Toward a Socialist Soundscape: The Making of an Auditory Authority in Post-1949 China

Abstract

This thesis is an inquiry into sound and voice associated with China’s official authority after 1949. It reconsiders the process in which sound and voice weave into the fabric of governmental authority and socialist nation-building and eventually outlive the political model as the sonic imaginary of an era. Rather than considering “the voice of authority” as a monolithic whole, this thesis questions its construction – how the embodied individual voice is attributed to an inanimate collective — and its decline — how the voice of a past is allegorized and mystified as a means to explore the dynamic between national body and individual body and issues over corporeality and embodiment. By analyzing the relationship between sound and power, this thesis argues that authority in the context of post-1949 China undergoes continuous construction and transformation and is shaped by an interplay between human will and historical contingency. In addition to the formation process at its historical origin, it also considers the post-socialist disavowal of socialist legacy in consolidating the imaginary of authority. Through looking for the voice of early broadcasters in the People's Republic of China, the voice of Mao, and the voice of documentary films, this thesis reveals that these voices are heard and imagined in equal measure. The dynamic between the materiality and the metaphoricality of voice underscores the difficulties in narrating and memorializing China’s socialist decades.