Heritage and Ancestors: The Politics of Chinese Museums and Historical Memory

The University of California, Berkeley Center for Chinese Studies will host a discussion with Magnus Fiskesjö on the developments of Chinese museums and their relation to historical memory.

Panelist/Discussant: You-tien Hsing, Chair, CCS; Geography, UC Berkeley
Speaker/Performer: Magnus Fiskesjö, Anthropology, Cornell University

Sponsor: Center for Chinese Studies (CCS)

The current Chinese boom in museum-building and in the construction of memorial sites coincides with a broad re-definition of the official and predominant view of China’s history and identity. The Mao-era Communist orthodoxy of history as a sequence of class struggles is replaced across the board, with a story of unbroken, if interrupted, national glory. In this presentation I ask, how are the current developments related to older Chinese conceptions of culture-hero ancestry and imperial glory? Moreover, in what ways should we understand the new Chinese developments within their broader context — especially the simultaneous, yet seemingly paradoxical current world trends of economic globalization and narrow nationalism?

Elvera Kwang Siam Lim Memorial Lecture