'In Memory of Norman Bethune':Two Exegetic Resurrections of the 'Spirit of Selflessness' in Maoist China

This article examines how a single phrase praising the ‘spirit of selflessness’ of the Canadian doctor Norman Bethune, which appeared in his obituary by Mao Zedong in 1939, led to two conflicting exegeses in the medical literature of the People’s Republic of China. The first exegesis identified Bethune as a prototype of self-cultivation for medical workers, while the second identified him as a prototype of the abolition of the self. In this article I demonstrate how the two ‘resurrections’ of Dr Bethune’s ‘spirit of selflessness’ reflected and fuelled conflicting governmental understandings of the ‘technology of the self’ necessary for socialist construction during the first two decades of the People’s Republic of China