Propaganda tends to be read as centrally produced imagery disseminated to, and absorbed by, the general public. This talk turns to the Maoist Chinese case to complicate that picture.
Visual propaganda is often understood through its most iconic top-down forms: the patriotic imagery of WWII Britain and America, the enemy images of Nazi Germany, or the intensely red visual sphere of the communist bloc. In each case, propaganda tends to be read as centrally produced imagery disseminated to, and absorbed by, the general public. This talk turns to the Maoist Chinese case to complicate that picture.
Propaganda imagery of the period needed to be simultaneously comprehensible to the masses and easy to disseminate quickly and effectively. To this end, the CCP — like many governments before it — built a visual lexicon of easily identifiable cues that could be read at a glance. Drawing on Kress and van Leeuwen's foundational work on reading imagery, and on the first half of my forthcoming monograph, this talk treats that image-based vocabulary as central to the political communication of the era.
But the vocabulary is only half the story. Drawing on the second half of the book, this talk turns to the grassroots level of DIY propaganda production enabled by the propaganda manual — specifically the PPRM (propaganda poster reference materials), the Maoist-era blueprint for producing politically safe, locally inflected propaganda imagery. Where the CCP supplied the grammar, it was ordinary producers who put it into practice, adapting central visual conventions to local circumstance and need.
About the Speaker
Avital Zuk Avina is a scholar of Chinese politics and visual culture. She specialises in political communication, propaganda, and visual culture in modern China, with a focus on how political imagery shapes everyday life and mediates political meaning across Maoist and contemporary contexts. Drawing on comparative and decolonial approaches to Asian politics, her interdisciplinary work engages debates on nationalism, race, minority identity, and art as activism across East Asia and beyond. She has taught at SOAS, Oxford, Manchester, York, and Edinburgh. Her monograph, 'From Visual Grammar to Grassroots Practice in Maoist China: The Propaganda Manual', is forthcoming with Routledge.
The ANU China Seminar Series is supported by the Australian Centre on China in the World at ANU College of Asia and the Pacific.