The Conclusive Scene – Mao Zedong’s Last Meeting with the Red Guards.

Rab-Rab Press is pleased to announce the release of a new book The Conclusive Scene – Mao Zedong’s Last Meeting with the Red Guards. This book includes the first complete English translation of the Chinese Cultural Revolution document “Conversation in a Meeting with the Responsible Persons of the Capital Red Guards.”

The document is a transcribed conversation between Mao Zedong and the Central Group for the Cultural Revolution with the five most famous Red Guards leaders, which took place on July 28th, 1968 at Beijing University. 

This unique historical document is presented with detailed annotations by the translator of the text Andrea Piazzaroli Longobardi, who has given historical insight into the complex relations within the Cultural Revolution. 

Both the foreword and afterword to the document are written by theoretician and sinologist Alessandro Russo, whose work on the Cultural Revolution has given a fresh philosophical perspective for grasping the subjective dimension of this antagonistic episode in modern politics. By discussing the document as a ‘script’ for a stage performance, Russo claims that artistic approaches, rather than supposed classical socio-historical scholarly wisdom, are better qualified to “look at the document as deeply subjective, that is, as intrinsically political.”

Rab-Rab Press is pleased to present this theatrical and political document as evidence of the fact that real learning happens in the scenes of antagonisms and contradictions, violating the limits of liberal equilibrium. By collecting bits and pieces of subjective traces from this divisive and confrontational historical period, we discover that it also included plenty of humour, irony, elan, youthfulness, and brightness. 

Ultimately, we hope this book will give a clue to what Mao actually meant when he asked professional writers and students to “write a novel per week.”

Beautifully designed by Ott Kagovere, the book is published with a flag-like cover in a large format. The print run is 300 copies.

You can order The Conclusive Scene and other publications of Rab-Rab Press directly from our website, or by writing to us: info@rabrab.fi

Rab-Rab Press is an independent publishing platform for radical political commitment and experimental art, based in Helsinki: www.rabrab.fi  

The production of the book is supported by Kone Foundation.