ESSAYS II Extracting Affect: Televised Cadre Confessions in China Christian Sorace Without you, what am I to myself but a guide to my own self-destruction? — Augustine, Confessions Confessions, apologies: why this thirst for abasement? A hush falls. They circle around him like hunters who have cornered a strange beast and do not know how to finish it off. — J. M. Coetzee, Disgrace In J. M. Coetzee’s novel Disgrace, Professor David Lurie loses his job and becomes a social pariah due to his refusal to display contrition needed for the ritual of confession to be effective. Standing before a “committee of inquiry” composed of his colleagues, many of whom are also his friends, Lurie avows that he is guilty of having an affair with one of his students, but he does not apologize for his behavior. The simultaneous avowal of objective guilt and lack of subjective repentance destabilizes the affective requirements of the ritual of confession: “We want to give you an opportunity to state your position.” “I have stated my position. I am guilty.” I am grateful to Timothy Cheek, Gloria Davies, Ivan Franceschini, Iza Ding, Jonathan Kinkel, and Sue Trevaskes for reading and commenting on different drafts of the manuscript. Also, I would like to thank the editorial board of Public Culture and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments. Public Culture 31:1 doi 10.1215/08992363-7181871 Copyright 2018 by Duke University Press Downloaded from https://read.dukeupress.edu/public-culture/article-pdf/31/1/145/558978/0310145.pdf by CO COLLEGE user on 16 January 2019 145 Public Culture “Guilty of what?” “Of all that I am charged with.” “You are taking us in circles, Professor Lurie.” (Coetzee 1999: 49) During the hearing, the committee offers Lurie the opportunity to seek legal advice and therapy. When he declines, they remind him of the potential ramifications of his behavior during the hearing (notably, not for the offense of which he is accused). Lurie’s response is to call into question the purpose of continuing the hearing after he has already affirmed his guilt. “I am sure the members of this committee have better things to do with their time than rehash a story over which there will be no dispute. I plead guilty to both charges. Pass sentence, and let us get on with our lives” (emphasis added; ibid.: 48). The committee, however, cannot bring the hearing to a satisfactory resolution and get on with their lives until they have extracted from Lurie a “spirit of repentance” (59), which is precisely what he refuses to give: “You charged me, and I pleaded guilty to the charges. That is all you need from me.” “No. We want more. Not a great deal more, but more. I hope you can see your way clear to giving us that.” “Sorry, I can’t.” (emphasis added; ibid.: 58) In his lectures on confession and avowal at the School of Criminology of the Université Catholique de Louvain (April – May 1981), Michel Foucault suggested that without the ritual of confession, the legal machinery breaks down (Foucault 2014). For the law to function, it requires the extraction of an affective surplus — ”not a great deal more, but more” (Coetzee 1999: 58) than the avowal of guilt. According to Foucault: If avowal were simply the material confirmation of a truth that was otherwise established, it should have sufficed and satisfied the judges. And yet the avowal was made, but it is clear that this was not what the judges were seeking; what they demanded was that the guilty party say something about his crime — that he say why he committed his crime, what meaning he gave to his gesture. And if he could not say anything about it, if the accused could say nothing about his crime this is where the difficulty began. This is where the penal machine began to stumble and to jam. (emphasis added; Foucault 2014: 215) For Foucault, the penal machine is threatened by a person who avows guilt without displaying repentance, not by the guilty person who feigns innocence. 146 Downloaded from https://read.dukeupress.edu/public-culture/article-pdf/31/1/145/558978/0310145.pdf by CO COLLEGE user on 16 January 2019 In Coetzee’s novel, David Lurie is monstrous not because of his wrongdoing but because of his refusal to atone for it. This logic appears in inverted form in the familiar idea that confession will lead to lighter sentencing in the courtroom. Although the relationship between repentance and mercy has political theological origins, a similar logic structured the legal code of the Qing Dynasty in China (1644 – 1912). During Qing rule, if voluntary confession took place prior to the demonstration of guilt, punishment could be waived or mitigated. If a person refused to confess but was proven guilty, torture was authorized to extract a confession (Dittmer 1998: 264; Naquin 1976; Park 2008). The extraction of confession became necessary after guilt had been established by the court. In the above examples, the exercise of power through which the law inscribes itself on the heart requires an affective surplus of confession to function properly. Lack of contrition undermines the ritual of confession and threatens to throw the machinery into disarray. Why? Confession supplies the affective energy and discursive validation that political order requires to maintain its legitimacy. As Jean-François Lyotard argued, “What matters is that integrity and uniqueness have been restored to the language of communication by his confession and public declaration, even if they are forced” (1992: 94). Without confession to deliver the affective surplus of the subject, the public transcript of legitimation starts to disintegrate into nothingness. Confession is perhaps best pictured as a Mobius strip along which power speaks through the subject and requires the subject to speak in the idiom of power. As political ventriloquism, the confessing subject speaks the words placed there by the state. But confessions are seldom that simple and most often demand that the subject give something of his or herself in the process of speaking. Confessions reveal how state power and discourse imprint how the subject appears to and speaks about his or herself. A society’s ritual of confession (both its form and discursive content) also provides insight into how political power is organized and legitimated. In this essay, I argue that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) generates affective sovereignty from its ability to adapt confessional practices to fit its governing needs at different moments in history. My argument is grounded in an analysis of what recent televised confessions of party cadres reveal about China’s political order, its modes of legitimation, and its mechanisms of power. This reading calls into question the often-repeated claim that confessions in the Xi Jinping era represent a regression to the confessional violence of the Mao era (Bandurski 2015; Fiskesjö 2017; Pils, 147 Downloaded from https://read.dukeupress.edu/public-culture/article-pdf/31/1/145/558978/0310145.pdf by CO COLLEGE user on 16 January 2019 Extracting Affect Public Culture Zhang, Hilton 2016; Schell 2016; Zhao 2016). During the Mao era, confessions were intended as a form of self-transformation and redemption in the pursuit of constructing a new political subjectivity and utopian society. In the Xi era, the drama of confession is intended to separate corrupt cadres from the party, repair the party’s image, and shore up the fragile foundation of its moral legitimacy. The article is organized in three sections. In the first, I draw from different cultural and historical examples of confession to show the affective dynamics produced by the act of confession. What emerges from this analysis is a picture of how confessional politics traverse political regime type and cultural difference. In the second section, I trace how China’s rituals of confession evolved throughout the Mao era and have been reworked to fit a new set of political goals in the Xi era. In the final section, I engage in a discursive analysis of these recent televised confessions. The abject bodies of cadres offer apologies without the hope of transformation in an age of politics without redemption. In the conclusion, I suggest that the legitimation of power extracts affective surplus from everyday life — it requires people to feel themselves addressed by the call of the state (Althusser 2008). Affective Dynamics of Confession The following is a heuristic guide to varieties of confession that circulate in public discourse (that is not meant to be exhaustive, but rather a way of showing how different cultural practices may be more familiar than imagined). Reassurance. Public confessions of leaders are meant to reassure their followers that they have recognized their wrongdoing and are committed to change. When it is successful, the confession repairs the social bond and normative expectation that has been breached. According to Susan Bauer’s study of sexual sin and public confessions in America, Bill Clinton’s “admission of sin, which made careful use of evangelical Protestant vocabulary while avoiding any actual admission of legal guilt (or financial misdoing), was intensely reassuring” (Bauer 2008: 7). Clinton’s willingness to confess his sin without avowing legal guilt is the inverted image of Coetzee’s protagonist’s unwillingness to repent for his admitted guilt. A public confession’s ability to reassure a wounded public and restore a damaged social bond depends on its perceived sincerity. Currently, the United States is experiencing a public confession fatigue in which the apology for sexual wrongdoing is no longer easily forgiven (Bee 2017; Garber 2017). In China, the confessions of corrupt cadres are intended to reassure the public that the party is morally pure and not to excuse or redeem the offending cadre. Redemption. In Catholicism, the sinner exposes her heart to the gaze and judge- 148 Downloaded from https://read.dukeupress.edu/public-culture/article-pdf/31/1/145/558978/0310145.pdf by CO COLLEGE user on 16 January 2019 ment of the priest who prescribes a ritual of penance. The confession establishes a relationship of power between the priest and the confessor, inscribed within the institution of the Church. During the Mao era, Communist Party cadres were expected to examine and confess their innermost thoughts in an ongoing process of self-transformation and revolutionary redemption. As David Apter and Tony Saich argue in Revolutionary Discourse in Mao’s Republic, “the discourse of confession creates its own forms of power. For confession requires someone to confess to” (1994: 290). From the Catholic Church to the atheist Communist Party, redemption’s transcendence requires vertical authority and subjective submission. As I argue later, redemption does not play a role in the confessions of the Xi era. Recantation. Recantation occurs when power demands from the subject renunciation of heterodox beliefs. It is a coercive technique for demolishing the private beliefs of the subject who challenges the discursive order. Recantation has occurred in different guises throughout history. According to Ervand Abrahamian, under both the rule of the Shah and Islamic Republic “public recantations in Iran come in various forms — in pretrial testimonies; in chest-beating letters; in mea culpa memoirs; in ‘press conferences,’ ‘debates,’ and ‘roundtable discussions’; and, most prevalent of all, in videotaped ‘interviews’ and ‘conversations’ aired on prime-time television” (1999: 4). Recantation can involve destruction of physical manifestations of the object of belief. During the Tokugawa era of Japan (1600 – 1868), the ritual of fumi-e required suspected Christians to trample on pictures of Christ and the Virgin Mary in order to prove they were not Christians. In destroying the object of belief, the subject destroys the innermost core of his or herself. In China, recantations are reserved mainly for “enemies of the people” who challenge Communist Party orthodoxy and discourse. A recent example is the human rights lawyer Wang Yu’s televised confession in which she declares that she is “ashamed” (cankui) and “regrets” (chanhui) her previous legal activism (Hernández 2016; Zhuang 2016). Demonstration. The term “show trial” came into existence with the Shakty trial of June 1928 in the Soviet Union, the precursor to the infamous Moscow show trials (1936 – 38) through which Stalin purged his perceived enemies (Wood 2005). During a show trial, the speaking subject is erased and replaced by the dramatic script of political theater. The show trial stages the regime’s idealized version of itself, exerts discursive control over reality, and educates the population in whom to hate. According to historian Elizabeth Wood: “The melodrama was plain for all to see: villains who had undermined the Soviet order; heroes who had uncovered their treachery; a supreme Soviet state, committed to defending 149 Downloaded from https://read.dukeupress.edu/public-culture/article-pdf/31/1/145/558978/0310145.pdf by CO COLLEGE user on 16 January 2019 Extracting Affect Public Culture innocent citizens” (ibid: 194). The defining characteristic of a show trial is that it sacrifices actual lives for the sake of political demonstration. In contemporary usage, the term show trial has become a generic term to indicate any form of public confession. Despite the theatricality and propagandistic function of the televised confessions in Xi’s China, and the apparently coercive conditions under which they are produced, I argue that they do not constitute a “return of the show trial” (Fiskesjö 2017). A more complex relationship exists between the Communist Party’s foundation of legitimacy, role of cadres in maintaining its power, and perceptions of the Chinese public. It is to how power in China is recalibrated through its rituals of confession that we now turn. The Communist Party’s Affective Sovereignty The People’s Republic of China is a fascinating laboratory of experimentation in different techniques for the extraction of affective surplus and its political instrumentalization. According to Elizabeth Perry, China’s revolutionary process of state building and social transformation depended on the mass mobilization of emotions (Perry 2002). What Perry describes as “emotion work” is the affective tie between political campaigns and people’s daily lives. In a similar vein, Michael Dutton argues that “Maoist China was the site of an experiment designed to calibrate an approach to political transformation through the channeling of affective flow” through which political ideas were “intensely felt” (Dutton 2016: 719). Yu Liu elaborates how Maoist discursive practices: aimed not just to induce conformity but also to establish its legitimacy through the transformation of minds, which in turn depended on eliciting appropriate emotions. As recorded in numerous memoirs, living through the communist revolution was a highly emotional experience. People showed great indignation in struggle meetings, cried during the ritual of speaking bitterness, sank into deep guilt and despair while writing confessions, experienced moments of ecstasy during the Great Leap Forward, and so on. (2010: 330) In this essay, I build on Perry’s “emotion work” and Dutton’s “political-affective flows” by arguing that the Communist Party governs according to a practice of affective sovereignty. I define affective sovereignty to mean that the party-state claims sovereign jurisdiction over people’s emotional life and that the party-state’s sovereignty is revitalized through its extraction of affective energy. 150 Downloaded from https://read.dukeupress.edu/public-culture/article-pdf/31/1/145/558978/0310145.pdf by CO COLLEGE user on 16 January 2019 Chinese history is replete with examples of the Communist Party asserting its control over people’s affective lives. In my book, Shaken Authority, on the aftermath of the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, I detail how the Communist Party launched “gratitude education campaigns” (gan’en jiaoyu huodong) to educate the disaffected earthquake survivors how to properly receive a gift (Sorace 2017). The Communist Party also views negative affects (fumian qingxu) as politically threatening. In Jie Yang’s excellent book on laid-off workers, Unknotting the Heart, she argues that local authorities deploy a combination of Maoist-era propaganda and new-age therapy to enforce positive thinking (Yang 2015). For the Communist Party, affect is not the private domain of the individual but a source of the social ties that hold together public life. For this reason, political authorities consider the affective realm to belong to their sovereign jurisdiction. The Communist Party does more than control and regulate negative affect (Yang 2017a); it also requires constant infusions of affective energy for its own legitimation. Sovereignty is not a fleshless concept but an exercise of power that requires the extraction of an affective surplus. In China, the Communist Party’s transition from a “revolutionary party” (geming dang) to a “ruling party” (zhizheng dang) has been accompanied by a shift in its modes of affective extraction. The difference between rituals of confession throughout the Mao and Xi eras reveal different political-affective assemblages and strategies of legitimation. During the Mao era, the Communist Party’s ambition was to transform Chinese society and create a new socialist individual. The motivating logic was not survival for its own sake. In the words of Marc Blecher, “While most authoritarian states seek to insulate themselves from society by representing it into quiescence, the Maoist state chose instead to rule by activating society . . . It wanted believers, not subjects” (2009: 220). In response to political exigencies, the Maoist state deployed different modes of confession. Before the Communist Party obtained state power in 1949, it fought an antiimperialist war against Japan (1937 – 45) and a civil war against the Guomindang (1946 – 49). During most of this period, the Communist Party operated a base camp in Yan’an, Shaanxi Province, which became a pilgrimage site for disaffected members of society with revolutionary inclinations (Apter and Saich 1994). Yan’an was the crucible in which Communist Party organizational discipline and ideological orthodoxy were forged under Mao’s leadership (Schurmann 1968). During the Yan’an rectification movement (yan’an zhengfeng yundong) in 1942 – 44, the Communist Party launched a campaign to mentally remold and discipline party leaders and rank and file cadres. As Timothy Cheek puts it: 151 Downloaded from https://read.dukeupress.edu/public-culture/article-pdf/31/1/145/558978/0310145.pdf by CO COLLEGE user on 16 January 2019 Extracting Affect Public Culture When undertaken seriously, this form of political training resembles nothing so much as Bible study in small groups run by your local police department . . . Individual study, public confession of your sins, review of your personnel record, and public propaganda about role models (and a few negative role models to show what is to be avoided) define a CCP rectification campaign. (Cheek forthcoming) In their study of revolutionary discourse in the Yan’an era, David Apter and Tony Saich argue that the Communist Party’s power was derived from a religious process of “exegetical bonding” that required “the most intimate and sensitive aspects of one’s life . . . to be exposed and held up to public view” (Apter and Saich 1994: 264). The ritual of confession channeled affective energy from the individual to the party organization, binding them together in the process. The Communist Party’s power was rooted in the mobilized affect of the individual; the individual’s power was amplified by their submission to the party. In 1949 when the Communist Party began the task of rebuilding the state and national community, the exegetical community of the Communist Party expanded to proselytize a fragmented and exhausted society. In the early 1950s, the ritual of confession was retooled to incorporate unbelievers, especially intellectuals from the “old society” ( jiu shehui). For people whose intellectual and political attachments belonged elsewhere, the Communist Party employed techniques of recantation through which people were expected to renounce their old lives, habits, and ways of thinking (Cheek 2016; Teiwes 1993 [1979]). Successful recantation would be rewarded with redemption in the new society. The stated purpose of rectification in the Mao era was to “cure the disease to save the patient” (zhibing jiuren). The often brutal methods of curing the disease killed an untold number of “patients.” The combination of recantation and redemption in the ritual of confession was an effective tool of governance and generating belief. The Communist Party’s power was reinforced by its ability to push a person to the edge of collapse with one hand, while holding out another hand offering salvation. This power dynamic is most vividly captured in two works of literature: Yang Jiang’s Baptism (xi zao, which literally means “to bathe” in Chinese) set in the early 1950s and Shen Rong’s novella “Snakes and Ladders — or Three Days in the Life of a Chinese Intellectual” (Zhen zhen jia jia) set in the late 1970s. Yang Jiang’s novel is set at a literary institute in Beijing in the early years of the People’s Republic of China. Its main characters are intellectuals who must perform self-criticisms of their indiscretions and insincerities in order to ‘wash off” the dirt from the old society. In the novel, the party cadre Fan Ertan stipulates the guidelines for self-criticism: “The first priority is not to fear the shame 152 Downloaded from https://read.dukeupress.edu/public-culture/article-pdf/31/1/145/558978/0310145.pdf by CO COLLEGE user on 16 January 2019 of revealing those hidden, dirty parts. The second is not to fear the pain of scrubbing those parts clean, or of digging or cutting them out.” As he laconically puts it: “first you tear down a bit, then you build up a bit” (Yang 2007: 213). During Fan Ertan’s speech, the intellectuals in the audience viscerally register the party’s interpellation of their guilt. “They hadn’t had time yet to consider whether they had anything to be ashamed of, but all of them already felt a prick at their backs” (ibid.). Yang Jiang’s use of the Chinese word zhizui (literally to know one’s guilt) suggests that affective knowledge precedes cognitive recognition and elaboration. As soon as one feels a prick, quiver, or knot in the stomach, interpellation has worked its magic (Althusser 2008 [1970]). As the novel unfolds, the private writing of self-criticisms and public staging of confessions pierce each intellectual’s self-understanding and defense mechanisms. Ding Baogui panics that his self-criticism will not be accepted by the audience. “He seemed like a drowning man whose head was still above water but whose body was sinking fast” (ibid.: 253). After his self-criticism is lauded by the masses for its sincerity, “Ding Baogui felt his heart rise out of his stomach. He was so happy he nearly shed tears. He felt as if he had taken first place in the imperial service examinations, and right after that been chosen by a beautiful young lady. Half in a dream and half awake he walked home as if floating on air” (ibid.: 254). For Du Lilin, the successful ritual of confession transforms “bitter tears of sorrow” into “warm tears of gratitude” (ibid.: 239). Similarly, Yu Nan regards himself as a “piece of gold that had been refined in a blazing fire” (ibid.: 266). Through the ritual of confession organized by the Communist Party, all three characters undergo a religious process of death and rebirth. Shen Rong’s novella “Snakes and Ladders” takes place in 1979 in the Foreign Language department of a provincial Academy of Social Sciences. Explaining the origins of his passionate attachment to the Communist Party, party branch Secretary Yang shares a vivid memory from the early 1950s when he was approached by a young female who was despondent because she could not gain Communist Party membership. He counselled her not to lose hope and to trust in the benevolent judgment of the party and effects of ideological rectification. Upon hearing his words, she was bathed in tears of gratitude. This was only possible because he was working for the Party. At that wondrous moment of her breakdown, his vision of the Party was suddenly suffused with an aura of something akin to sanctity. The Party was both sublime yet humble, magnificent yet approachable. She was warmth incarnate, possessed of the sternness of a strict father, yet brimming with motherly love. (Shen 1986: 136) 153 Downloaded from https://read.dukeupress.edu/public-culture/article-pdf/31/1/145/558978/0310145.pdf by CO COLLEGE user on 16 January 2019 Extracting Affect Public Culture It is important to note that this scene is a memory recalled to revitalize belief in the party’s legitimacy in a period of disbelief and exhaustion following the Cultural Revolution (Lee and Yang 2007). During the Cultural Revolution, the Communist Party’s affective sovereignty was redistributed and dispersed to the people (Yang 2017b).1 Public confessions became spontaneous mass events that exceeded the control of the party and targeted its cadres. People were forced to confess, publically humiliated, beaten, and killed on the thinnest of pretexts. Despite the staged and spectacular quality of confessions during the Cultural Revolution, they do not fit the definition of show trials. They also failed to produce the redemptive moment desired by previous campaigns. In the words of Lowell Dittmer, “In this context, an institution originally designed to achieve redemption and renewed unity within a closed circle of elites resulted in non-redemptive purges and rampant factionalism in society” (1998: 272). As Geremie Barmé (1990) argues, the violence of the Cultural Revolution resulted in a “desire to confess” and felt “need for repentance” among intellectuals during the 1980s to come to terms with their own silence, complicity, and ambivalence. Since Mao’s death, the Communist Party has worked diligently to neutralize Mao’s legacy and remove the people from the scene of politics. China’s rituals of confession have been reformatted to accommodate the shift from revolution and class struggle to economic construction and social harmony. In the Xi era, confessions are no longer a ritual of redemption through which a cadre reforms thoughts inherited from the old society; they are a ritual of restoration through which the Communist Party regenerates itself. The drama of the confession is intended to separate the errant cadre from the party, repair the party’s image, and shore up the fragile foundation of its moral legitimacy. In the Communist Party’s own formulation, the anticorruption campaign is designed to separate the “necrotic flesh” and “dead cells” (huaisi xibao) from the healthy tissue of the “party organism” (dang jiti) (Sorace 2017a). Party leaders must be willing to “sacrifice the local [necrotic tissue] and protect the whole [organism]” (xisheng jubu, zhaogu quanbu) (Si 2014). In 2014, Xi Jinping argued that the party needed to “scrape the bone of poison” (guagu liaodu) and resemble the “warrior who severed his [poisoned] wrist” (zhuangshi duanwan) for it to survive (ibid.). These phrases originate from classic stories in which a warrior severs a 1. The Cultural Revolution can be interestingly compared to Eric Santner’s (2011) argument that democratization in Europe dispersed the king’s “royal remains” throughout the agitated flesh of the people. 154 Downloaded from https://read.dukeupress.edu/public-culture/article-pdf/31/1/145/558978/0310145.pdf by CO COLLEGE user on 16 January 2019 limb to prevent poison from spreading throughout his entire body. The confessions define cadres as mutated, necrotic cells that needed to be excised for the party to complete its “self-purification, improvement, and renovation” (ziwo jinghua ziwo gexin) (Li 2017). Cadre confessions are not moribund rituals but are meant to “revitalize the party” (zengjia huoli), as a close friend from Beijing described it during a recent conversation. I suggest that this revitalization is derived from the extraction of affective surplus generated during the ritual of confession. Televised confessions in the Xi are a ritual of orthodoxy in an age of rampant cynicism. I agree with Timothy Cheek’s provocative argument that the Xi era is closer to Liu Shaoqi’s doctrine of submission to centralized authority than it is to Mao’s flirtations with anarchy and rebellion (Cheek forthcoming; Liu 1939). To this point, I would add that Xi era confessions are better understood as an elaboration of the Chinese phrase “to humbly apologize by bringing a bramble to ask for punishment” (fujing qingzui) from the Warring States period (years 475 – 221 BCE) than as a return to Maoism. The line comes from Sima Qian’s Records of the Grand Historian section on shame and the cultivation of virtue (Sima 1993). I suggest that the parable provides insight into the confessional logic of the Xi era. In the kingdom of Zhao, General Lian Po was jealous that the wise counselor Lin Xiangru obtained a higher official position. Despite Lian Po’s animosity, Lin Xiangru deferred to him in order to maintain the unity of the kingdom and defend against the threat of the more powerful kingdom of Qin. When Lian Po learns of Lin Xiangru’s patriotism, he is overwhelmed with shame for nearly ruining the country as a result of his own pride. Bare-chested, he takes a bramble to Lin Xiangru, kneels down, confesses his arrogance, and asks to be beaten in forgiveness. In a children’s cartoon version of the story found on YouTube, the narrator summarizes the moral lesson of how general Lian Po “admits his mistakes and reforms himself, letting go of selfish and self-serving behavior, and knowing shame, then team work and cooperation will be achieved, with the country and the world being at peace.”2 The posture of offering a bramble in an act of contrition suggests a model of political subjectivity based on discipline, orthodoxy, and submission to party rule. Xi Jinping perceives his mission as saving the party from internal decay and has referred to the fight against corruption as a “life and death struggle.” For Xi, cadre corruption “severely damages the party’s image” (yanzhong baihuai dang de xianxiang) and “swallows the people’s trust in the party” (tunshi renmin dui dang de xinxin) (Always on the Way). These claims should not be dismissed as hyper2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJze2d5vLYU&t=22s (accessed November 11, 2017). 155 Downloaded from https://read.dukeupress.edu/public-culture/article-pdf/31/1/145/558978/0310145.pdf by CO COLLEGE user on 16 January 2019 Extracting Affect Public Culture bolic party-speak. They are based on fundamental, operational precepts about the Communist Party’s political and moral legitimacy in the context of China’s oneparty system. Without the mandate provided by periodic elections, the Communist Party’s legitimacy is derived from its moral superiority and benevolence, defense of national and territorial sovereignty, and vanguard status (Shue 2004). Any event, discourse, or person that calls these pillars into question shakes the party’s discursive foundation of legitimacy (Sorace 2017). When ordinary people interact with the Communist Party, it is through their everyday encounters with party cadres. For this reason, cadre behavior shapes people’s perceptions of the Communist Party’s image through which its legitimacy is reaffirmed or challenged. As many scholars have argued before, the Communist Party’s central leadership protects its moral authority by blaming local agents during a crisis. It is not the policies that are bad but the local agents who implement them. Consequently, people’s anger at abusive local officials deflects criticism from and preserves a modicum of trust and belief in the moral integrity and legitimacy of the center (Li 2004). Confessions cauterize corruption as a localized individual disease rather than as a systemic threat. Contrary to popular opinion, Xi is not returning to the past but is attempting to tighten the rusty and loosened screws of the party and state machinery that he inherited. Unlike the Mao era, the Chinese masses are not asked to play a direct role in the tribunal of justice but are relegated to the position of passive spectators of the televised spectacles and Internet video clips. In reform-era China, justice is a party-controlled affair, not a participatory one. The boundaries between party state and society are strictly regulated and policed. The purpose of the televised confessions in the Xi era is to repair the party’s image, not to empower the masses. Televised Confessions Since late 2016, state-run China Central Television (CCTV) and the Communist Party’s internal disciplinary apparatus known as the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) have coproduced two documentary series on the biographical details and confessions of corrupt cadres. The first series Always on the Way (yongyuan zai lushang) focuses on corrupt officials, whereas the second series To Forge Iron, One Must Be Strong (datie hai xu zishen ying) is specifically devoted to corrupt officials within the disciplinary apparatus.3 In these documen3. In terms of audience reception, there has been a predictable reaction of public praise on Chinese websites, accompanied by varying degrees of support, informal cynicism, or indifference in private. On the Chinese website, Douban, Always on the Way obtained 1,355 uncensored posts 156 Downloaded from https://read.dukeupress.edu/public-culture/article-pdf/31/1/145/558978/0310145.pdf by CO COLLEGE user on 16 January 2019 taries, corrupt Communist Party cadres are paraded before the camera with their heads bowed in shame before they apologize to the party and the people for their mistakes and failures. In addition, the CCDI created a website called “Confession and Analysis” (chanhui yu poxi) for the publication and analysis of confessions of corrupt cadres. In this essay, I decided to only focus on cadre confessions and not confessions of regime critics, such as human rights lawyers, journalists, and labor activists. This decision is grounded in the fact that they belong to separate conceptual universes and require different rituals of confession. From the party’s perspective, corrupt cadres are internal problems that are to be handled first through the party’s disciplinary apparatus and later through the legal system. By contrast, activists are framed in official discourse as external threats who are instruments of foreign hostile forces. Corrupt cadres are expected to display contrition and remorse for their errant behaviors; activists are forced to renounce what they have fought and worked for their entire lives. These different categories of confession are an updated application of Mao’s famous distinction between methods for handling “contradictions among the people” and for handling “contradictions between the people and their enemies” (Mao 1957; Trevaskes 2016). I focus solely on the confessions of cadres for the main reason that their confessions provide a glimpse into the black-box of how the party governs itself and with an average rating of 8.0. According to one user, “very positive and informative. After this, it is even clearer, how can one argue with the disciplinary commission?” (zhengnengliang, ye zhang zishi le, yihou geng qingchu zenme he weibanju jiaoqing [Beijing dialect for being argumentative and unreasonable]? On the website, the documentary typically receives resounding plaudits, such as the declaration: “Why do I like to watch people confessing in front of the camera lens? . . . I support the central government’s actions, and I hope that the anti-corruption line can continue” (weishenme wo hui xihuan kan bieren zai jingtou qian chanhui . . . zhichi zhongyang de xingdong, xiwang fanfu zhi lu neng yizhi zou xiaqu). A bit more cynically, another user comments “the highest ranks are still untouchable” (shangmian de haishi mobudao). Conversely, on the YouTube link, the comment section appears to have been deleted, although it is still possible to post. As Wedeen (2015 [1999]) has argued, even if discursive-symbolic rituals are not believed in, they are effective mechanisms of power, which induce compliance among the public. Many of my friends in China who were indifferent, or disdainful of such propaganda-heavy documentaries, avidly watched the 55-episode Chinese drama series In the Name of the People (renmin de mingyi), which aired on Hunan Television between March and April 2017. Although I admittedly watched only the first dozen or so, I was also enthralled by the plot of an idealistic prosecutor’s attempt to uncover networks of corruption that implicate even his own bosses. The discursive themes of In the Name of the People are nearly identical to those of the documentaries, but conveyed in a much more palatable aesthetic. The CCP’s “soft power” propaganda in this drama series is a fascinating example of reverse-engineering what Mao once famously referred to as “sugar-coated bullets” (tangyi paodan) of Western entertainment. 157 Downloaded from https://read.dukeupress.edu/public-culture/article-pdf/31/1/145/558978/0310145.pdf by CO COLLEGE user on 16 January 2019 Extracting Affect Public Culture exerts control over the affective lives of its cadres (Mertha 2017). The party cadre (dang de ganbu) is a special category of political subject in China’s Leninist partystate that is not to be confused with a generic Weberian bureaucrat or professional politician (Sorace 2016). In the remainder of this essay, I provide a discursive analysis of cadre confessions as a genre that stage three affective scenes of ingratitude, desire, and shame. Biting the Hand That Feeds In their confessions, cadres must declare their gratitude to the Communist Party. They frequently do this by begging forgiveness for their “ingratitude” (wang’en fuyi). The phrase’s individual characters are forgetting (wang) benevolence (en) and responsibility (fu) for justice (yi) (this deeper register of meaning was brought to my attention by Delia Lin, pers. comm., March 26, 2017). According to the Pleco dictionary, the phrase means “to kick a benefactor in the teeth.” In the confessional context, the benefactor (being kicked in the teeth) is the Communist Party that believed, invested in, and cultivated the character of the cadre who decided to sacrifice the party’s general (gong) interest for individual (si) desire and greed. Behind the party stands “the people” (renmin) who “entrust” (weituo) the party — and by extension the cadre — to govern on behalf of their interests. At stake in the dialectic of corruption and confession is a dramatic staging of popular sovereignty and the Communist Party’s mandate to govern. Party cadres are not professional Weberian bureaucrats who go home after work but vessels of party legitimacy (Sorace 2016). To reaffirm the primacy of the organization and the public welfare over individual interest, cadres must atone for their ingratitude. To supplicate their benefactors, cadres will “ask for forgiveness” (dui bu qi) from the “Party” (dang) for betraying its trust, the “people” for disappointing their expectations, and their “family” (jiaren) for bringing them shame and humiliation. These apologies emphasize how the cadre (like all of us) is dependent on structures that support his or her individual life. One of the purposes of confession, as I argue, is to reveal the abjection and shame of individual life apart from the structures which support it. Although apologizing to the party may seem sycophantic, it makes perfect sense from within the logic of the Leninist organization, in which the party takes precedence over the individual. In a profound sense, the individual cadre’s life belongs to the party. In the words of Bai Enpei, former party secretary of Yunnan Province (2001 – 11): “I repent! The Communist Party cultivated a provincial level party secretary and how did I become like this?” (Always on the Way 2016). 158 Downloaded from https://read.dukeupress.edu/public-culture/article-pdf/31/1/145/558978/0310145.pdf by CO COLLEGE user on 16 January 2019 To emphasize the cadre’s dependence on the party, most confessions, or the official commentary accompanying them, include a biographical account linking the cadre’s successful career trajectory and personal honor to their admission to the party. Particularly salient examples are cadres born into poverty. Take for example Liu Tienan, one of Xi Jinping’s first captured “tigers” who served as the Director of the National Energy Administration (2011 – 13) and the Deputy Director of the National Development and Reform Commission (2008 – 11) as well as numerous other high-ranking posts. Liu Tienan’s account of his rise and fall from power begins from a “childhood of poverty” during which he dreamt of a better life (Shi et al. 2014). Accompanying media commentary describe Liu as “an ordinary steel worker who entered the Party” (ibid.). This life-transforming event provided him with the opportunity to work diligently and reach the upper echelons of power. “If compared with my family, I hurt the [Party] organization even more” given that “the Party raised me for so many years, I should be grateful” but instead “I made this kind of mistake and now [I must] apologize to both my country and family” (ibid.; also see Dong 2014). Liu Tienan’s haunting closing statement interrogates the depths of his personal transformation: “Is this me? How did I end up here? Each morning I wake up and ask myself: Where am I? How did I fall from grace into this abject state?” (ibid.). In Always on the Way, former Executive Vice Mayor of Kunming and member of the Yunnan Provincial Standing Committee Li Xi recalls growing up in poverty and “bearing many hardships” until he was admitted into party. “Under the [party] organization’s care” (zuzhi de guanxin xia), Li ascended the bureaucratic hierarchy. In a visceral metaphor, he describes his life as suffused with the benevolence of the party. “Each stage of my career was coagulated with the Party’s blood, sweat, and expectations” (Confessions and Analysis 2016). According to his description, Li’s own life would be nothing without the party. Li goes a step further and thanks the party for guiding China’s “reform and opening” that allowed millions, like him, to escape from poverty. Without the party and its benevolent governance, Li “would just be an ordinary villager” mired in poverty. In his own self-lacerating words, Li accuses himself of the worst kind of intimate and national “betrayal” (beipan) (ibid.). In this “ventriloquism of power” (Kim 2013: 24), the Communist Party is asserting itself as the indispensable foundation of life in China. It is not only cadres who are expected to be grateful; survivors of the 2008 Sichuan earthquake are expected to display gratitude for the party’s benevolent reconstruction (Sorace 2017); Tibetans are expected to thank the party for providing them with the amenities of modernity (Yeh 2013); and all Chinese should have in their heart the 159 Downloaded from https://read.dukeupress.edu/public-culture/article-pdf/31/1/145/558978/0310145.pdf by CO COLLEGE user on 16 January 2019 Extracting Affect Public Culture knowledge that “without the Communist Party, there would be no new China” (meiyou gongchandang, meiyou xin zhongguo). When the Dam Breaks The main purpose of the confessional genre is to reassuringly answer the potentially destabilizing question: why do Communist Party cadres become corrupt? The model answer is crystallized in the words of Li Chuncheng, former Mayor and Communist Party Secretary of Chengdu (2001 – 11) and Deputy Party Secretary of Sichuan Province (2011 – 12). In his tearful confession, Li states: “the mistake is entirely mine” (cuo zai wo zheli) (Always on the Way). The literal meaning of Li’s phrase in Chinese is that the “mistake is located in me.” What this spatialization reveals is how the confession individualizes, localizes, and distributes blame for the corruption and abuses of power ingrained in the political system. Political contradictions and structural corruption are reduced to individual moral failures and personal mistakes. To use another popular term in party discourse, a corrupt cadre is like a “horse that brings trouble to its herd” (haimazhiqun) and needs to be removed from the group (the few “rotten” apples spoil the bunch saying in English). The cadre must be sacrificed to preserve the moral integrity and legitimacy of the political system. In the Xi era, cadre confessions are personalized accounts of individual “degeneration” (duoluo). The confession provides a carefully scripted and simplified moral tale of a cadre’s fall from an upstanding agent of the party to a person shrouded in shame. After the cadre expresses gratitude for the opportunities provided by the party, he or she will typically recall a feeling of trepidation before the temptation to indulge in corruption. Usually, the temptation is said to arise from a deep-seated envy of the lifestyle, comfort, and wealth of surrounding business people. Lacking firm ideological conviction, the cadre submits to desire, accepts the first bribe, and loses his or her moral compass. The documentaries relay montages of vivid images of illicit cash, homes, and objects of desire, such as jade. After crossing the threshold of the first bribe, the cadre is emboldened to act on desire, and each subsequent act of corruption becomes easier to rationalize. According to the party’s epistemological framework, the root cause of corruption is due to problems in a cadre’s thinking process, which condition his or her behavior and actions. For this reason, confessions are littered with subjective indictments which explain corruption as a product of the cadre’s “mistaken value system” (cuowu de jiazhiguan), “selfish motives” (sixin), “emotional imbalance” (xinli shiheng), “desire” (yuwang), “greed” (tanyu), and so on. In this account, the 160 Downloaded from https://read.dukeupress.edu/public-culture/article-pdf/31/1/145/558978/0310145.pdf by CO COLLEGE user on 16 January 2019 origin of corruption is not the objective existence of temptation but how a cadre subjectively relates to it. Xi Jinping’s governance strategy is to create new norms of political life, instill in CCP cadres “reverence” (jingwei) for political power, and maintain organizational discipline by cultivating an environment of moral obligation and patriotic duty (Xi 2008). Xi Jinping’s strategy of promoting ethical cultivation and self-governance is supported by an underlying punitive dimension. The party’s internal disciplinary apparatus has been strengthened, retooled, and deployed to catch both “tigers” (high-ranking leaders) and “flies” (low-level officials) who are suspected of abusing their power for personal gain (ChinaFile 2016; Wedeman 2014). The problem with this strategy is that the threat of punishment is not an effective deterrent if cadres do not believe they will be caught. Instead, many party cadres act with impunity as if the law and party’s disciplinary regulations do not apply to them. The confessions of cadres who have been caught serve as examples that ideologically supplement the law. A ubiquitous trope in the confessions is the acknowledgement of “wishful thinking” (jiaoxing xinli) that if a cadre is powerful and careful enough, he or she will not be caught. Typically, this admission is followed by examples of selfdeception and consolation through which the cadre rationalized corruption. In many cases, a cadre will attempt to maintain “clean hands” and allow family members to profit from his or her power. Televised confessions are reminders that no one can outsmart, maneuver, or hide from the party’s disciplinary apparatus. To affirm the inescapability of the law, in their confessions, corrupt cadres quote Laozi’s saying: “heaven’s net has wide meshes but nothing escapes it” (tian wang hui hui, shu er bu lou). There is no refuge in “wishful thinking” and soothing words — sooner or later, you will be caught. In a few cases, cadres even described a feeling of relief at finally being captured. They recount lives of constant anxiety, and sleepless nights, anticipating the day of their inevitable capture. In prison, cadres no longer have to worry about that fateful moment. Whether cadres engage in “wishful thinking” or dread the day of reckoning, the commonality is that their thinking has been corrupted by desire. Among the most common tropes in cadre confessions is the comparison of ideology (yishixingtai) to a dam or embankment (diba). Each stray thought, negligent act, selfish temptation, and indiscretion pokes a small hole in the dam and chips away at its integrity. Inevitably, the dam “collapses” (tanta, bengkui and kuiba are frequently used). From this point on, the cadre is no longer in control of his life. In their confessions, cadres describe their lives after the first bribe as “sliding into an abyss” 161 Downloaded from https://read.dukeupress.edu/public-culture/article-pdf/31/1/145/558978/0310145.pdf by CO COLLEGE user on 16 January 2019 Extracting Affect Public Culture (huaxiang shenyuan) from which there is no return. They have become ghosts of their desire [in Chinese, the character gui — ghost — when used as a suffix signifies addiction]. Official commentary on the corruption cases describe “desire” as “a bottomless pit” (yuwang shi yi ge wudi dong) and “greed” as an “uncontrollable poisonous weed” (tanyu de ducao jiu hui fengkuang de shengzhang) (Always on the Way 2016). Without ideological conviction and self-control, cadres lose their humanity. In the words of disgraced cadre Bai Enpei, “I crossed a line beyond which I can no longer be a person” (tupo le zuoren de dixian) (ibid.). According to Gloria Davies, the term zuo ren from the previous sentence, literally translated as “working at being human,” is a deceptively simple phrase that “signifies ‘decency’ as both a personal attribute and self-mastery through attainment of the highest standards of ethical and social conduct” (Davies 2010: 61). There are stark religious overtones of straying from the path, or dao, which is ultimately the party-line. Nowhere to Show One’s Face At the fulcrum of the confessional drama is the cadre’s remorseful body. In front of the camera, the cadre no longer appears powerful but is reduced to an abject state of humiliation (Cook 2016). The cadre’s abject physical appearance and remorseful tears display what Foucault (2014) called an “expressive, theatrical truth” of sovereign power. To emphasize the theatrical aspect of the ritual, Foucault quotes fourth-century theologian Saint Ambrose: “They confess through their groaning, they confess with their tears, they confess by speaking, freely — without being under constraint” (ibid.: 124). These performances are not gratuitous, ornaments of state power but fundamental to its operations (Euben 2017). The cadres’ bowed heads, shaking hands, and tearful gazes are manifestations of the Communist Party’s affective sovereignty. Through the ritual of confession, the party separates and expels the abject cadre from itself. Under the guiding principle that the Communist Party represents the interests of the people in all matters, expulsion from the Communist Party is synonymous with excommunication from “the people” (renmin). When the case of corruption is severe, cadres will be expelled from the party (kaichuchu dang), permanently stripped of political rights (duoqu zhengzhi quanli zhongshen), and have their personal assets confiscated (moshou geren quanbu caichan). Banished from the party’s glory, they appear as spectral remnants of their former powerful selves. They are now “bare life” occupying a liminal space outside of the sovereign domain (Agamben 1998). 162 Downloaded from https://read.dukeupress.edu/public-culture/article-pdf/31/1/145/558978/0310145.pdf by CO COLLEGE user on 16 January 2019 Cadres descent into “bare life” can explain why they ask for forgiveness from the party. Forgiveness would not necessarily mean lighter sentencing, but rather absolution from the feeling of shame and rehabilitation of personal dignity and character. As Sue Trevaskes (2017) points out, shame does not accompany punishment but is a form of punishment on its own. Shame as a mode of punishment is the inability to show one’s face in society. Instead of being able to show one’s face, which implies dignity, what is exposed is the monstrosity of one’s shame. Generally, almost all confessions include the phrase “without a place to show one’s face” (wudi zirong). The expression means to feel shame defined as an experience of placelessness and social exile. In Episode Four of Always on the Way, former Communist Party Secretary of Qinghai, Gansu, and Jiangxi Provinces, Su Rong laments: “Even if they released me now, I would be unable to go out. How would I face my acquaintances? My classmates? Especially older [Party] leaders? I can’t meet with them. I have no face to present (wo mei lian qu jianmian).” In his account, being expelled from the Communist Party is coterminous with being expelled from society. To be able to show his face again would require a process of political and personal rehabilitation that exceeds the jurisdiction of the legal system (such affective sovereignty belongs to the party and it alone). Shame is the culmination of a cadre’s process of “degeneration” (duoluo) and “deterioration” (tuibian). From participating in the glory and honor of being a Communist Party cadre, fallen cadres are reduced to a state of abjection in which they are no longer recognizable as human (bu zuo ren). In his segment of Always on the Way, the former boss of the State-Owned Enterprise (SOE) Guangdong Power Grid, Wu Zhouchun explains that “there is no place where I can show my face” (wudi zirong) because “[I have] degenerated into a person with ulcers on my head and festering boils on the soles of my feet” (touding chuang, jiaoxia liunong) who is “rotten and fetid” (fuchou). Shame has transformed him into an abject creature, the sight and smell of which is unbearable and repulsive to others. From this perspective, shame is not an abstract moral concept, but an embodied public affect that prohibits entry into society. Confessions are not disembodied texts. Cadres may not always describe themselves as having leprous bodies, but they must physically display their shame and contrition in a variety of manners. Words are validated in the bodies that speak them. As Foucault argued concerning penitence, the importance of the physical, the necessity of seeing (on the part of the confessor) the one who was confessing, also had [. . .] another justification: it should also allow the confessor to decipher through the attitude of the 163 Downloaded from https://read.dukeupress.edu/public-culture/article-pdf/31/1/145/558978/0310145.pdf by CO COLLEGE user on 16 January 2019 Extracting Affect Public Culture one who was confessing, what eventually he might have been hiding or what he was ashamed of telling; it allowed the confessor also to see if he was truly ashamed, if he felt contrition, or if he was indifferent to his sins or even happy to have committed them. (2014: 190) The ritual of confession requires an affective display of shame and contrition in order to function. Sovereign power and the rule of law are recognized and validated in the tears and trembling of the subject whose behavior called them into question. To continue with Foucault’s religious example, if a sinner was indifferent to the fact that he or she sinned and ignored the priest’s threats and blandishments, the Church’s power would evaporate. According to an article in the People’s Daily, “corrupt cadres frequently repeat the words ‘I’m sorry’ [dui bu qi] [and] when they apologize, they become emotionally agitated and shed tears” (Dong 2014). In the first episode of Always on the Way, Li Chuncheng loses composure and bursts into tears in the middle of the confession. As he discusses how his mistakes have destroyed his life, he removes his glasses and holds his head in his hands, unable to suppress the tears. Sobbing, he apologizes to the party, the people, and other cadres who followed him at their own peril. This may be a scripted performance but it is one bathed in the poignant and agonizing tears of someone who realizes that their entire life has been reduced to nothing. The physical appearance, attitude, and emotional reactions of the cadres are meticulously described in both domestic and international media reports. During his confession from Beijing’s maximum-security prison on February 2015, former Mayor of Nanjing Ji Jianye is reported “to break down as he is pressed to discuss his alleged crimes. He reaches into his left pocket and produces a crumpled tissue with which he wipes his eyes” (Phillips 2015). His tears are a recognition of his own guilt and affirmation of the justice of the party’s punishment. It is not only the tears but the entire body that can be an inscriptive surface of shame and party justice. In the confession of Li Xi, former Executive Vice Mayor of Kunming (2008 – 14) and member of Yunnan Provincial Standing Committee, he details physical symptoms resulting from his shame, such as insomnia and anxiety: “If I think about my wife and son’s current situation and future living conditions, my heart is desolate, and I am wracked with excruciating pain. Countless tears fall from my eyes, like they were falling from paradise into hell” (Confession and Analysis 2016). Although consciousness is prone to self-deception, the body is a repository of the knowledge of shame and its devastating effects. Part of the iconography of shame is the appearance of cadres whose formerly 164 Downloaded from https://read.dukeupress.edu/public-culture/article-pdf/31/1/145/558978/0310145.pdf by CO COLLEGE user on 16 January 2019 dark hair has gone white (this phenomenon is not limited to cadres but also includes human rights lawyer Pu Zhiqiang and labor activist Zeng Feiyang among others). In Part One of the documentary To Forge Iron, One Must Be Strong, Wei Jian, former Director of the No. 4 office under the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, appeared with hair that “turned white overnight” since his arrest. Although one’s hair turning white is typically associated with a traumatic experience, it is also a source of shame for Communist Party leaders who uniformly have black hair (although it is often dyed). When former Secretary of the Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission of the Communist Party (2007 – 12) and Politburo Standing Committee member Zhou Yongkang appeared on trial in 2015 with white hair, his appearance provoked an outpouring of commentary on both official and social media in China. According to a Chinese netizen, “Such big changes — he was once the powerful Politburo Standing Committee member and now he is all white hair and in such a terrible state! So the law applies to everybody!” (BBC 2015). Another Chinese netizen joked that he had been “stripped of his right to dye his hair” (ibid.). For the Communist Party leader, white hair is a mark of shame and loss of power. The abject body of the fallen cadre is the result of ideological failure — a submission to desire rather than discipline. A cadre’s moral degradation and transformation is accompanied by a degeneration of physical appearance. The party exerts its power and restores its moral legitimacy through the excommunication and exposure of the corrupted body of the cadre. Concluding Remarks Our understanding of how power works through public confessions is enriched by focusing on China, for the simple reason that the Chinese Communist Party has constructed an elaborate machinery for the extraction of affect. Throughout its history, the CCP has continuously modified its rituals of confession to adapt to political exigencies. The Mao era’s ambition of creating a new political subject required a confession of recantation and redemptive transformation. In stark contrast, the Xi era’s goal of restoring the Communist Party’s moral legitimacy, organizational discipline, and ideological loyalty requires spectacles of shame and abjection. Confessions are not only a tool of authoritarian regimes. The ritual of confession can be found in various guises in authoritarian and democratic regimes, religious and secular variants, intimate gatherings and mass publics, mundane scenes and spectacular displays. Confessions are conduits through which discourses of 165 Downloaded from https://read.dukeupress.edu/public-culture/article-pdf/31/1/145/558978/0310145.pdf by CO COLLEGE user on 16 January 2019 Extracting Affect Public Culture legitimation get under the skin. They are apologies for our deficiency in relation to the unbearable weight of expectations. Even when confessions are scripted, they tap into a deeper affective truth of subjectivity, glimpsed in Freud’s account of the melancholic: When in his heightened self-criticism he describes himself as petty, egoistic, dishonest, lacking in independence, one whose sole aim has been to hide the weaknesses of his own nature, it may be, so far as we know, that he has come pretty near to understanding himself; we only wonder why a man has to be ill before he can be accessible to a truth of this kind. (1917: 246) Without the affective surplus that the subject gives of herself in confession, power has nothing to grasp. In China, confession is often described as “handing over the heart” (jiao xin) — a term that vividly captures the mechanism of affective sovereignty. References Abrahamian, Ervand. 1999. Tortured Confessions: Prisons and Public Recantations in Modern Iran. Berkeley: University of California Press. Agamben, Giorgio. 1998. Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life. 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Zhuang Yan. 2016. “Beijing fengrui lüsuo lüshi wangyu qubao hou shoufang: ‘wulun jingwai ban shenme jiang dou bu jieshou’ ” (Post-Bail Interview with Beijing Fengrui Law Firm Lawyer Wang Yu: ‘Regardless of Whatever Foreign Award [I am given], I Will Not Accept.’ ” Pengpai (The Paper). August 1. http://m.thepaper.cn/newsDetail_forward_1507039. Christian Sorace is an assistant professor of political science at Colorado College. He is the author of Shaken Authority: China’s Communist Party and the 2008 Sichuan Earthquake (2017). He is also the coeditor of a forthcoming volume titled Afterlives of Chinese Communism. His articles have appeared in Critical Inquiry, Comparative Politics, The China Journal, and The China Quarterly, among other journals. His current research focuses on urbanization within the Mongolian steppe. 171 Downloaded from https://read.dukeupress.edu/public-culture/article-pdf/31/1/145/558978/0310145.pdf by CO COLLEGE user on 16 January 2019 Extracting Affect