ICS Translations

If  one were to select a topical vocabulary of the year 2020, then “involution” would certainly be found in that list. Earlier used as an academic jargon entangled in the witchcraft sort of academic discourse within a small range of academic circle, involution suddenly had an “exvolution” in the year 2020, becoming a cultural phenomenon popular among the crème university students and the middle class. In the current online discussions in China, involution has already become a vocabulary with an extensive meaning, leading to the “everything is involution” phenomenon. However, these discussions mostly use involution as the “description of a miserable condition”. They focus upon expressing a common anxiety prevalent in the current Chinese society, but lack the analysis of the causality behind the issue.