Maoist Discourse and the Mobilization of Emotions in Revolutionary China

This article focuses on how Maoist discourse engineered revolutionary emotions as a method of political mobilization. Based on personal memoirs and eyewitness accounts, it argues that the Maoist discourse can be disaggregated into three themes, each aimed at provoking one type of emotion: the theme of victimization, which mobilized indignation in struggle campaigns; the theme of redemption, which generated guilt in thought reform campaigns; and the theme of emancipation, which raised euphoria in social transformation campaigns. It also argues that Maoist discourse propagation employed three techniques——personalization, magnification, and moralization—and emphasizes that these techniques of propagation are as important as the content of the three themes in the production of passions.