Zurück zur Übersicht Dienstag, 24.06.2025
Dienstag | 19.00 Uhr | Heidelberg Guest Lectures by Worldmaking-Fellows Ways of Imagining the Self and China Dai Jinhua (Peking University) This lecture examines how Chinese millennials (born between 1985 and 2005) imagine self and nation amid the shifting landscape of contemporary Chinese society. By analyzing various symptoms and phenomena in youth popular culture and subcultures—including films, animations, online novels, and video games—the speaker explores how cultural practices mediate the psychological formations, lived social experiences, and structural conditions that shape young people’s self-perception and collective imagination. Framed within the broader context of “China’s rise,” this lecture considers how rapid economic growth, political and cultural continuities and ruptures, large-scale internal migration, accelerated urbanization, the implementation and end of the one-child policy, the exam-oriented education system centered on the national college entrance examination (gaokao), and an increasingly precarious labor market have shaped contemporary Chinese youth culture. These forces contribute not only to the construction of a generational self-image, but also to evolving visions of “China” itself. The lecture focuses on four interrelated themes: the narrower or larger drawing of individual boundaries, mechanisms of self-suggestion and persuasion, the tension between absolute social order and the impossibility of rebellion, and the pervasive undercurrent of melancholia. Through these entry points, the speaker aims to engage the audience in a dialogue on the emotional and social dimensions of the evolving cultural landscape of Chinese youth in a time of profound transformation. Adresse Centre for Asian and Transcultural Studies (CATS) 010.01.05 (CATS Auditorium) Voßstrasse 2 69115 Heidelberg Veranstalter Centre for Asian and Transcultural Studies (CATS) Homepage Veranstalter https://www.cats.uni-heidelberg.de Kontakt |