Abstract

In reference to Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of “the plane of immanence,” this paper aims to engage the prevailing discourse that sees a lack, on the part of Chinese peasants, of a sense of the collective or of any capacity to organize by themselves. First through a discussion of the “Xiaogang village paradox,” I hope to make clear that what I refer to as village sociality is not to be confused with a “collectivist society” endorsed by the hegemonic discourse that concerns governing. It is instead a tacit, intrinsic, and taken-for-granted practice that is specific to a society or community where people grow up and live together. In other words, village sociality is always there but its forms of practice keep changing and interacting with other forms of practices, such as formal regulations, which in turn contribute to the endless becoming of an ungraspable social – what could be otherwise known as immanent sociality. Meanwhile, village sociality never ceases to coexistence with the official system, no matter how much the latter cuts across the former, or how much tension and equivocation exists between these two orders. Village sociality is immanent to villagers’ everyday life; in this case too, village sociality is something which, though prevalent, can find no place in official discourse. To put it another way, what villagers “lack” is not the capacity to organize themselves, but a formalization of their actions in a normalized discourse.

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