Christian Sorace
Biographic Data
| ID | 295508 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Christian Sorace |
| GIVEN NAMES | Christian |
| FAMILY NAME | Sorace |
| SIGNATURE | SORACE C |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Cambridge |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-7644-1481 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 32 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 71 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 31 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2010 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Steppe Transitions
Mongolia’s diverse ecology was the site of revolutionary transformations in the twentieth century, when the principal source of wealth—the livestock herd—was sequentially the basis of feudal class, collective resource and a privatized asset. The socialist making of a nation-state and its capitalist unmaking—a materialist account
One and All: A Conversation with Pang Laikwan
Life First: Pandemic Biopolitics in China
China’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic could be described as a lesson directly from the pages of Foucault. For nearly three years, China’s vast state apparatus and society were mobilized around the goal of protecting life until November 2022, when people took to the streets calling for an end to lockdowns. In the West, the A4 protests, as they came to be called, are solidifying in public memory as a cautionary tale for Western governments who …
Moral Economic Transitions in the Mongolian Borderlands: A Proportional Share
Repetitions of history
Cultural Revolution and Revolutionary Culture: A Conversation with Alessandro Russo
Ghosts of Urban Past, Present, and Future in Ulaanbaatar
Ger districts, informal neighborhoods where residents live in traditional yurts, continue to house much of the Mongolian capital’s population. Government redevelopment plans, in an echo of socialist-era urbanization, call for moving inhabitants to new apartment buildings. The ger districts are often blamed for causing air pollution, poverty, and crime. But many residents are skeptical of the “apartmentalization” scheme and prefer to stay in the g…
Immunity beyond Spheres
This essay is a critical exploration of Peter Sloterdijk's philosophy of spherology. It asks whether we can live apart from protective spheres, find new forms of being-in-common, and discover new forms of immunity in the wreckage of sphere-based existence. It argues that the relationality associated with the placenta—or afterbirth—is a source of immunity distinctive from the politics of birth, identity, and belonging. To show this, it turns to th…
The Nomadic Leviathan: A Critique of the Sinocentric Paradigm, written by Lhamsüren Munkh-Erdene
Biopolitical Binaries (or How Not to Read the Chinese Protests)
Newborn Socialist Things: A Conversation with Laurence Coderre
The Chinese Communist Party's Nervous System: Affective Governance from Mao to Xi
In its one hundred years of existence, the Communist Party of China has experimented with how to connect its narratives of legitimacy to people's affects. In this essay, I trace the conceptualization of gratitude, from its repudiation in the Mao era as a vestige of feudalism and imperialism to its return in the reform era as a re-verticalization of Party sovereignty. The paper addresses four examples of gratitude work: Politburo Standing Committe…
Ideological Conversion: Mongolia's Transition from Socialism to Postsocialism
After the collapse of socialism in Mongolia, democracy promised life after ideology. This article argues that what disappeared during the democratic transition was not ideology but a conceptualization of ideology as an explicit object, field of intervention, and responsibility. By analyzing the urban form as an invention of ideology, it is possible to locate ideology in material artifacts, cinematic representations, and the cultivation of embodie…
Mobility and Displacement: Nomadism, identity and postsocialist narratives in Mongolia, written by Orhon Myadar
Gratitude: The Ideology of Sovereignty in Crisis
Urban Horror: A Conversation with Erin Y. Huang
Undoing Lenin: On the Recent Changes to China’s Ethnic Policy
Poetry after the Future
Books by Our Readers
An abstract is not available for this content. As you have access to this content, full HTML content is provided on this page. A PDF of this content is also available in through the ‘Save PDF’ action button
Metrics of Exceptionality, Simulated Intimacy
This essay defines Maoism as an experiment in intimate governance and an attempt—albeit a failed one—to dismantle the divide between political leaders and ordinary people. The Communist Party’s claim to intimacy with the people needs to be constantly reenacted in the relationship between party cadres and ordinary citizens––a cadre’s gestures, habits, and attitudes are magnified and scrutinized under the lens of party legitimacy. The special privi…
Political Enchantments: Aesthetic Practices and the Chinese State
The special issue’s editors introduce the rationale for the following articles, all of which take up aspects of the relations among the production of artworks, the behavior of audiences, and the state’s interest in assembling, regulating, and transforming what it knows as its people through the responses to art
Afterlives of Chinese Communism: Political Concepts from Mao to Xi
Afterlives of Chinese Communism comprises essays from over fifty world- renowned scholars in the China field, from various disciplines and continents. It provides an indispensable guide for understanding how the Mao era continues to shape Chinese politics today. Each chapter discusses a concept or practice from the Mao period, what it attempted to do, and what has become of it since. The authors respond to the legacy of Maoism from numerous persp…
Extracting Affect
In this essay, I argue that the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) affective sovereignty results from its ability to adapt confessional practices to fit its governing needs at different moments in history. I analyze what recent televised confessions of party cadres reveal about China’s political order, its modes of legitimation, and its mechanisms of power. During the Mao era, confessions were intended as a form of self-transformation and redemption…
In the Name of the Working Class: Narratives of Labour Activism in Contemporary ChinaHolland Prize Winner
Since their appearance in the mid-1990s, Chinese labour NGOs have mostly focused on disseminating labour law and guiding labour disputes through official channels. In so doing, they have assisted the Chinese Communist Party in achieving its paramount goal of maintaining social stability. In line with this approach, activists in these organizations have traditionally framed their work in terms of "public interest" or "legality," both of which reso…
Shaken Authority: China's Communist Party and the 2008 Sichuan Earthquake
In Shaken Authority, Christian P. Sorace examines the political mechanisms at work in the aftermath of the 2008 Sichuan earthquake and the broader ideological energies that drove them. Sorace takes Communist Party ideas and discourse as central to how that organization formulates policies, defines legitimacy, and exerts its power. Sorace argues that the Communist Party has never abandoned its conviction that discourse can shape the world and the …
China's Phantom Urbanisation and the Pathology of Ghost Cities
This article examines the production of China's "ghost cities" and constant urban expansion to challenge the dominant conceptual narrative of rural-to-urban migration as the driver of urbanisation. It argues that behind China's "miraculous" urbanisation story is a powerful ideological commitment to urban growth as the "royal road" to modernity and assessment of political performance. Local governments have a wide-ranging "tool-kit" for pursuing u…
Extracting Affect
In this essay, I argue that the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) affective sovereignty results from its ability to adapt confessional practices to fit its governing needs at different moments in history. I analyze what recent televised confessions of party cadres reveal about China’s political order, its modes of legitimation, and its mechanisms of power. During the Mao era, confessions were intended as a form of self-transformation and redemption…
China's Last Communist: Ai Weiwei
Party Spirit Made Flesh: The Production of Legitimacy in the Aftermath of the 2008 Sichuan Earthquake
This article argues that the Party retains a tradition of seeking to revitalize its legitimacy through demonstrations of benevolence and glory. The post-2008 Sichuan earthquake provided just such an opportunity to mobilize the discourse of "Party spirit" and display the willingness of cadres to suffer and sacrifice themselves on behalf of the people. In addition to being grist for the propaganda mill, these norms and expectations were implemented…
The Communist Party's Miracle? The Alchemy of Turning Post-Disaster Reconstruction into Great Leap Development
Life First: Pandemic Biopolitics in China
China’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic could be described as a lesson directly from the pages of Foucault. For nearly three years, China’s vast state apparatus and society were mobilized around the goal of protecting life until November 2022, when people took to the streets calling for an end to lockdowns. In the West, the A4 protests, as they came to be called, are solidifying in public memory as a cautionary tale for Western governments who …
Ideological Conversion: Mongolia's Transition from Socialism to Postsocialism
After the collapse of socialism in Mongolia, democracy promised life after ideology. This article argues that what disappeared during the democratic transition was not ideology but a conceptualization of ideology as an explicit object, field of intervention, and responsibility. By analyzing the urban form as an invention of ideology, it is possible to locate ideology in material artifacts, cinematic representations, and the cultivation of embodie…
Recession and the Politics of Class and Production in China
The article begins by analyzing the historical evolution of “class ideology” in China, especially since 1978. Next, it turns to the concrete effects of the recent and ongoing recession on the Chinese working class. It finds that the crisis affected rural–urban migrants far more substantially than it did workers in the formal (mostly state-owned) urban sector. While this situation presents numerous challenges (for the central state, a crisis of le…
Saint Mao
Alain Badiou's political thought revives the revolutionary aspiration to create the “emergence of another humanity.”3 However, Badiou's project is not a nostalgic attachment to Leninism; it is a response to Leninism's failure and a call to experiment beyond the exhausted political forms of the twentieth century. In a recent lecture, “Is the Word Communism Forever Doomed,” Badiou argues that the model of the Leninist party-state is no longer a via…
Saint Mao
Alain Badiou's political thought revives the revolutionary aspiration to create the “emergence of another humanity.”3 However, Badiou's project is not a nostalgic attachment to Leninism; it is a response to Leninism's failure and a call to experiment beyond the exhausted political forms of the twentieth century. In a recent lecture, “Is the Word Communism Forever Doomed,” Badiou argues that the model of the Leninist party-state is no longer a via…
Recession and the Politics of Class and Production in China
The article begins by analyzing the historical evolution of “class ideology” in China, especially since 1978. Next, it turns to the concrete effects of the recent and ongoing recession on the Chinese working class. It finds that the crisis affected rural–urban migrants far more substantially than it did workers in the formal (mostly state-owned) urban sector. While this situation presents numerous challenges (for the central state, a crisis of le…
China's Vision for Developing Sichuan's Post-Earthquake Countryside: Turning Unruly Peasants into Grateful Urban Citizens
In the aftermath of the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake, government officials, scholars and outside observers eagerly hoped that the emergency relief and reconstruction process would bring about the emergence of civil society and increase grassroots democratic participation. Contrary to this optimistic assessment, this article contends that the local state used the opportunity of the disaster as an experimental laboratory to implement an array of alread…
China's Last Communist: Ai Weiwei
The Communist Party's Miracle? The Alchemy of Turning Post-Disaster Reconstruction into Great Leap Development
Party Spirit Made Flesh: The Production of Legitimacy in the Aftermath of the 2008 Sichuan Earthquake
This article argues that the Party retains a tradition of seeking to revitalize its legitimacy through demonstrations of benevolence and glory. The post-2008 Sichuan earthquake provided just such an opportunity to mobilize the discourse of "Party spirit" and display the willingness of cadres to suffer and sacrifice themselves on behalf of the people. In addition to being grist for the propaganda mill, these norms and expectations were implemented…
China's Phantom Urbanisation and the Pathology of Ghost Cities
This article examines the production of China's "ghost cities" and constant urban expansion to challenge the dominant conceptual narrative of rural-to-urban migration as the driver of urbanisation. It argues that behind China's "miraculous" urbanisation story is a powerful ideological commitment to urban growth as the "royal road" to modernity and assessment of political performance. Local governments have a wide-ranging "tool-kit" for pursuing u…
Shaken Authority: China's Communist Party and the 2008 Sichuan Earthquake
In Shaken Authority, Christian P. Sorace examines the political mechanisms at work in the aftermath of the 2008 Sichuan earthquake and the broader ideological energies that drove them. Sorace takes Communist Party ideas and discourse as central to how that organization formulates policies, defines legitimacy, and exerts its power. Sorace argues that the Communist Party has never abandoned its conviction that discourse can shape the world and the …
Afterlives of Chinese Communism: Political Concepts from Mao to Xi
Afterlives of Chinese Communism comprises essays from over fifty world- renowned scholars in the China field, from various disciplines and continents. It provides an indispensable guide for understanding how the Mao era continues to shape Chinese politics today. Each chapter discusses a concept or practice from the Mao period, what it attempted to do, and what has become of it since. The authors respond to the legacy of Maoism from numerous persp…
Extracting Affect
In this essay, I argue that the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) affective sovereignty results from its ability to adapt confessional practices to fit its governing needs at different moments in history. I analyze what recent televised confessions of party cadres reveal about China’s political order, its modes of legitimation, and its mechanisms of power. During the Mao era, confessions were intended as a form of self-transformation and redemption…
In the Name of the Working Class: Narratives of Labour Activism in Contemporary ChinaHolland Prize Winner
Since their appearance in the mid-1990s, Chinese labour NGOs have mostly focused on disseminating labour law and guiding labour disputes through official channels. In so doing, they have assisted the Chinese Communist Party in achieving its paramount goal of maintaining social stability. In line with this approach, activists in these organizations have traditionally framed their work in terms of "public interest" or "legality," both of which reso…
Gratitude: The Ideology of Sovereignty in Crisis
Urban Horror: A Conversation with Erin Y. Huang
Undoing Lenin: On the Recent Changes to China’s Ethnic Policy
Poetry after the Future
Books by Our Readers
An abstract is not available for this content. As you have access to this content, full HTML content is provided on this page. A PDF of this content is also available in through the ‘Save PDF’ action button
Metrics of Exceptionality, Simulated Intimacy
This essay defines Maoism as an experiment in intimate governance and an attempt—albeit a failed one—to dismantle the divide between political leaders and ordinary people. The Communist Party’s claim to intimacy with the people needs to be constantly reenacted in the relationship between party cadres and ordinary citizens––a cadre’s gestures, habits, and attitudes are magnified and scrutinized under the lens of party legitimacy. The special privi…
Political Enchantments: Aesthetic Practices and the Chinese State
The special issue’s editors introduce the rationale for the following articles, all of which take up aspects of the relations among the production of artworks, the behavior of audiences, and the state’s interest in assembling, regulating, and transforming what it knows as its people through the responses to art
The Chinese Communist Party's Nervous System: Affective Governance from Mao to Xi
In its one hundred years of existence, the Communist Party of China has experimented with how to connect its narratives of legitimacy to people's affects. In this essay, I trace the conceptualization of gratitude, from its repudiation in the Mao era as a vestige of feudalism and imperialism to its return in the reform era as a re-verticalization of Party sovereignty. The paper addresses four examples of gratitude work: Politburo Standing Committe…
Ideological Conversion: Mongolia's Transition from Socialism to Postsocialism
After the collapse of socialism in Mongolia, democracy promised life after ideology. This article argues that what disappeared during the democratic transition was not ideology but a conceptualization of ideology as an explicit object, field of intervention, and responsibility. By analyzing the urban form as an invention of ideology, it is possible to locate ideology in material artifacts, cinematic representations, and the cultivation of embodie…
Mobility and Displacement: Nomadism, identity and postsocialist narratives in Mongolia, written by Orhon Myadar
Biopolitical Binaries (or How Not to Read the Chinese Protests)
Newborn Socialist Things: A Conversation with Laurence Coderre
Cultural Revolution and Revolutionary Culture: A Conversation with Alessandro Russo
Ghosts of Urban Past, Present, and Future in Ulaanbaatar
Ger districts, informal neighborhoods where residents live in traditional yurts, continue to house much of the Mongolian capital’s population. Government redevelopment plans, in an echo of socialist-era urbanization, call for moving inhabitants to new apartment buildings. The ger districts are often blamed for causing air pollution, poverty, and crime. But many residents are skeptical of the “apartmentalization” scheme and prefer to stay in the g…
Political science (20 works) · Sociology (20 works) · Law (17 works) · Politics (15 works) · Chinese history and philosophy (12 works) · Political economy (11 works) · Communism (10 works) · History (10 works) · Law (10 works) · China (9 works)