Flattened Utopias: Deindustrialization and the Digital Pastoral in China and Beyond

About This Event

In recent years, terms like "involution" (内卷) and "lying flat" (躺平) have played a central role in pop appraisals of Chinese politics, succinctly expressing trends as distinct as deflation, overwork in the tech sector, and rising youth unemployment. Meanwhile, online influencers have made fortunes acting out a rustic return to the countryside. Often romanticized, these digital artifacts are also Romantic in the more formal sense, expressing a familiar form of utopian pastoralism generated by industrialization itself. Over the years, employment began to deindustrialize, the state launched governance reforms, and extensive crackdowns targeted underground labor organizers, Marxist groups, and feminists, both devastating and reinventing the Chinese left. This talk discusses how these trends are related to one another, how similar expressions have emerged in previous cycles of industrial transformation, and its connections to the broader forces shaping the global class struggle.

Featured Guests

• Phil A. Neel, independent researcher