Chronicles of Jiabiangou: A contemporary reading of chinese reportage literature utilizing theories of totalitarianism and power

The Chronicles of Jiabiangou (Jiabiangou jishi 2003), a contemporary reportage text about the sufferings of Chinese intellectuals in a re-education farm during the Anti-Rightist Movement and the Great Famine. By analyzing the plots and scenes described by the text, this paper will investigate how the book depicts the Chinese-style totalitarianism of the Mao era. Employing Hannah Arendt's (1986) theory on totalitarianism, and Michael Foucault's concept of the micro - physics of power, the paper also addresses how totalitarianism and political and social upheavals such as the Anti-Rightist Movement and the Great Famine, severely affected many individuals, (mainly intellectuals), by isolating, disciplining, punishing, and starving them via the system of laojiao (re-education through labor).