The University of Sydney - China Studies Centre

Sydney China Distinguished Fellow Presents

Please join us for another talk presented by Professor Connery.

30 August | Grass Stage and the Fate of Social Theater in Xi Jinping’s China

 

This hybrid event is co-presented with the Discipline of Gender and Cultural Studies. Zoom link will be provided late. You are also welcome to join us for drinks at Courtyard cafe after the talk.

 

China’s economic and social development over the last 25 years has featured significant elements from the neoliberal playbook–ideologies of competition and human capital, market metrics, efficiency, suppression of labor rights, and more–coexisting with severe state limitations on private property, impediments to the formation of a capitalist class, and, especially in the last ten years, an expansion of state-owned enterprises and party control of the economy. This talk argues for the continued relevance of neoliberalism to an understanding of China today, and suggests that China’s particular and limited neoliberal character offers insights into the nature of contemporary capitalism, and of its antagonists.

About the speaker

Christopher Connery is Professor in the Literature department at the University of California Santa Cruz, where he teaches Cultural Studies, Chinese Studies, and courses in Marxist and neoliberal theory. He has also served recently as Visiting Professor in the graduate department of Cultural Studies at Shanghai University. His research has involved four areas: early imperial Chinese culture and history ( Empire of the Text: Writing and Authority in Early Imperial China ; contributions to the Columbia History of Chinese Literature) ; oceanic ideology and mythos in global capitalism (articles in boundary 2, Journal of Historical Geography, PMLA, Harvard Design Magazine, et al); the global 1960s (various anthologized articles, plus special issues of boundary 2 and Inter-Asia Cultural Studies); and contemporary Chinese culture, ideology, and politics (articles in Made in China, boundary 2, New Left Review, et al). Since 2010 he has been involved as writer, performer, and political consultant in the Shanghai-based, Chinese-language social and experimental theater group Grass Stage, which has performed throughout China, as well as in Hong Kong, Japan, Taiwan, Macao, and North America.

As part of the Sydney China Distinguished Fellowship Program 2024, this event is co-hosted by the Discipline of Chinese Studies in the School of Languages and Cultures, the China Studies Centre at the University of Sydney. The fellowship is enabled by the acuity of vision and generosity of Mr James Lee, a University of Sydney alumnus now based in Hong Kong.