MAO: THE UNTRUE STORY WATCH
Aside from postings criticizing Mao: The Untrue Story, I'll be postings quotes from scholars who have given the book favorable reviews.
Bob Avakian has criticized Mao for this idea of "class truth" (see Bob Avakian in a Discussion with Comrades on Epistemology-ON Knowing and Changing the World), but let's be honest: many intellectuals--many of the same who criticize the Cultural Revolution for its utilitarian approach to truth--have had their own version of "class truth"; scholars who know better are letting this horrible book get a free ride. It's been shameful how few intellectuals have stepped forward to denounce this book; it's even more shameful how many have praised it...always with one gentle criticism thrown in for good measure of course.
The first scholar I'm calling out is Michael Yahuda, a professor emeritus at the London School of Economics, and visiting scholar at George Washington University.
In his review, which reads more like a summary, he ends with the following:
"This magnificent book is not without its blemishes. There is no discussion of the quality of the sources or how they were used. The motives of people in general and of Mao in particular are asserted rather than evaluated... Nevertheless it is a stupendous work and one hopes that it will be brought before the Chinese people, who still claim to venerate the man and who have yet to come to terms with their own history, even as they require others to do so."
Well, if the book casts "new and revealing light on nearly every episode in Mao's tumultuous life" and there's no evaluation of these so-called new sources then shouldn't you be somewhat fucking skeptical? That's a blemish!?! That's like saying the "blemish" of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion is that it doesn't have endnotes.
Michael Yahuda has failed to defend his thesis, he gets an F.
-Out-
Bob Avakian has criticized Mao for this idea of "class truth" (see Bob Avakian in a Discussion with Comrades on Epistemology-ON Knowing and Changing the World), but let's be honest: many intellectuals--many of the same who criticize the Cultural Revolution for its utilitarian approach to truth--have had their own version of "class truth"; scholars who know better are letting this horrible book get a free ride. It's been shameful how few intellectuals have stepped forward to denounce this book; it's even more shameful how many have praised it...always with one gentle criticism thrown in for good measure of course.
The first scholar I'm calling out is Michael Yahuda, a professor emeritus at the London School of Economics, and visiting scholar at George Washington University.
In his review, which reads more like a summary, he ends with the following:
"This magnificent book is not without its blemishes. There is no discussion of the quality of the sources or how they were used. The motives of people in general and of Mao in particular are asserted rather than evaluated... Nevertheless it is a stupendous work and one hopes that it will be brought before the Chinese people, who still claim to venerate the man and who have yet to come to terms with their own history, even as they require others to do so."
Well, if the book casts "new and revealing light on nearly every episode in Mao's tumultuous life" and there's no evaluation of these so-called new sources then shouldn't you be somewhat fucking skeptical? That's a blemish!?! That's like saying the "blemish" of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion is that it doesn't have endnotes.
Michael Yahuda has failed to defend his thesis, he gets an F.
-Out-
posted by Toni Sweep at 12:02 AM
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