(Re)creando al ‘Otro’ a través de pósteres de propaganda maoísta: entre manifestación popular de identidades y recuerdo kitsch

Abstract

With the triumph of Mao, the construction of a Chinese identity was delineated through incessant watchwords and ubiquitous advertising. Facing the nation one could distinguish the ‘Others’, this time differentiated between friendly countries – the socialist brothers – and opponents– or the imperialistic and capitalistic demons Yizu (异族) – following the socialist revolutionary dialectics. This binary opposition inspired a great number of propaganda posters, put into circulation between 1949 and 1976 in order to instruct the mainly illiterate population. The same visual code that portrayed foreigners as barbarians and invaders – which resonated all through the 90’s – reverberates also nowadays, showing that the dynamic cultural shifts, contradictions and tensions that it preserves are a product of the constant accumulation of meanings, adjoined due to experiences, appraising and shifting contexts. As a matter of fact, the multiplicity of usages and the difference of contexts promote the sense of a ‘deferred’ meaning that both ‘differs’ and ‘defers’. By looking at original propaganda posters and its sequels, this article traces what has changed in the image that China formulated about its ‘Others’ – whether westerners, transnational or transregional identities, such as hongkongers -, what has been excluded, neglected, repressed or affixed in the process of rearranging beyond their original context.