Since the 1990s the issue of identity has been one of the most prominent and hotly-debated topics... more Since the 1990s the issue of identity has been one of the most prominent and hotly-debated topics in Taiwan Studies. A rich corpus of literature has been produced in various fields in the attempt to address this problematic issue, examining questions of Taiwanese identity from political, social and cultural perspectives. Imaging and Imagining Taiwan takes a fresh approach to this important topic, examining Taiwanese identity from a visual perspective and exploring the ways in which the island is presented and imagined. In contrast to those studies that seek to address the issue of identity from an essentialist position, Imaging and Imagining Taiwan offers a new contextualization of identity, investigating the ways in which Taiwan has been represented in films, fine art, advertising, sport, and social spaces at different periods in history. Covering a diverse range of topics, the book aims to capture the fluidity, changeability, fragmentation and dynamism of Taiwanese identity as an ...
Making Sweatshops: The Globalization of the U.S. Apparel Industry. Ellen Israel Rosen. Berkeley: ... more Making Sweatshops: The Globalization of the U.S. Apparel Industry. Ellen Israel Rosen. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002.
Taipei: City of Displacements, by Joseph R. Allen. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2011.... more Taipei: City of Displacements, by Joseph R. Allen. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2011. xvi + 280 pp. US$75.00 (hardcover), US$30.00 (paperback).In this book, the scholar of Chinese literature Joseph R. Allen writes: "everyplace has a history, a history of contingencies and changes, layers of production and construction, often reaching back through the decades and centuries, that informed its contemporary condition" (p. 181). Taipei: City of Displacements reads the cultural landscape of Taipei City from the Japanese colonial period to the current time. The book comprises three parts: the Prologue is a brief overview of the history of Taiwan, which provides a context for the later chapters; the Postface explains the theoretical and conceptual frameworks that inform the book; and the seven core chapters guide the reader through a set of chronologically and spatially interrelated materials (though not arranged in a chronological order) that Allen takes as exemplifying the cultural displacement of Taiwan over the past hundred years.The book benefits greatly from Allen's long-term engagement in Taiwanese Studies, his deep understanding of the history and ethos of Taiwan and his personal, intimate relationship with the city of Taipei (as a researcher, resident and casual [or not-so-casual] wanderer). It provides much insight but, for people accustomed to a more conventional social scientific writing style, Taipei might appear to lack a clear focus or line of argument. The fact that Allen places his discussion of theoretical frameworks at the end does not help in this regard. Although he advises that the Postface (in which key concepts such as "displacement" are conferred) could be read before or after the core chapters, or not read at all, I would suggest that readers start with this chapter.Among the various heuristic models for reading cultural space (such as inscription and erasure, occupation and exile, hegemony and resistance, hybridity and multiculturalism), Allen found displacement especially useful in "sorting out the structures of significance" (p. 188). He uses displacement to include different types of social displacement before and after Japanese and/or Nationalist rule, with the goal of revealing the ideological work that both motivated and derives from these displacements. When Allen uses the term, however, he does not use it simply to mean "erasure" or "amnesia" (both of which are metaphorical conditions commonly found in models of cultural theory), but in the sense of one cultural form or phenomenon displacing another by "forcing it out of the center and to the side" (p. 188). The displaced thus does not disappear; it becomes peripheral but not absent or partial. The displaced can always be re-placed. Yet, when a displacement is reversed, the once-displaced object is never restored to its original condition but acquires new meanings. …
This essay looks at the recent renovation of the Twenty-five Ladies’ Tomb, and examines the polit... more This essay looks at the recent renovation of the Twenty-five Ladies’ Tomb, and examines the politics of the feminist movements and the politics of memory as they are expressed through different meanings of female ghosts, in southern Taiwan. People who were involved in the renovation process included the families of the deceased “twenty-five maidens,” the Kaohsiung city government, and feminist groups in Kaohsiung and elsewhere in Taiwan – most notably the Kaohsiung Association for the Promotion of Women’s Rights – all of whom had different considerations and therefore diverse expectations regarding the future and purpose of the tomb. In Specters of Marx (2006), Derrida uses the idea of “specters” and “haunting” as consequences of historical injustice and tragedy metaphorically but powerfully. These two elements come together in our essay as well. However, the “ghosts” in our accounts are more literally ghosts with whom some (if not all) of our ethnographic subjects interact. They ap...
Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State & Society, 2015
The twenty-five Ladies' Tomb was the collective burial site of female workers who were drowned du... more The twenty-five Ladies' Tomb was the collective burial site of female workers who were drowned during a ferry accident on their way to work at export processing zones in Kaohsiung, Taiwan, in 1973. This essay focuses on the renovation of the tomb in the 2000s, and examines the politics of the feminist movement and the politics of memory as they are expressed through the different meanings bestowed on the deceased women. People involved in the renovation process included the Kaohsiung Association for the Promotion of Women's Rights (KAPWR), the families of the deceased, and the Kaohsiung City government, all of whom had different considerations regarding the purpose and the future of the tomb. This essay argues the KAPWR activism illustrates the fact that specific feminist praxis is dependent on the socio-cultural and political-economic attributes of the society within which feminist groups are embedded. The KAPWR's effort to refashion the image of the tomb resonates with feminist movements worldwide to rectify women's history by rewriting the valorizing the contribution of women. Specifically, it was a critique of the Taiwanese patriliny that treasures sons as true and permanent members, but regards daughters as outsiders and thus temporary associates, of their father's family. This symbolic differentiation has provided a framework on which many gender-based practices are constituted and justified. The approach of the KAPWR activism was therefore a strategic choice borne out of the particular context of Taiwan that, in turn, created the possibility to question patrilineal cultural practices.
Since the 1990s the issue of identity has been one of the most prominent and hotly-debated topics... more Since the 1990s the issue of identity has been one of the most prominent and hotly-debated topics in Taiwan Studies. A rich corpus of literature has been produced in various fields in the attempt to address this problematic issue, examining questions of Taiwanese identity from political, social and cultural perspectives. Imaging and Imagining Taiwan takes a fresh approach to this important topic, examining Taiwanese identity from a visual perspective and exploring the ways in which the island is presented and imagined. In contrast to those studies that seek to address the issue of identity from an essentialist position, Imaging and Imagining Taiwan offers a new contextualization of identity, investigating the ways in which Taiwan has been represented in films, fine art, advertising, sport, and social spaces at different periods in history. Covering a diverse range of topics, the book aims to capture the fluidity, changeability, fragmentation and dynamism of Taiwanese identity as an ...
Making Sweatshops: The Globalization of the U.S. Apparel Industry. Ellen Israel Rosen. Berkeley: ... more Making Sweatshops: The Globalization of the U.S. Apparel Industry. Ellen Israel Rosen. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002.
Taipei: City of Displacements, by Joseph R. Allen. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2011.... more Taipei: City of Displacements, by Joseph R. Allen. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2011. xvi + 280 pp. US$75.00 (hardcover), US$30.00 (paperback).In this book, the scholar of Chinese literature Joseph R. Allen writes: "everyplace has a history, a history of contingencies and changes, layers of production and construction, often reaching back through the decades and centuries, that informed its contemporary condition" (p. 181). Taipei: City of Displacements reads the cultural landscape of Taipei City from the Japanese colonial period to the current time. The book comprises three parts: the Prologue is a brief overview of the history of Taiwan, which provides a context for the later chapters; the Postface explains the theoretical and conceptual frameworks that inform the book; and the seven core chapters guide the reader through a set of chronologically and spatially interrelated materials (though not arranged in a chronological order) that Allen takes as exemplifying the cultural displacement of Taiwan over the past hundred years.The book benefits greatly from Allen's long-term engagement in Taiwanese Studies, his deep understanding of the history and ethos of Taiwan and his personal, intimate relationship with the city of Taipei (as a researcher, resident and casual [or not-so-casual] wanderer). It provides much insight but, for people accustomed to a more conventional social scientific writing style, Taipei might appear to lack a clear focus or line of argument. The fact that Allen places his discussion of theoretical frameworks at the end does not help in this regard. Although he advises that the Postface (in which key concepts such as "displacement" are conferred) could be read before or after the core chapters, or not read at all, I would suggest that readers start with this chapter.Among the various heuristic models for reading cultural space (such as inscription and erasure, occupation and exile, hegemony and resistance, hybridity and multiculturalism), Allen found displacement especially useful in "sorting out the structures of significance" (p. 188). He uses displacement to include different types of social displacement before and after Japanese and/or Nationalist rule, with the goal of revealing the ideological work that both motivated and derives from these displacements. When Allen uses the term, however, he does not use it simply to mean "erasure" or "amnesia" (both of which are metaphorical conditions commonly found in models of cultural theory), but in the sense of one cultural form or phenomenon displacing another by "forcing it out of the center and to the side" (p. 188). The displaced thus does not disappear; it becomes peripheral but not absent or partial. The displaced can always be re-placed. Yet, when a displacement is reversed, the once-displaced object is never restored to its original condition but acquires new meanings. …
This essay looks at the recent renovation of the Twenty-five Ladies’ Tomb, and examines the polit... more This essay looks at the recent renovation of the Twenty-five Ladies’ Tomb, and examines the politics of the feminist movements and the politics of memory as they are expressed through different meanings of female ghosts, in southern Taiwan. People who were involved in the renovation process included the families of the deceased “twenty-five maidens,” the Kaohsiung city government, and feminist groups in Kaohsiung and elsewhere in Taiwan – most notably the Kaohsiung Association for the Promotion of Women’s Rights – all of whom had different considerations and therefore diverse expectations regarding the future and purpose of the tomb. In Specters of Marx (2006), Derrida uses the idea of “specters” and “haunting” as consequences of historical injustice and tragedy metaphorically but powerfully. These two elements come together in our essay as well. However, the “ghosts” in our accounts are more literally ghosts with whom some (if not all) of our ethnographic subjects interact. They ap...
Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State & Society, 2015
The twenty-five Ladies' Tomb was the collective burial site of female workers who were drowned du... more The twenty-five Ladies' Tomb was the collective burial site of female workers who were drowned during a ferry accident on their way to work at export processing zones in Kaohsiung, Taiwan, in 1973. This essay focuses on the renovation of the tomb in the 2000s, and examines the politics of the feminist movement and the politics of memory as they are expressed through the different meanings bestowed on the deceased women. People involved in the renovation process included the Kaohsiung Association for the Promotion of Women's Rights (KAPWR), the families of the deceased, and the Kaohsiung City government, all of whom had different considerations regarding the purpose and the future of the tomb. This essay argues the KAPWR activism illustrates the fact that specific feminist praxis is dependent on the socio-cultural and political-economic attributes of the society within which feminist groups are embedded. The KAPWR's effort to refashion the image of the tomb resonates with feminist movements worldwide to rectify women's history by rewriting the valorizing the contribution of women. Specifically, it was a critique of the Taiwanese patriliny that treasures sons as true and permanent members, but regards daughters as outsiders and thus temporary associates, of their father's family. This symbolic differentiation has provided a framework on which many gender-based practices are constituted and justified. The approach of the KAPWR activism was therefore a strategic choice borne out of the particular context of Taiwan that, in turn, created the possibility to question patrilineal cultural practices.
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