Utopian Ruins

“The memory palaces of contemporary China are akin to a necropolis, one built atop a storied tenement. Within those virtual walls lost souls, dead dreams, frustrated ambitions, and reanimated specters continuously jostle; variously they haunt the living. Jie Li is a learned docent with an assured demeanor who guides us through the hidden passages and dark corridors of that labyrinthine structure with the judicious balance of a historian and the craft of a curator. Her navigation also confronts us with an imagined future in which the contentious possibilities and conflicted potentials of the past will inevitably be visited, and revisited, as China continues its titanic, two-century-long quest on the path to modernity.” — Geremie R. Barmé, editor of China Heritage

“Utopian Ruins presents a creative and nuanced approach to memories of the Maoist era and their various mediations, bringing together a remarkably diverse set of archives, including police dossiers, photography, films, and physical spaces. The questions that Jie Li raises are as vital for global history as they are for China, since socialism's demise leaves many around the world puzzled about the legacies of that period, how to remember them, and what to build in their place.” — Lisa Rofel, coauthor of Fabricating Transnational Capitalism: A Collaborative Ethnography of Italian-Chinese Global Fashion