book
The Cultural Revolution: A People’s History, 1962–1976
Dikötter, Frank. The Cultural Revolution: A People’s History, 1962–1976. New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2016.
Why this matters here
Dikötter’s people’s history of the Cultural Revolution documents a period in which study, denunciation, confession, and doctrinal struggle intensified across schools, workplaces, and streets. When Interpretation No Longer Matters cites that fever of required criticism to mark a structural failure: abundant interpretation without correction that restores predictability. The book’s claim is that the presence of criticism was not the presence of repair—each purification wave manufactured new enemies and vigilance obligations rather than settling shared terms.
