenging insight is that the Western New Left student movement and its diverse countercultural practices of the 1960s were, in fact, a historical continuation of bourgeois political and economic revolutions in the realm of cultural thought. The author synthesizes Hegel's historical morphology, Marx's class analysis, and Gramsci's theory of cultural hegemony into a historical interpretive framework, providing an historical explanation of the cultural revolution of the 1960s. This book is a specialized monograph offering an in-depth study of the 1960s countercultural movement. It not only involves extensive historical materials and theoretical literature but also proposes highly original viewpoints, arguing that it was "a revolution completed in the name of rebelling against the bourgeoisie, ultimately serving the bourgeoisie itself," and that it was "a struggle by the bourgeoisie to reclaim the cultural hegemony that had been lost to the aristocracy and the left for a century and a half." This conclusion opens up a new perspective for understanding the nature of the 1960s revolution and holds significant implications for comprehending contemporary theoretical trends and academic research.