Assuming power in 1949, the Chinese Communist Party was soon faced with a crucial problem: how to construct the socialist 'New Man'? Using Foucault's theory of 'technologies of the self', Lynteris examines the conflict between self-cultivation and the abolition of the self in the biopolitically neuralgic field of 'socialist medicine'.

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Authors and Affiliations

University of Cambridge, UK

Christos Lynteris

About the author

Christos Lynteris is a Mellon/Newton Research Fellow at the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities (CRASSH) of the University of Cambridge, researching the social ecology of plague in Inner Asia. He read and lectured social anthropology at the University of St Andrews and completed this book under a Fellowship at the Centro Incontri Umani, in Ascona, Switzerland.

Bibliographic Information

Book Title: The Spirit of Selflessness in Maoist China
Book Subtitle: Socialist Medicine and the New Man
Authors: Christos Lynteris
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137293831
Publisher: Palgrave Pivot London
eBook Packages: Palgrave History Collection, History (R0)
Copyright Information: Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited 2013
Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-137-29382-4Published: 30 October 2012
eBook ISBN: 978-1-137-29383-1Published: 30 October 2012
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: X, 126
Topics: History of Science, Asian History, Social History, Modern History, History of China

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Table of contents (6 chapters)

Front Matter

Introduction

The Sublimation of Skill

Self-Cultivation: Confucian Roots

Red or Expert?

Abolishing the Self as Private Property

Conclusion

Back Matter

About this book