21st Century Map of Chinese Culture. Volume 3

Author: Zhu Dakuo
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-01-01
Features: We are like the mapmaker K in Kafka's works, unable to find our hotel in the spiritual midnight of this era. We struggle to search for our own "map" and seek the exit of the spiritual labyrinth, yet we cannot guarantee where that exit leads...... The collection includes three parts: thematic articles, divided into five themes, including "Literary Criticism," "Mass Culture Criticism," "Film and Television Criticism," "Art Criticism," and "Music Criticism"; cultural keywords, a brief exploration of the popular terms in 2004 that reflect social psychological trends and hidden desires; and cultural events, documenting the various cultural events in 2004 that captured public attention, from the distribution of topics in the National People's Congress proposals to Guo Jingming's continued performance of the publishing and reading myth. Cultural criticism is a new form of writing. It continues the tradition of intellectuals engaging in social critique but relies no longer on academic-style professional writing, instead adopting a more individualistic and unconstrained approach to confront mass media. The Cultural Atlas is now in its third volume. The editorial intention is to select excerpts from various cultural criticism articles of the previous year to review and organize the trends and flows of contemporary Chinese social and cultural phenomena. The title "Atlas" is borrowed from Walter Benjamin's metaphor, aiming to present a cultural landscape in progress in an era that has lost its overall sense of order. Of course, it is also possible that the opposite effect will occur, and readers may only end up in a world that is even more devoid of meaning and coordinates.