能 Neng （Energy/Capacity) and China’s Long 1980s: A Re-evaluation

能 (Capacity/Energy) and China’s Long 1980s: A Re-evaluation

Columbia University
Weatherhead East Asian Institute
October 31 – November 1, 2019

About the Conference
Convening amidst a spate of state-led celebrations commemorating four decades since the start of the Reform and Opening and the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic, this workshop critically explores the experiences and legacies of the “long 1980s” (1978-1992). This “long decade” is perhaps most often remembered for its state-led turn from central planning to a market approach to economic and social governance and the increasing integration of China into the world economy. These years also witnessed the emergence of a “cultural fever” characterized by artistic experimentations with media old and new at all levels of society. Existing scholarship on the 1980s has fruitfully examined economic, political, material and cultural arenas of development. What has been lacking, however, are studies exploring interconnectedness of these arenas at both conceptual and practical levels. We propose a re-evaluation of these years through attention to the Chinese character neng ( 能 ). Connoting both the “capacity” associated with individual and collective subjects as well as the natural and material “energy” required to fuel ambitious Reform era ideals of economic and social development, the overlapping meanings of this character encourage a focus on the interconnectedness of psychical and material economies during the country’s search for a collective orientation after Mao. Our workshop connects individual and collective projects of becoming to the broadly-defined ecological environments where notions of resource and capacity have been reconceptualised through experimentation and contestation at various levels of production – intellectual, social, industrial, artistic, and personal.
Connecting approaches informed by neng to the long 1980s might take a variety of forms. Papers can revisit specific debates, cultural products, and areas of experiences from Deng
era China or consider the legacies of this long decade through explorations of more recent events. We might ask questions about how extraction, availability, redistribution or “release” of
human and natural resources associated with the early years of reform have come to enable or shut down possibilities of living and imagining personal and shared pasts and futures. How have
fluctuations of emotions such as excitement, anxiety and despair been mobilized alongside shifting circulations of materials and resources? Meanwhile, how have spheres of media, art and
culture intertwined with the material economies of the society, and how did they interact with social, economic and technological changes? What have been the ways in which these media
have reconfigured realms of experience? Finally, how have memories and representations of key happenings in the 1980s shifted in subsequent decades as China has further integrated into the
global capitalist order?

The workshop welcomes attention to vectors of energy, capacity and intensity—or their opposites: entropy, incapacity, and lethargy—as they travel from one form to another across social, economic, political and psychic realms and refigure individual capabilities and responsibilities. We intend to experiment with an interdisciplinary, and ecological, approach to
exploring the lived experiences, cultural articulations, and historical legacies of these “turbulent” and “surging” times.

Conference Organizers:
Ying Qian (EALAC); Nick Bartlett (AMEC and EALAC)

Conference Sponsors:
Weatherhead East Asian Institute
Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures
Program in Chinese Literary and Cultural Studies

Neng Conference Schedule

For more information on this event, please visit our events page.