| It is the aim of this dissertation to closely examine one relatively small but significant political phenomenon, largely neglected in the Western world until now. This political phenomenon is called Suku. It runs like a thread through the fabric of a series of political movements and events in China, from the Land Reform Movement of the 1940's and 1950's to the Cultural Revolution of the 1960's and 70's.;This paper first provides the necessary descriptive outline of the social, political and historical context of the Suku Movement. Following which, this examination reflects on and interprets the Suku phenomenon through a matrix of modern western social theory: Freud, Marcuse, Arendt, and Ricoeur. By interpreting Suku from the joint perspectives of political identity and subjective psychological identity, it is the aim of this paper to postulate a new paradigm for discussing social suffering, collective confession in a political context and the subjective individual suffering in narrative. This is an analysis of the transformation of identity from the traditional to the modern, both for the individual peasant and for the state of China.;It is argued then, that the use of Suku on the micro level, to forge a new identity in the individual by weaving together the public-Freudian personal experiences of confessional narrative with the ideological narrative of the state, also functioned on a macro level for the masses and for Chinese society as a whole. It is possible, this paper concludes, to synthesize a theory of China's modern identity through an understanding of Suku. And the Suku phenomenon provides a historical and theoretical opportunity for understanding the problems of identity which modern China is confronted with in an increasingly globalized world.;Suku is the practice of confessing individual suffering in a political context and in a collective public forum. In Chinese the term "Suku" means to tell of one's suffering, or to pour out one's bitterness, in public. "Su" means to tell, to speak, to pour out, or to confess, while the term "Ku" means bitterness, pain, and suffering. Suku was invented and used as a political instrument by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) as a component of the above mentioned and other socio-political campaigns directly affecting the lives and identity of hundreds of millions of Chinese peasants. |
