“Good Samaritans” and Approaches of Resistance in the Cultural Revolution

Research on the Cultural Revolution focuses on agents of violence and their intentions, activities, and conflicts but pays little attention to resistance to the resulting aggression and oppression. I show that workers, rebels, Red Guards, and others served as “good Samaritans” who thwarted violence against “class enemies” and assuaged their suffering. I draw on studies of resistance and social interaction by James Scott, Michel de Certeau, Erving Goffman, and others. My analysis focuses on the first two years of the Cultural Revolution, when punishments were decentralized and haphazard. I describe four approaches of resistance—“confrontation,” “playacting,” “direct care,” and “deniable care”—based on the transparency of intention and visibility of the good Samaritan’s act. Such acts of resistance reoriented revolutionary justice from an assault on class enemies to their care and protection and served to contingently reknit social bonds as the Cultural Revolution ripped them apart.