Children of the Middle Class -- 1960s and Cultural Leadership

Author: Cheng Wei
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-06-01
Features: This book presents a novel subject and unique methodology, representing a bold attempt at "cultural studies" concerning the 1960s cultural movement. The author takes the Cultural Revolution as the theme and, at the interdisciplinary boundary between political economy and semiotics, skillfully demonstrates fresh perspectives in cultural studies, proposing an effective interdisciplinary explanatory framework. His most challenging insight is that the 1960s Western New Left student movement and its diverse anti-cultural practices were, in fact, the 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 a historical explanation of the 1960s cultural revolution. This book is a specialized monograph offering an in-depth study of the 1960s anti-cultural movement. It not only involves extensive historical materials and theoretical literature but also proposes highly original viewpoints, arguing that this was "a revolution completed in the name of rebelling against the bourgeoisie, ultimately serving the bourgeoisie itself" and that it was "the bourgeoisie regaining cultural hegemony that had been lost to the aristocracy and the left for a century and a half." This conclusion opens up a fresh perspective for understanding the nature of the 1960s revolution and holds significant implications for comprehending contemporary theoretical trends and academic research.