China’s Mundane Revolution: Cheap Print, Vernacular knowledge, and the Rise of the Common Reader, 1894-1954（中國的世俗革命：廉價印刷、民間知識，與 普通讀者的崛起, 1894-1954）
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Abstract:
The talk examines the interactions among three key components of China’s mundane transformations: cheap books as objects, vernacular knowledge as meaning, and common reading as cultural practice. This dynamic interactive thread runs through the book manuscript which the talk briefly introduces. The manuscript argues that the epistemic worlds common readers inhabited were integral to the broad and shifting knowledge terrain from which fundamental change in China’s century of revolution was actualized. It ultimately asks what these inquiring readers, the cheap print editions they consumed, and the heterogeneous brand of knowledge they lived by can teach us about the vagaries—and failures—of China’s iconic twentieth century revolutions.
The talk examines the interactions among three key components of China’s mundane transformations: cheap books as objects, vernacular knowledge as meaning, and common reading as cultural practice. This dynamic interactive thread runs through the book manuscript which the talk briefly introduces. The manuscript argues that the epistemic worlds common readers inhabited were integral to the broad and shifting knowledge terrain from which fundamental change in China’s century of revolution was actualized. It ultimately asks what these inquiring readers, the cheap print editions they consumed, and the heterogeneous brand of knowledge they lived by can teach us about the vagaries—and failures—of China’s iconic twentieth century revolutions.