英文摘要 |
Taking Mo Yan’s 莫言 novel Frog 蛙 as a principal example, this article explores the ways in which the traditional cultural memory of birth is marginalized, the ways in which such memory endorses the farmers’ resistance to state violence in birth control, and the ways in which it is revitalized in a quasi-religious form in the era of the market economy. It argues that birth control is not only a sociopolitical practice, but also a cultural practice. Such a practice embodies the sophisticated innate connections among reason, belief, and violence in the Chinese Enlightenment Movement, nation-state building, socialist practice, and the market economy. When the state legitimizes its violent birth control practices though these modern discourses, the farmers invoke their repressed cultural memory rooted in traditional beliefs to endorse their resistance. |