Gan Yang on Culture and Capitalism

In 2024, Gan Yang published The Path Back to Culture, a collection of more than 30 articles written between 1984 and 2019.  The book is divided into three parts: “Cultural China and Rural China,” “The Western Cultural Left and Global Culture,” and “The Path Back to a Civilizational State.”  Matthew Dean and I have decided to work our way through the volume, translating articles from each of the three parts, perhaps working our way toward a book-length English-language translation of Gan’s work, which could be an important contribution to work on contemporary Chinese intellectuals.  Matt, a graduate student in philosophy at Tulane University, kicks off the project with this translation of the 2017 interview which introduces Gan’s book.
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In a week or two, I will add a translation of Gan’s lengthy interview with Zha Jianying in her prize-winning book, The 1980s.  The interview is rich in detail on Gan’s personal and intellectual life and makes for lively reading.