Material Structures of Contingency: Materiality and Embodied Interpretations in the Emergence of Factional Politics at the Lushan Conference of 1959

Shuheng Chen, Renmin University of China

Why did the Lushan Conference of 1959 abruptly devolve from a moderate, consensus-building "meeting of immortals" into a contentious "Anti-Rightist" political purge? Using archives including original meeting records, diaries, and memoirs of political actors, this article argues that existing explanations based on structural causation, rational choice, and ideological performance overlook the materiality underlying the radicalization of political alignments. The extended physical co-presence on Mount Lu provided elites with the material conditions for frequent, informal interactions with Mao Zedong and one another, moving beyond formal meetings and written documents. This carnal and spatial proximity fundamentally altered how actors interpreted each other's political stances. Under conditions of high stakes and radical uncertainty, actors' contradictory, embodied interpretations of Mao's ambiguous signals selectively accumulated within disparate sub-groups. This dynamic inadvertently drove factional fragmentation and polarization, rather than producing a unified consensus through "group alignment." Through an eventful analysis of the Lushan Conference, this study illuminates the material structures of contingency that facilitate the emergence of factional politics, thereby contributing to political and historical sociology by revealing the micro-interactional foundations of elite conflict.

No extended abstract or paper available

 Presented in Session 179. Red Guards, Elite Conflict, and the Cultural Revolution