Guo Moruo, André Malraux: Impaired Revolutionaries and the Gramophone in Early Twentieth-Century Anti-Colonial China

This article brings together science and technology studies, sound studies, postcolonial history, and critical disability studies by examining how the intellectuals André Malraux (1901–1976) and Guo Moruo (1892–1978), with speaking or hearing impairments, conceptualized sound reproduction technologies during the peak of imperialism. It focuses on how their ideas were entangled with and articulated through bodily experiences during the anti-colonial revolution and the global expansion of technological innovations. By analyzing their writings on the gramophone, this study highlights how bodily impairment influences cultural imagination and challenges the conventional narratives that are inattentive to the social experience of disability. It first investigates how Guo articulated his view of the gramophone against the backdrop of an ableist revolutionary culture, thereby adapting a distinctive sonic imagination to align with anti-colonial movements. It then supplements this with the works of Malraux to evaluate the potential of a disability-mediated view of revolution in the greater anti-colonial world. In so doing, this article assesses how the intellectuals’ impaired bodies, as sites of engagements with revolution and sound technologies like the gramophone, provide a valuable lens for contesting ableist assumptions and a critical understanding of the historical dynamics of auditory culture.