Introduction: The cultural politics of postsocialism
Part I. Intellectual discourse: national and global determinations
The return of the politcal: the making of the post-Tiananmen intellectual field
Nationalism, mass culture, and intellectual strategies in the 1990's
Postmodernism and postsocialist society: cultural politics after the "New Era"
Part II. Literary discourse: narrative possibilities of postsocialism
Shanghai nostalgia: mourning and allegory in Wang Anyi's literary production in the 1990's
Toward a critical iconography: Shanghai, "minor literature," and the unmaking of a modern Chinese mythology
"Demonic realism" and the "socialist market economy": language game, natural history, and social allegory in Mo Yan's The republic of wine
Part III. Cinematic discourse: universality, singularity, and the everyday world
National trauma, global allegory: construction of collective memory in Tian Zhuangzhuang's The blue kite
Narrative, culture, and legitimacy: repetition and singularity in Zhang Yimou's The story of Qiu Ju.