The Imperialist Eye - Taiwanpoco

pos 8.1-01.
Chen
5/1/00
1:03 PM
Page 9
The Imperialist Eye: The Cultural Imaginary of a Subempire and a Nation-State Kuan-Hsing Chen
I look hard for The origin of blood. Some say Im from the Malaysian archipelago, On the southwest border of China . . . But my parents told me: We are all children of the sun, The eggs of the rattler, The race bred in the earth . . . No accurate answer after all. But retracing assures me, Making me understand the real master of the beautiful island, And page after page of broken history. Monanen Malialiaves (Ah Neng), Burning (1989)
positions 8:1 2000 by Duke University Press
pos 8.1-01.Chen
5/1/00
1:03 PM
Page 10
positions 8:1
Spring 2000
10
1. The Problematic of a Third World Cultural Studies
For the past few years, I have been puzzled by one question: What does it mean to do cultural studies in a Third World space like Taiwan?1 After a long period of training in Anglo-American cultural studies, I went back to Taiwan in 1989 and have witnessed the most turbulent transformations. My critical training has driven my involvement in these changes. Meanwhile, the mood of indigenization (ben-tu-hua) provokes me to reect on the necessity of decolonizing my intellectual work. But it also makes me realize that exclusive indigenization is a sheer dead end. Wavering constantly between a local critical theoretical stand and my personal historical experiences, I have been searching for a workable position, without which no research is possible. Compared with my theoretical writings abroad, discourse on popular democracy and new internationalist localism are harbingers of the results of my attempts.2 An eye-opening event for me was the symposium entitled The Changing Global Reality and the Future of Asian People, hosted by ARENA in 1993.3 This was my rst opportunity to meet critical scholars who were all from Asia, to actively learn about the political and economic situations all over Asia, to realize that mine was an American accent, to experience the uncanny Philippines that is so similar to yet so different from Taiwan, and, nally, to hear local people call Taiwans inux of capital imperialist. It also highlighted the importance of Third World as a politico-theoretical concept. I believe I am approaching that workable position, becoming more aware of the blind spots of Taiwan indigenous cultural studies and the limitations of Western cultural studies. Perhaps a new road could emerge from the dialectic of the local, the Third World, and global capitalist culture.
1.1. The Blind Spots in the Crisis of Internationalizing Cultural Studies
The academic discipline of cultural studies is being internationalized through cross-border dialogue, contrary to the old research model, which was based on local issues. Currently, the overarching problem is that, on the epistemological level, the nation-state has become the presumed parameter of almost all local analysis and, hence, of the cultural study of Britain, the United
pos 8.1-01.Chen
5/1/00
1:03 PM
Page 11
Chen The Imperialist Eye
11
States, Canada, Australia, and so forth. This endlessly reproduces the target of criticism and the power relationship within the capitalist system as well. For example, two recently published collections (both titled Cultural Studies) of some ve hundred to eight hundred pages, respectively, have nothing to say about studies of the Third World; their authors are mostly EuroAmericans.4 Nevertheless, the intention to engage in dialogue does exist. The senior editor of positions: east asia cultures critique, for example, has established connections with local groups in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Korea, and other places for the purpose of promoting dialogue.5 The heated debate in the present dialogue is Aijaz Ahmads; his 1992 In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures criticizes the theories of Jameson and Said from a Marxist perspective. Public Culture also establishes a discursive space with its special issue titled Controversies: Debating in Theory. Unfortunately, almost all the responses have as their target Ahmad, thus foreclosing more frontal dialogues as well as challenges. Other new academic journals bent on creating such dialogic spaces include Third Text, New Formation, Cultural Studies, Theory, Culture, Society, Transition, Social Text, and the Journal of International Communication. This ongoing internationalization is not simply the result of the dialogue among cultural studies scholars. Rather, as Stuart Hall notes, this phenomenon reects the pressure of the globalization of culture, as it grows out of postCold War globalizing capitalism. The operation of local culture cannot be explained without reference to the global. Therefore, globalization per se becomes an important issue.6 Nevertheless, although this issue can be the focus of this international dialogue, the First World critical theories also reproduce a considerable number of blind spots due to their academic and geopolitical position. Take the recent hot issue of postcolonialism as an example:7 although it successfully incorporates and politicizes the energy of postmodern debate, it remains colonized in places like Macao and Hong Kong; the Third World is still conditioned by capitalist colonial structure; aborigines, workers, women, and homosexual people are subjugated by empowered groups such as the bourgeois, male chauvinist patriarchy and its heterosexual system. The declaration of the formation of postcolonial culture is based on the global structure of postcolonial theory. Its practical result is
pos 8.1-01.Chen
5/1/00
1:03 PM
Page 12
positions 8:1
Spring 2000
12
not only to blur the new colonial structure emerging in global capitalism but also to purge the old colonial subject and to provide theoretical justication for reconguring the global hegemonic order. What underlies postcolonialism is still the spirit of nation-state. With the shifting and gaining of political sovereignty as the watershed, the continuous economic, cultural colonialism and political neocolonialism seem to have been crossed out. Another potential problem of globalization is that it conceals the underlying power relationships. Despite Halls emphasizing continuous reection on power inequity,8 an obvious tendency now is rather depowerment and depoliticization. John Tomlinson, in From Imperialism to Globalization, his conclusion to Cultural Imperialism, exemplies the incriminating strategy of replacing the pejorative imperialism with the neutralizing globalization.9 According to him, imperialism implies a strong agenda to impose one system on the whole world, whereas globalization is a less overbearing form, implying an international mutual dependence in solving common human problems that are the result of modernity, the predestined fate of the human race. In his argument, globalization involves no structural unequal distribution of resources and power. The differences between oppressed and oppressing, First and Third Worlds, capital and labor, state and social subject, are all erased under the name of globalization. This reects the limitation of Tomlinsons position.
1.2. The Third World and Neocolonizing Imperialism
The rapid disintegration of the socialist Second World, internal colonization within the Third World, and the transformation of the global political power structure have made it necessary to challenge and revise the theory of three worlds.10 Nevertheless, to hastily erase the historic forces of imperialism is no less than remission. Whether imperialism has indeed been displaced is still questionable. Undoubtedly, compared with earlier forms of imperialism, neocolonial imperialism has changed substantially since decolonialization movements after World Wars I and II, especially in the 1970s and 1980s. Territorial conquest, military oppression, and direct usurpation of political sovereignty have been replaced by the operational logic of hegemony. New forms of imperi-
pos 8.1-01.Chen
5/1/00
1:03 PM
Page 13
13
alism include multi/transnational companies,11 global capitalism, and megastate-organization. Backed up with capital, military power, and the dominant position in the hierarchical structure of international politics, imperialism is effecting a new form of politico-economic dependence and a new division of labor on the global level. These are the mechanisms of imperialist self-reproduction in structure. Nevertheless, the critical conditions and constitutive structural effects of imperialism remain unchanged, if not intensied: (1) Corporate monopoly structure persists in core metropolitan centers; (2) The expansion of the economic centers power intensies the ambition to control resources and markets; (3) International division of labor continues to serve the purposes of dominant zones; (4) Industrial countries upscale their competition in exports and investment abroad; (5) Exploitation of labor deepens; (6) The general gap between rich and poor broadens; (7) The environment deteriorates ecologically in colonized areas.12 As Herbert Schiller says, the era of postimperialism has not arrived. Miyoshi Masao further points out that colonialism becomes even more dynamic in the form of global capitalism, as illustrated by transnational corporations.13 Yet even Miyoshis radical stance contains the blind spots inherent in his geopolitical position. According to him, with the transition from colonialism to global capitalism, nation-state gradually gives way to multinational/ transnational companies as the prime historic dynamo. To those living in the Third World, however, nation-state and nationalism play an increasingly important role. Examples are South Korea, Taiwan, the Philippines, India, and Siran.14 While we should acknowledge the strength of global capitalism, we should also recognize the transformation, not the decline, of the nation-state in the process. The formation of mega states such as the European Economic Community, the North American Free Trade Area, and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations express precisely the alliance of state machines in these regions to cut up territory, divide markets, and effect the restructuring and redivision of labor of international capitalism. In this light, we should not only differentiate the empowered from the disempowered, the central from the marginal, in order to locate the dominant forces; we must also avoid idealizing the Third World nation-state, so as to recognize its class afliation and avoid identifying with it.
pos 8.1-01.Chen
5/1/00
1:03 PM
Page 14
positions 8:1
Spring 2000
14
The Third World revolutionary theorist Frantz Fanon made the following analysis in his important work The Wretched of the Earth, published in 1961, before the foundation of Algeria. In the process of anti-imperialism, unless decolonization can transform nationalist energy into a liberating consciousness of sociopolitical needs, once the colonizer disappears as the common enemy, the most resourceful national bourgeoisie will occupy the dominant position of nation-building and state-making and collaborate closely with colonizing countries, thus turning the colony into the neocolony. Meanwhile, this national bourgeoisie will exercise internal colonization,15 suppressing the working class, farmers, aboriginals, women, and homosexuals, even fostering long-term ethnic clashes by tapping such differences, in order to prevail in its internal struggle for power.
1.3. Revisiting Fanons Proposition: ColonizationDecolonizationNeocolonization
Fanons analysis implies a theoretical model common to the structural experiences in the Third World: colonizationdecolonizationneo-/re-/internal colonization, and thus incorporation into neocolonial capitalism. This historical trajectory will lead to neocolonial stratication in global capitalism, on the one hand, and to the unique historical past as well as the current historical conditions of a specic geographical area, on the other. Perhaps a historicalgeographical materialism more pertinent to the Third World (both temporal and spatial)16 will be able to confront problems surfacing on all levels in the global-local dialectic. Perhaps this framework will avoid the blind spots discussed above and a line of inquiry into how imperialist colonialism has shaped local culture, and how oppositional culture was formed by local colonized consciousness, could be opened up for international cultural studies.17 This direction of research is not meant to create a Third World centrism or chauvinism or to deny the importance of First World cultural studies. The articulation of dialogue and alternative, counterhegemonic alliances (on the level of knowledge production, at least) will depend on collective interaction and efforts. In this context (of refusing to duplicate the existing power structure), the cultural position of Third World cultural studies is not limited to critiquing
pos 8.1-01.Chen
5/1/00
1:03 PM
Page 15
15
Western imperialism. It also transcends nationalism, so as to highlight the multiple layers of power relationships within the Third World, its hierarchical division, and the emerging Third World subimperialism. The following analysis is the starting point of such a track. To pursue this track, and especially a historical analysis of colonial psychoanalytic formation, is my long-term attempt.
2. Advancing toward South, West, East: The Formation of Taiwans Subempire
The policy of advancing toward the south, promoted by the Taiwan state and endorsed by the opposition party, has had an enthusiastic response from the public sphere since early 1994 and is applauded and propagated by scholars, politicians, and capitalists generally.18 The scattered dissenting voices focus on the unsatisfactory conditions of southern countries: unstable societies, backward infrastructures, inefcient governments, skyrocketing real estate prices, and rising salaries as the disadvantages of advancing toward the south.19 (It is noteworthy that transnational capitalism has described Taiwans investment environment in exactly the same terms.) Both pros and cons, however, are framed by the narrative structure of southward-advancing, which allows no room for metacritical reection in the discursive eld. As a matter of fact, advancing toward the South, West, and East projects exactly the same desire as that of imperialist expansionism in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In short, the Taiwanese Empire is being formed.20
2.1. The Demarcation and Implementation of Subempire
To be more exact, the ideology of the Taiwanese subempire is being formed. Within the neocolonial structure, Taiwans own economic, political, and cultural structure is subordinated to the United States and Japan. Therefore, its targets of expansion are the politico-economically weaker countries, rather than more robust capitalist areas. I use the term subempire to refer to a lower-level empire that depends on the larger structure of imperialism.21 Neocolonial imperialism here refers to the fact that unlike the earlier capital-
pos 8.1-01.Chen
5/1/00
1:03 PM
Page 16
positions 8:1
Spring 2000
16
ism, it no longer depends on its military force for other countries territory, sovereignty, and economic prots but instead uses economic and political intervention to inuence policy direction and the control over markets by recourse to its dominant position within the structure. Third World history has proven that a number of former colonies have won independence only to fall prey to their old colonizing countries once again. The reasons include the former colonies continuing economic, cultural, and political dependence. This stratied construction of global capitalism is neocolonial imperialism. What are the concrete manifestations of the Taiwanese subempire? 1. Medium- and small-size capitals westward and southern ow and the state machines southward-advancing policy are all indices of expansion. 2. Taiwans sixth export processing area22 in the Philippines, the Taiwan industrial area in Vietnam, and the Taiwan development project in Indonesia all signify the expansion of both capital and state. More than that, they display classical imperialisms tendency to establish a base in order to control its foreign territory, a territorial colonialism. 3. We must also mention the exploitation of mainland laborers. Factories in Taiwan are closed down and investment is moved to the mainland for the purpose of exploiting cheaper labor. Mainland women are frequently subjugated to monetary allure by the Taiwanese businessmen.23 Laborers working conditions are extremely poor, generally, in the factories built by Taiwanese capital, and workers also face severe regimens. In Thailand, workers died from re in a Taiwanese-owned toy factory. In the Philippines, women workers went on strike to protest Taiwanese managements militaristic style and punishment. 4. Economically, Taiwanese investment in Malaysia in 1989 amounted to 24.7 percent of the total, second only to Japanese investment. In Thailand, Taiwans share was about 10 percent in 1988, again second only to Japans. In Fujian Province, Taiwans investment was one-third in 1990. In 1990 in Guangdong Province it was second only to Japans.24 In general, Taiwans capital expansion was well under way in Southeast Asia by the end of the 1980s.25
pos 8.1-01.Chen
5/1/00
1:03 PM
Page 17
17
5. Politically, Taiwan tries to inuence other countries trading and diplomatic policies by negotiating the number of imported foreign laborers (from Thailand, for example). The Taiwanese state actively intervened to press the Indonesian government to suppress laborers struggle against Taiwanese capital. This displays the logic of dependency characteristic of neocolonialism. 6. Culturally, music, lm, and the arts and publishing industries have all landed on the mainland. Deng Lijun, Qiong Yao, and Zhao Chuan have penetrated into the enemys backyard, bringing with them the capitalist lifestyle. The potential effect is to metamorphose the collective structure of socialist ideology. Will Taiwan build its subempire successfully? Where should the structural ow of capital be directed? Is it always necessary for capital to expand externally? These are not the questions I am considering here. Sufce it to say that imperialist expansion not only leads to exploitation of foreign laborers but is harmful to local workers as well; investment abroad will reduce the employment of local laborers. Taiwan experienced the colonization of aboriginal people by Holland and the Ming and Qing dynasties. Decolonization began after its liberation from Japanese control half a century ago, only to be interrupted by the KMTs recolonization and the seduction by the U.S. economic and military supports. Taiwan eventually fell prey to Americas global agenda and was subsumed under the United States neocolonial structure. In the 1960s and 1970s, it became part of the capitalist system through the severe exploitation of its laborers, which in turn produced the so-called Taiwan economic miracle and enriched todays bourgeoisie/state. Unfortunately, capital recognizes no national boundaries. Capitalists have parted with their families and dumped the laborers who made them rich, in order to invest abroad. The trinity of land/capital/state is completely committed to the formation of the Taiwanese subempire.26 From this principle we can conclude that advancing to the south demonstrates that capital accumulation in Taiwan has accelerated so much in as little as fty years that the country has metamorphosed from a colony into a structural position of quasi empire, thus no longer occupying a marginal position on the map of global capitalism. Constricted
pos 8.1-01.Chen
5/1/00
1:03 PM
Page 18
positions 8:1
Spring 2000
18
economically by mega-empire as it is, it has joined in the general imperialist competition, investing downward in order to grab markets, resources, and labor. Taking into consideration the three worlds27 theory put forward in the 1955 Bandung conference in Indonesia, should we believe that some of the earlier Third World areas (such as the Four Little Dragons and NICs) have replaced the earlier Second World position and thus redrawn the map of the world capitalist system, having become strong enough to expand? Or should we rather attempt a ner analysis of the internal differences of the Third World?28
2.2. Culture, Imperialism, and Said
I want to emphasize here that I am not concerned with the fate of Taiwans subempire. Rather, I will focus on the imperial consciousness, the ideology and desire frankly displayed in the discourse of southward-advancing. Of course, history has proved that the formation of empire is never merely a matter of political, economic, and military operations. A cultural discourse also plays an active role of articulation; that is, it provides the theoretical foundation for the power bloc in the making of an empire. The question here is, What are the sources of this theoretical foundation? Edward Said gives a further analysis of the production of imperialist ideology in his 1993 work, Culture and Imperialism, which followed his inuential 1978 study, Orientalism.29 Although his argument is based on the past in the form of the Western canon (Conrad, Austen, and Camus), the problematics he deals with are pertinent to the future. Although the gigantic colonial structure has disintegrated with the end of the imperial era, he argues that classical or high imperialism remains as a culturally inuential force in the present.30 It unavoidably casts a shadow on all levels of culture, one that cannot be erased overnight. Critical discourse on imperialism had focused mostly on political and economic issues; the role of culture in modern imperialism had been largely neglected. For Said, imperialism and colonialism are not simply a matter of capital accumulation and the seizure of territory and resources. Only with the backing of a powerful ideological formation can all of a nations energies be pooled together against the common external other.31 To push this point further, imperialism, during its process of
pos 8.1-01.Chen
5/1/00
1:03 PM
Page 19
19
expansion, not only projects its own cognition onto the colony to dene the colonized culture; it also denes and afrms itself by continuously changing its relationship with the colony. The imperialist subjectivity operates on its power relation with its colony. Saids analysis convincingly demonstrates that cultural discourse, together with practice and politics, consciously or not, actually produces a system of domination that extends throughout the space of the cultural imaginary, shaping the thinking parameters and categories of the dominant and the dominated; it hence conrms the imperialist right to expand, and in this case it makes impossible alternative modes of imagination. Saids detailed analysis cannot be completely repeated here. But his insights can provide some entry points for the following investigation. To simplify, several interpretive directions emerge from Saids discourse: (1) The formation of imperialism is backed up by cultural discourse/ideology; (2) The imperialist subject must base its self-identication on its relationship with the colony to construct its own identity; and (3) The imperialist cultural imaginary often conditions the visions of the colonized. Rather than serving as my analytical framework, these propositions will be my reference points to return to in the reading process. The dialectic of these propositions and analysis will help answer the questions raised below.
2.3. Guozu-ism versus Minzu-ism and the Politics of Translation
To be sure, Saids analysis of the complicity of Western imperialism and cultural discourse cannot be directly mapped onto the new phenomena in the Third World. The core concepts here, at the center of my interpretation, are nation-state and guozu-ism, or nationalism. Nation-state in Taiwans mainstream discourse is translated as mingzu guojia, and recently also as guomin guojia, a rendition from the Japanese, which might be due to Dr. San Yat-sens tradition of zhonghua minzu-ism (or Chinese nationalism). Historically, however, this term refers to the nation-state apparatus. Abundant historical research has proved that guozu (nation) results from the construction of the state apparatus and that the state apparatus, through its transforming and appropriating into guozu-ist discourse and sentimentality, creates the nation. Therefore, nation and state
pos 8.1-01.Chen
5/1/00
1:03 PM
Page 20
positions 8:1
Spring 2000
20
apparatus have been historically symbiotic, and the new nation-building is a critical component of statism.32 According to another translation, that of Huang Meiying,33 nationalism equals national independence movement, a phrase that species the inevitable connection between guozu-ism and the goal of independent nation-building. Therefore, minzu-guojia is the product of modernization ideology, and guozu-guojia attempts to disclose the inseparability of nation-building and state-making. In the following argument, minzu-ism is the term of my interlocutor, whereas guozu-ism and nation-state ( guozu guojia) are my terms.
2.4. The Positioning and Questions for The Special Issue of Southward-Advancing
I have positioned southward-advancing as the projection of imperial ideology. Now I shall move toward a cultural political analysis. To begin, I must dene the objects of my analysis. The three months since early 1994 had seen the dispersive disemination of various images, pictures, narratives, arguments, opinions, and letters to the newspaper, which were woven into a discourse of southward-advancing, to produce the social mood and fashion of southward-advancing. Among these components, the Renjian (Human Space) supplement of the China Times newspaper is the most inuential cultural discourse. From 2 through 4 March, the newspaper put out A Black Tide from the South, a special issue on southward-advancing. Since Renjian occupies a strategically important cultural position, as the leading mainstream newspaper supplement in Taiwan and the platform of mainstream cultural criticism for the Taipei cultural circle, I shall explore the details of its major ideological effects rather than the motives of the writers. My analysis is not limited to the immanence of the text. The great impact of the special issue lies precisely in its immediate involvement and intervention in the reality of historicosocial space and in interpolating a southward-advancing subject. Therefore, methodologically, I will not treat it as an enclosed cultural commodity. Instead, through analysis I intend to open up the multilayered ideological structure articulated in this special issue. Epistemologically, I do not pre-
pos 8.1-01.Chen
5/1/00
1:03 PM
Page 21
21
sume that this discourse will easily, successfully, and naturally mobilize and recruit the social subject in the particular social space. But I do not deny its potential. My analysis can be seen as an antihegemonic discourse competing with this discourse of southward-advancing.34 To be sure, my reading is not the only possibility. Other subject positions, such as those of workers, feminists, aboriginals, and homosexuals, may produce readings not within my purview. As to whether I can hit the nail on the head, so to speak, others will decide. The questions I want to raise are, What exactly are the cultural, political, and ideological implications of the southward-advancing discourse? How does it operate? How is the argument put forward? What ideological structure does it display? As a cultural imaginary, what are its sources? My deeper theoretical concern is the question of whether we can discern the ideological articulations between imperialism, colonialism, nationalism, and statism through an analysis of this southward-advancing discourse.35 I want to reemphasize that my focus is the level of cultural imaginary; that is, my aim is to tease out the ideological connections of nation-state and subempire through an analysis of this issue.
3. The Imperialist Eye: Reading The Special Issue of Southward-Advancing
This special issue appeared in the Renjian supplement after Li Denghuis New Year visit to the Southeast Asian countries and therefore explicitly echoed the real political situation and the subjection to it. The whole issue was the cocreation of ve scholars and experts: Yang Changzhen, Liu Kexiang, Wu Micha, Yang Zhao, and Yang Bo. The fact that these selfclaimed liberals or native leftists (often seen as the oppositional force in cultural circles) suddenly made an about-face and turned toward the political establishment (the state), laboriously searching for historical and cultural theoretical justication for the state-guided, southward-advancing policy, threw many dissident elements into confusion. How to account for this cultural phenomenon? Does this development mark the inception of a new historical stage in which the oppositional voices have reversed themselves to actively join the new political order?
pos 8.1-01.Chen
5/1/00
1:03 PM
Page 22
positions 8:1
Spring 2000
22
The ve articles included in the supplement were published in the following order: Yang Changzhens Gazing at the Low Latitudes: Taiwan and the Southeast Asian Movement and Liu Kexiangs A Disappearing Line both appeared on 2 March; Wu Michas Revisiting Taiwans Position and Yang Bos The Mysterious Chinese the following day; and Yang Zhaos From Chinas Borders to the Center of Southeast Nanyang: An Episode of Neglected History in installments from 2 March through 4 March. In order not to unduly burden my dialogue with the articles with an excessive preoccupation with my own theoretical, cultural, and political concerns, I shall expand my analysis beyond the above mentioned reference points to interact with their discursive content and direction, meanwhile including some relevant discussion and responding to the arguments and concerns of the writing subjects. I shall begin with the editors introduction to the special issue.
3.1. Echoing the Double-Li Structure
The editorial remarks on the special issue actively give a direction for reading and reveal the background and motives of its production; it is therefore the starting point of my interpretation. In order not to read out of context, I quote the whole text of the editors guide as follows: President Lis New Years travel to Southeast Asia has provoked many responses; most of the news reports, however, focus on political-economic and trade issues. Taking into consideration Taiwans cultural and historical connections with Southeast Asian countries, we launch this special issue, both to provoke fresh thinking and to echo Principal Lis [Academia Sinica] plan to make Taiwan the center of Southeast Asian historical studies within ten years. An annual black tide advancing north from the South Sea; an unrecognized biogeological line; a Southeast Asian Chinese man as depicted by a French female writer, and the southward-advancing base in the ThirtiesWe hope the whole series of humanist reections from the margin will put Taiwan in a new light, and reconnect it with the past and future of Southeast Asia and its surrounding areas. Editor
pos 8.1-01.Chen
5/1/00
1:03 PM
Page 23
23
This editorial guide, put right in the center of the supplement serves as the axis of reading.36 It mixes the rational mode of discourse with poetic language full of artistic accents that both subvert and supplement each other. Designed as a dialogue between the humanist reections from the margin and political and economic concerns from the center, it actually collaborates in constructing a new angle, a new past, in order to push Taiwan toward the future of this past, that is, toward southward-advancing, instead of challenging and questioning the center. The editor species from the very beginning the strategic position of the southward special issue in echoing the double-Li: politico-economy versus culture, current policies versus historical connections. The model of thinking here is obviously not the Western scholastic binary opposition but the yin-yang logic of so-called Chinese cultural tradition: bipolar complementarity. The two Lis need each other to round out a whole, although Principal Li has repeatedly denied any political implications of his grand scholarly plan to render Taiwan the center of Southeast Asian historical studies.37 But it is impossible to miss the ambition of the southward special issue, considered as an ideological construction, to back up the current political and economic trend by targeting the cultural and historical elds. From the perspective of area studies, Principal Lis southward-advancing plan is very likely to predate that of President Li. The formers denial of political connections is credible. As a matter of fact, due to his long-term politico-geographical position (the University of California at Berkeley is a stronghold of Asian studies; the United States obviously occupies a higher level of global capitalism than Taiwan), Principal Lis perspective might be loftier than that of President Li. His purview of the rise of the Southeast Asian economy also more closely approximates the new view from the peak point of global capitalism than does President Lis perspective. Principal Li does harbor a huge ambition. In order to strengthen neocolonialism after World War II, the United States vigorously proposed area studies, aimed at understanding global economic and cultural development through serious scholarly research. Half a centurys efforts have established the United States as the leading force in area studies. The research institutes specializing on East, Southeast, and South Asia are all concen-
pos 8.1-01.Chen
5/1/00
1:03 PM
Page 24
positions 8:1
Spring 2000
24
trated in Washington, D.C., and a few renowned universities outside the district. Asian studies centers in universities like Harvard, Chicago, and UC Berkeley are all postwar productions.38 In order to catch up with and eventually replace such places within ten years, Principal Li will likely need, on the one hand, to produce a team of linguistic masters capable of analysing the complicated Southeast Asian linguistic structure. On the other hand, he could also take the shortcut of importing large numbers of American scholars bringing with them archives of the past half century. Otherwise, the plan to become the center of Southeast Asian research is a pipe dream. I am not in the position to predict the projects fate here; another ten years will give us an account of its success or failure. Objectively speaking, Principal Lis plan shares a similar spirit with the United States full-edged area studies, although it is not comparable in scale. They both orient the academic directions toward national interests and national development. The obvious fact is that academy-serving politics will probably be the future of the Academia Sinica. To direct the academy through the control of research funding this is the most explicit ideological manifestation in Taiwans academic history. We will continue to watch and to see how successfully Principal Li Yuanzhes grand plan will serve capital/state. One point needs to be claried. The state (southward-advancing policy), the academic direction (looking toward Southeast Asia), and cultural production (the special issue on southward-advancing) are interconnected not through a linear, sequential relationship on the level of motives, nor simply through what might be reduced to conspiracy theory. Rather, their connections lie in a homologous relationship in the structure of discursive space, and its complex ideological picture of knowledge/power can be revealed only through the fabric of discursive form, content, and direction. In the second paragraph quoted above, the editor lists the discursive forms and directions, such as the black tide biogeographical line, the colonial woman writers narrative imaginary, and the southward-advancing base of the 1930s. All of these natural, geological, historical, literary, and biological aspects make up the particular arrangement and disposition of the writing form. By recovering historical memories through the retrieval of marginalized, forgotten stories, it hopes to reposition Taiwan is this a geological term? Is
pos 8.1-01.Chen
5/1/00
1:03 PM
Page 25
25
this the Taiwanese state? male? or the Han Chinese bourgeois, for example? in a new (political?) horizon, so as to discover its genuine connections with the black tide from the South and the surrounding areas (China? Japan?) both in the past and in the future.39 Therefore, the southward-advancing special issue has its impetus in the need to recover the forgotten past, lling in the present blankness, in order to secure a steady future. The South has always been throbbing with the blood in Taiwans history. The phrase A black tide from the South appeared in bold characters at the very top of the newspaper for two successive days. In the accompanying drawing, the trees lean on either side, overarching the ocean view above the horizon. Whether to display the stereotypical Southeast Asian avor or to indicate the line of Taiwans southern ocean embracing the southern black tide, what is clear is that a bird with wings spread (code for freedom, here symbolizing Taiwan) is ying toward and landing on the two characters of nanfang (the South). What, however, is the semiotic function that the black tide attempts to detonate?
3.2. Decoding the Black Tide and Naturalized Knowledge/Power
In his article Gazing at Low Latitudes: Taiwan and the Southeast Asia Movement, Yang Changzhen paves the road for southward-turning by putting Taiwan back to the black tide cultural sphere to which it has always belonged. Yangs argument is based on natural geology. Due to differences in ocean temperature, the revolution of the earth, and geological formations, an ocean current known as the black tide forms around the Indo-Chinese peninsula in Southeast Asia; along side this tide East Asias rice civilization was formed, and this is the so-called black tide cultural sphere. The author goes on to cite archaeological and anthropological evidence, especially the idea that the pingpu tribe belongs to the Malay race, to argue that Taiwan was originally a member of the black tide cultural sphere and that it was incorporated into the Chinese system only after the Han peoples invasions during the Ming dynasty.
pos 8.1-01.Chen
5/1/00
1:03 PM
Page 26
positions 8:1
Spring 2000
26
3.2.1. THE SIGN VALUE OF THE BLACK TIDE
The effect of this argument is naturalizing Taiwans original status as part of the Southeast Asian black tide cultural sphere and attributing its later Chinese afliation to human factors (i.e., the Han invasion). Underlying this argument is a set of complementary binary relationships: nature versus human, original versus later, and Southeast Asia versus China. Taiwans identity is constructed from the operation of this chain of signiers. The logic of equivalence links up the concepts of Taiwan, originally, naturally belonging to Southeast Asia and the black tide area, interpolating the reading subjects identication and eventually connecting Taiwan and black tide sphere tightly together. The function of the code of black tide is to restore Taiwan to the place where it belongs, as a member of the black tide cultural sphere, as opposed to the later-intruding China. This argument clearly contains progressive elements. The opposition between aboriginal pingpu tribe and the Han and white people suggests the hostility of the former toward the latter as invaders, as well as the aboriginals full entitlement to Taiwan. However, this marginal pingpu subject is mentioned only once in the article (when it is used to support Taiwans proper geological identication); it disappears completely in the rest of the narrative, in the course of which Taiwan is homogenized, personied, and deprived of any social difference. Yangs starting point could have led him to restore Taiwans territory and sovereignty to nature and to the real Taiwanese that is, to the aboriginal. But in fact, he only manipulates the aboriginal for the purpose of connecting the Han peoples Taiwan with Southeast Asia.
3.2.2. THE NARROW- MINDED INTERPRETATION OF
IMPERIALISM AND SOUTHEAST ASIA
As we have seen, the author pushes forward from natural geography to human history. At its zenith, the Chinese empire expanded its strategic and economic power throughout the entire black tide cultural sphere. Taiwans incorporation into (world) history was initiated by Chinese pirates blazing the nautical route from Japan through China to Southeast Asia for their own trading purposes. From that point, Taiwan entered Chinese history, Southeast Asian history, as well as world history.40
pos 8.1-01.Chen
5/1/00
1:03 PM
Page 27
27
His following argument touches on an important theme that is, imperialism and the formation of Southeast Asian nationalism. Yang argues that Southeast Asian nationalism has been fashioned through two waves of the Southeast Asian reordering movement: (1) the expansion of Japanese capitalism and (2) socialism centered around Red China. The failure of these two movements led to the subsequent consensus of area collaborations, which culminated in the foundation of ASEAN (Association of Southeastern Nations) in 1967, cultivating parallel cooperating subregional systems as the basic strategy of nation-states self-autonomy and freedom. I shall discuss in detail and challenge some of the more absurd points of Yangs article: rst, that Southeast Asia has developed nationalism following the regions long-term oppression by the colonial and Han cultures; second, that Greater East Asian coprosperity Sphere propagandized by Japan to justify its invasion of Southeast Asia was once welcomed by Southeast Asian nationalists and intellectuals as its salvation; and third, that the Japanese occupation destroyed the colonial power structure that had suppressed local nationalism and thus fostered the blossoming of Southeast Asian nationalism and paved the way for the later regional coalition; fourth, that the socialist anti-imperialist, anticapitalist movement in China after the 1949 revolution produced sinophobia in its neighbors, so that Southeast Asian nationalism as a whole overwhelmed socialism and aborted the second movement of re-ordering through socialism; fth and nally, that historical experiences have destroyed the trust in foreign powers such as U.S., Chinese, and Japanese imperialists, and stimulated the desire to cultivate parallel cooperating subregional systems as the basic strategy of nation-states self-autonomy and freedom. To begin with, the author attributes the blossoming of Southeast Asian nationalism to the long colonial experience, to Wilsons postWorld War I push for national self-determination, and to Japanese invasion. He thus confuses the two very different concepts of nationalism and regional consciousness. In fact, the southeastern countries at the time manifested a variety of forms of guozu-ism, including rightist bourgeois and leftist radical versions, but developed no comprehensive minzu-ism, or nationalism, that could integrate the whole of Southeast Asia. Let us take colonial Malaya (Malaysia was not founded until 1963) as an example. Its pan-Malaya guozu-ism con-
pos 8.1-01.Chen
5/1/00
1:03 PM
Page 28
positions 8:1
Spring 2000
28
tains both an anti-British, pan-Indonesian trend proposed by radical farmers and a pro-British direction proposed by conservative Malay aristocrats, English-educated, anti-Chinese, and anti-Indonesian. In addition, Muslims have also voiced anti-Western, anti-imperialist opinions.41 Even if the authors notion of Southeast Asian guozu-ism refers not to a regional consciousness but to minzu-isms scattered over Southeast Asia, he should not homogenize and totalize minzu-ism. The questions of the formation of a regional consciousness and the state coalition based on self-interest and inherent class problems need to be investigated. But up to now, no forceful critique based on scholarship has appeared. Second, the authors opinion that the Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere propagandized by Japan was once welcomed by Southeast Asian nationalists and intellectuals as its salvation cannot stand. The Philippine nationalist historian Renato Constantino has demonstrated that, except for a handful of opportunists, the majority of Filipinos held no regard for this propaganda, which they considered ridiculous, let alone welcomed it.42 Although some of the Malayan and Indian colonials were tempted by Japanese anti-British rhetoric, Chinese communities in Malaya had begun promoting an anti-Japanese movement before Japans 1941 invasion. A heated wave of anti-Japanese sentiment was evident in Singapore by 1937 and escalated from 1942 to 1945, during the Japanese occupation.43 The author is again passing off the partial as the whole, simplifying the complexity of history. The unanswered question is why he should defend imperialist invasion at the expense of distorting history. Third, the author describes the Japanese imperialist contribution as destroying the existent colonial structure, dissolving the power structure that oppressed Southeast Asian nationalism, and paving the way for the later regional coalition. But the historical facts show just the opposite to be true. During the occupation, Japanese colonialists suppressed nationalism with various racially discriminating policies. Even the 1963 Malaysian federation was partly attributable to the operation of British imperialism, whose purpose was to contain all its southeastern colonies under its umbrella.44 Since the end of the Japanese occupation of Singapore, the old colonialists suppression of local nationalism, and especially of the leftists, had become increasingly cruel.45 All these historical facts contradict the
pos 8.1-01.Chen
5/1/00
1:03 PM
Page 29
29
authors argument. The authors absurdities multiply for example, his contention that the Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere can be regarded as the Southeast Asian countries intense ghting back against Western colonial invasion, or that the Japanese imperialist reordering of eastern Asia had an important legacy, namely, a mature modern nationalism. The authors afrmation of the Japanese invasion and of so-called modern nationalism suggests an enunciative position strikingly similar to the discursive self-exoneration on the part of the invaders.
3.2.3. SOCIALISM AND PHOBIA
Fourth, the author believes that the establishment of Red China stimulated the sinophobia of the Southeast Asian countries . . . and their eventual rejection of socialism and that the success of the Viet Cong was even more terrifying and hence catalyzed the birth of ASEAN. The fact is that resentment of China did not begin in 1949. Chinese merchants control of agriculture and the textile industry provoked Philippine discontent as far back as the end of the seventeenth century.46 The Philippine Communist Party (PKP) won great public support and prompted a military expansion after the 1949 coming-into-power of the Chinese Communist Party, to the extent that it expected to control the country within two years. Its failure was due not to Southeast Asian peoples choosing nationalism over socialism, as Yang asserts, but to American suppression of socialist movements.47 The most credible discourses coming out of this region clearly show that imperialist intervention in the politics of its colonies was in fact one of the reasons that Southeast Asians did not entirely abandon socialism for nationalism. A further important point is that the authors dichotomy of socialism and nationalism contradicts historical fact. These two impulses were actually combined, not mutually exclusive. In fact, socialist nationalist movements still exist in the Philippines, Malaysia, and Thailand. The authors overgeneralizing rhetoric no doubt betrays his own anxiety about socialism. Fifth, the narrative of the authors Southeast Asia reconstruction movement implies a strong statist stance. The Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere was an imperialist notion; ASEAN is also a conjunction of various state apparati. Their scope is limited by nation-state to the exclusion of
pos 8.1-01.Chen
5/1/00
1:03 PM
Page 30
positions 8:1
Spring 2000
30
much critical thinking. Constantino severely chastizes ASEAN as a comprador of transnational capital and imperialism in his Nationalism and Liberation,48 in which he also questions whether the transnational economic cooperation nourished by capitalists results from the autonomous efforts on the part of ASEAN nationalist bourgeoisie or whether it is in fact the enemy who hinders the peoples autonomy. Yangs idealization of ASEAN echoes exactly the premise of statism/capital. The only progressive aspect of ASEAN is its rivalry with Western imperialism. But this capitalist-oriented statist alliance is reactionary with regard to the interests of local people. Gazing at Low Latitudes quite naturally concludes with a back-tonature call. PostCold War territorialization of the regional economy hinges on mainstream international political cooperation. Taiwan, among the order of eastern Asian subaltern countries, naturally approaches Southeast Asia, due to the similarity between its historical experiences and current situation and the regions. Coming from nature and returning to nature this discursive position corresponds to the state engineers position. Yet if it is really so natural, why does it not come out naturally, that is, not until the statement of the two Lis? To sum up my critique of Yang Changzhens argument, (1) he arbitrarily rewrites East Asian history; (2) his narrative perspective is extremely right-wing; (3) his purpose is clearly to attack socialism; and (4) to restore Taiwan to Southeast Asia is to justify southward-advancing policy, which in effect amounts to justifying imperialism. I am waiting for Yang to publish his source materials on Southeast Asia so that I may examine the discursive position(s) of these sources. In the meantime, it is clear that he succeeds only in injecting rightist opinions from the perspective of the power bloc.
3.2.4. EVOLUTIONISM / SCHOLARSHIP / EMPIRE
Yangs strategy of naturalizing southward-advancing resurfaces in Liu Kexiangs A Disappeared Line but in a more subtle way. Liu tries to retrieve the Wallace line, a nineteenth-century biogeological discovery that connects Taiwan with Southeast Asia. His argument displays an interesting correspondence between knowledge and power, scholarship and empire. To begin with, Liu points out that Wallace was a disciple of evolutionary the-
pos 8.1-01.Chen
5/1/00
1:03 PM
Page 31
31
ory, but he seems not to be aware that the evolution of species and social Darwinism actually provide theoretical support for Western imperialism;49 therefore, biogeological research based on evolutionary theory is, so to speak, genetically linked with empire. Like the Wallace line, the British colony on the Malaysian archipelago now can be genealogically extended in Japanese imperialism. Liu gives a vivid account: The biological and anthropological implications of the biogeological line, and the Southeast Asia archipelagos within and outside of that line, attracted Japanese biologists visiting Taiwan who were eager to carry out a systematic investigation into its relationship with Taiwan, and even with Japan. For the Japanese government, Southeast Asia was the target of its southward expansion. For the biologists and anthropologists, it was as tantalizing as if they were whales returning to their breeding waters. The aspiration and strong desire for knowledge is not simply for the sake of knowledge, or science for its own sake, but to dig out the naturalscientic connection between colony and home country. This fatal attraction, the call of the South, stimulated scholars to march southward together with their nations empire, at the risk of their lives. To put it more accurately, without the empires material support for the southward advance, the retracing of Wallaces line would probably have been discontinued. Without the expansion of power, there will be no production of this knowledge. Conversely, without the scientic proof of the ancient cultural afnity between Japan, Taiwan, and Southeast Asia, the empire would lose its self-justication for this southward advance. This is no doubt a case of the precise content of this subject, and what it sets out to prove. One need not wait for the future to see whether this line can support the task. Yangs discursive production of knowledge has proved itself equal to the cause of imperial expansion. How can any perspicacious analyst still be blind to the complicity between cultural production and empire formation as manifested in his own analysis? Then why still attempt to counter the southward-advancing policy? Perhaps a reasonable answer will emerge after analysis.
pos 8.1-01.Chen
5/1/00
1:03 PM
Page 32
positions 8:1
Spring 2000
32
3.2.5. XEROXING THE IMPERIALIST CULTURAL IMAGINARY
Let us return to the propositions inspired by Said. The analysis thus far demonstrates that the discourse of southward-advancing provides ideological support for empire formation. It operates with the strategy of naturalization, in accordance with Antonio Gramscis theory of ideology. For Gramsci, the most natural is the most ideological, and naturalization is one of the principles of ideological production. The analysis also shows how the imperial subject (Taiwan) pulls its target colony (Southeast Asia) closely in, so as to establish distance from the enemy (socialist China) for the purpose of reinforcing its new but also already existent self-identity. It also suggests that the old imperialist cultural imaginary (e.g., the Wallace line and the southeastern reconstruction movement under the aegis of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere) still constrains the imagination of the colonized. The new empires cultural imaginary, as constructed by the southwardadvancing discourse, is no more than a Xeroxing or a pirating of the Japanese imaginary of a half century ago. The writing of history as an expressive form of the cultural imaginary continues to be circumscribed by the old imperial views. This will be further claried in the following discussion.
3.3. Taiwan-Centrism: The Incarnation of Imperialism
In terms of style, Wu Michas Reconsidering Taiwans Position is the most uninteresting piece in this special edition. What follows the initial repositioning of Taiwan on the map is simply a chronological record, from the fourteenth-century formation of the trading system between East and South Asia; through the seventeenth-century presence of the Dutch East India Company, which pushed Taiwan onto the stage of world history; to the nineteenth-century colonization by Japan, up until that nations defeat in 1944. Here Wus writing has the effect of a slide show, with a at voiceover, so devoid of any projection of desire of the writing subject that it prevents the audiences desire for identication. Nevertheless, it also puts the reader squarely in the position of spectator, positioned by the camera; in this way, the invisible cameraman can patiently unfold his history for us, systematically walking us through the past and framing Taiwans real posi-
pos 8.1-01.Chen
5/1/00
1:03 PM
Page 33
33
tion within the narrative from beginning to end. In other words, this piece offers the historical feasibility of writing Taiwan-centered history; it thus complements Yangs and Lius scientic, natural basis for the discourse of southward-advancing. The sign Wu Micha itself authorizes the scholarly importance of the article. As a Taiwan history expert, the national Taiwan University history professor and consultant for the important, semiofcial Jiang Jingguo fund (for the exploration of Taiwan and Korea), this signier connotes a symbolic enunciative position in Taiwan scholarship. We must ask, What exactly is the interface between such an expert position and southward policy?50 Wu begins and ends his article with his protagonist, President Li; this immediately establishes the reality as the context for Wus account and demarcates the time and space of his historical writing. President Lis Nanyang trip (Xia Nan-yang)51 enables us to nally discover our always existent . . . neighbors. Leaving aside the denition of us, here, why does this happen? Why have we been unable to discover this close neighbor, Southeast Asia, up until now? This interesting question is ignored by Wu but partially answered by Yangs essay cited above: these small, weak countries have only recently formed a regional alliance, an emerging force that has galvanized the state/capital mentality. For me, Taiwans experiences in the last half century tell us that America and Japan, the two major colonial nations closely connected to Taiwan politically, economically, and culturally, have transformed this relationship from a colonial to a neocolonial structure and therefore pinpointed us in our assigned position, which prevents us from discovering similarity between the colonized experiences of Taiwan and Southeast Asia. In this light, Wus notion that our thinking has been limited by mainland-centered cartography for a long time is only partially valid, because our recent relationship with the mainland dates only from the removal of the martial law. What has constricted us for the last half century is in fact this United States and Japan-centered cartography. Wus central argument is that President Lis traveling course limns out for us a long-existent, but unnoticed, Taiwanese geographical position, i.e., Taiwanthe PhilippinesIndonesiaThailandTaiwan and the ocean area circled within. The mainland-centered cartography leaves unclear both Taiwans regional position and the linear unrolling of its history. Once Tai-
pos 8.1-01.Chen
5/1/00
1:03 PM
Page 34
positions 8:1
Spring 2000
34
wan is placed at the center of the map, an entirely new scene emerges: Taiwan is the linkage between eastern Asia (the East China Sea) and Southeast Asia (the South China Sea). To a considerable degree, this position determines Taiwans historical unrolling and foreshadows its potential. Simply speaking, to reposition Taiwan is to correct the mistake of mainland-centrism; conversely, to centralize Taiwan as the crucial linking point is to nd Taiwans real position. Herein lies the divergence between Yang and Wu: the former pushes Taiwan toward Southeast Asia in his back to nature argument, while the latter harbors a more ambitious strategic deployment, in the form of approaching Southeast Asia without giving up East Asia. Their commonality is looking for historical justication for the southward-advancing policy from the position of statism. What exactly is Wus proof for Taiwans centrism? His chronicle records three similar historical experiences. The rst is how the seventeenthcentury Dutch East India Company gave rise to trade centers throughout Japan, Taiwan, Southeast Asia, and the Indian peninsula. In this historical moment, Taiwan-centeredness was not yet obvious. A clearer version, however, appeared during the twentieth-century occupation of Taiwan by Japan. Taiwan became the central station for Japans southward expansion, which encompassed Taiwan, South China, and Southeast Asia, all the way to Australia. The areas involved in these two experiences do not overlap completely. Yet the second naturally reminds one of the seventeenthcentury East Indian company, as Wu puts it. The most telling proof is a map contained in a book published by Asahi Shinbun in 1944 that put Taiwan in the center of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere! A most picturesque version for the reader is the reproduction of this map in the 3 March issue of Human World, showing Taiwan in the center of the concentric circles that billow around it. The caption reads: Some Japanese scholars in the 30s and 40s constructed the whole greater East Asian world around Taiwan. The third historical experience was obviously President Lis visit to Southeast Asia. His plan follows a course that seemed to evoke the very map, Wu remarks! What do these three historical episodes inspire in us? Wus comment reveals the obvious answer: their only common point is colonial imperialist
pos 8.1-01.Chen
5/1/00
1:03 PM
Page 35
35
ambition for expansion. A more distanced criticism would be that Wus Taiwan-centrist proposal is actually derived from the colonialist cultural imaginary, and this incarnation is being revived in the colony a half century later. But was Taiwan in reality the center of the empire?
3.4. The Intercourse of Empire, Capital, and Race
Yang Bos Mysterious Chinese is a rst-person travel narration with ashbacks to childhood memories, thereby connecting Taiwan and Southeast Asia. The authors sentimental touch, in contrast to the other articles dryness, seemingly constructs a relaxed space of fresh air, so to speak, for the reader. This temporary disarming of the reader maximizes and escalates the subjective voice into a collective psychoanalytic projection, thereby selectively constructing a popular memory that displaces the historical master narrative, as it more effectively collapses together the subject, capital, empire, and gender/sexuality. Through this writing process, the personal is political manifests its structural meaning. The episodic family history exposes the political basis of cultural China.
3.4.1. THE HISTORICAL MEMORY
AND THE
OEDIPUS COMPLEX
The author carries out the postcolonial studies of Southeast Asia in the name of the tourist/anthropologist whose center/base is Taiwan. Once he begins his Southeast Asia narrative, his desire is focused on the dialectic of me and the mysterious Chinese, which is further transformed into the dialectic between the Chinese and the colonizers. What is ruled out of the narrative is local people, who appear only in conict with the Chinese. The authors postcolonial curiosity leads back to his family history, the historical turmoil of the Vietnam War and the earlier era of Japanese occupation. This retrospective affective account enables him to handle the guilt of Oedipus complex in his childhood. He writes, I was unhappy with his relatives small-capital trading ( pao dan bang) in Southeast Asia and his fathers insurance and shipping business; but now Im sure this trading was no more humiliating than that of contemporary Taiwan merchants (taishang). The ambivalence toward petty capital and the literatis skepticism
pos 8.1-01.Chen
5/1/00
1:03 PM
Page 36
positions 8:1
Spring 2000
36
toward capital generally must be resolved through the courage for life gained from identication with his father. After all, to prioritize business over petty benets is exactly one of the basic life modes among overseas Chinese, naturally including Taiwanese. The identication with overseas Chinese is achieved through the sympathy with small-capital businessmen in the past and the avant-garde of southward-advancing Taiwan merchants in the present. As I mentioned above, this is representative of a highly selective construction of popular memory. That is to say, the writing hinges on class, race, and gender exclusion. His mother, his fathers workers, and the other peoples dwelling alongside the overseas Chinese are thus effectively screened out from my historical memory. The writer expresses his heartfelt concern over the questions, What kind of people are the overseas and nanyang Chinese? How are they viewed by other peoples there? These two questions indicate that individual subjectivity must be established in constant interaction with the others. As the author puts it, This is a basic training like know I know thou. Interestingly, his answer is not based on written accounts by these other peoples;52 rather, his (Chinese) self-identication is derived from two colonial literary works. Although he is unsatised by the negative image of the Chinese in Conrads Lord Jim, he does nd the possibility of Chinese identication encircling Taiwanese identity in Durass Lover.
3.4.2. DURAS S
INTERCOURSE
WITH
CHINESE
CULTURE
In the entire special edition, this is the only scene of women.53 At the top of the page, the articles layout displays the leading actor, Liang Jiahui, in a still from the movie, with the caption The Chinese man in the lm Lover; under this circled man is the article title, Mysterious Chinese, with the authors name, Yang Bo, below it; the oblong picture at the very bottom shows two women, one standing, the other sitting. Its caption reads, Indochina, 1930, a picture of the sixteen-year-old Duras in her Annan dress, with her companion. That year, on a ferryboat on the Meigong River, she met a Chinese who later became the prototype of the lover. In this picture, the insouciant Duras and her standing female companion look into the camera that is, also at the audience illustrating precisely the hier-
pos 8.1-01.Chen
5/1/00
1:03 PM
Page 37
37
archy of the colonial and the colonized. Considering Yang Bos penchant for reading askew, one might also argue for their camaraderie (or homosexual love). But of course this is not allowed under his heterosexual regime. More interestingly, in Yangs rewriting, the lover is no longer the Chinese, but the Chinese man. Through the whole of his writing, Yang links together Taiwanese man, nanyang Chinese man, and Chinese man and seemingly enters a neo-Confucian cultural China, which demonstrates his slipping identity. His description reveals the mechanism of this kind of cultural identication: This novel describes the chance encounter and love affair of a young woman, Duras, and a Chinese man on the Meigong River. Their economic and physical relationship reverses the relationship of white colonials and the colonized. . . . This book is a milestone in the representation of the Chinese. The rich Chinese lover in the novel, graceful and attractive, mysterious as ever (mischievous even), once he appears on the wide screen, compels both a recognition of the Chinese and a serious treatment. Within the sway of money, sex, and power,54 Duras did not construct her own female subjectivity by means of the nonwhite man; rather, the colonized, with recourse to the material, to sex and to capital, becomes the position of white female desire and thus recovers male, racial identity through intercourse, achieving the historical redemption of being colonized. This is indeed a reversal. Backed up by capital, the colonized replace the position of the white/male colonizers. The writing subject strongly identies with the man of cultural China, who is rich, graceful, attractive, and mysterious. But what kind of recognition is this? In Black Skin, White Masks, Franz Fanon gives an elaborated account of desire in the relationship between colonized men and white women: I wish to be acknowledged not as black but as white. Now and this is a form of recognition that Hegel had not envisagedwho but a white woman can do this for me? By loving me she proves that Im worthy of white love. I am loved like a white man. I am a white man. Her love takes me onto the noble road that leads to total realization. . . .
pos 8.1-01.Chen
5/1/00
1:03 PM
Page 38
positions 8:1
Spring 2000
38
I marry white culture, white beauty, and whiteness. When my restless hands caress those white breasts, they grasp white civilization and dignity, and make them mine.55 Fanons self-psychoanalytic account suggests that the writing subjects desire is to replace and become the colonizer, to become the white man, rather than to acknowledge black existence. This, then, is denitely a reversal. Chinese, however, are not interchangeable with black men in historical logic; not only do the former generally discriminate against the latter, they also often exhibit a general sense of racial superiority. For instance, in Tu Weimings neo-Confucianist theorization of cultural China, blacks (e.g., Africa and the Caribbean) do not seem to exist on the horizon of cultural China; on the other hand, in the Chinese chauvinist world, French civilization represents the apex of the mystery romance of Western culture. In the framework of cultural China, the intercourse of Duras and Liang Jiahui is the miscegenation of the rst-class breeds of the Oriental and Occidental civilizations, respectively. Their orgasm signies the recognition by the most highly civilized nation of the West, a clear proof of Chinese cultures vitality. To keep some critical distance, we can detect in the subconscious of cultural China the sexually charged anxiety of not being recognized. This is why Chinese male dignity must be ransomed with the advantage of capital. Yet this identity of cultural China is very oppressive to overseas Chinese, who are marginalized in their local environment and whose children are forced to study Chinese.56 More signicantly, due to the strong ethnocentrism in the concept of cultural China, Chinese identity can be only constructed vis--vis a Western, white colonizer, while the multiple nationalities and ethnic groups in Southeast Asia are ignored. This narcissistic egocentrism, which leads to unequal dialogue and disregard of resourceless people, is precisely the ideology of imperialism. Cultural Chinas strategy against Western cultural hegemony is no more than a reproduction of imperialist coloniality, this time with the center of racial (the Han people) culture in the framework of the China versus West dichotomy.
pos 8.1-01.Chen
5/1/00
1:03 PM
Page 39

3.4.3. TAIWANESE MAN VERSUS
39
MAINLAND
WOMAN : SEXUAL TRIUMPHALISM
To regain condence through male violence in sexual intercourse is a common way of dealing with the suppressed anxiety of the colonial situation. In the novella Memorandum of the Past, Yang Zhao gives a cruel description in a scene in which the male protagonist recalls the past, with the woman psychoanalyst: In this game, I could feel that her organs were fully prepared. Her moisture had dripped onto my groin, but she unwaveringly resisted my penetration. She suddenly pressed her palms against my chest, asking Do you love me? Of course I said I love you. She pressed her lips and thought for a while, then said But I hate you. I was confused and asked How can you hate me? Of course I hate you, she said. Meanwhile she moved my pausing hands toward her nipples and in a gentle voice ordered, Tell me you are a mainlander. I followed her with, Im a mainlander. She closed her eyes and guided my hands toward more sensitive spots, saying Say that again. Im a mainlander I repeated. All of a sudden, she straightened up and jammed my swollen penis into her body, and began to jerk her bottom violently. I didnt expect her sudden movement, and almost erupted. Luckily, I held myself back. Then she closed her eyes, looking up and murmuring while continuing her rocking, I hate you mainlanders who have ridden on top of us Taiwanese for forty years. I hate you rapists of this land. . . . Even in her electried orgasm, I could still hear amid her heavy breathing the crying for the Taiwanese victory day. . . .57 In this violent sexual war, the male reading subject is interpolated into an identication with the rst-person narrator. Yet the writing subject puts the woman in the active, dominant, controlling position with which the writing subject identies. In other words, he uses the woman to release Taiwanese hatred against the mainlander. Orgasm is not achieved by the I but by the electried Taiwanese. This reveals the male writing subjects double identity: rst, identifying with Taiwanese (but not women), and second, identifying with the Taiwaneses object the mainlander (male) whom he can replace. But why identify with a mainlander male? Yang Zhao writes in the following episode:
pos 8.1-01.Chen
5/1/00
1:03 PM
Page 40
positions 8:1
Spring 2000
40
Yet some old habits just wont die. I put her in bed, trying to launch a new drama with a kiss, but she couldnt help screaming. She is still not used to my being on top. She still has to say, But I hate you. At the moment of her shock, I entered her. After a t of unexpected spasming, she regained the habit of swaying her bottom to my rhythm. Her breath was becoming heavier, but she still wanted to talk: But you are a mainlander, and I hate mainlanders. I hate the clich topic which robs me of pleasure. I tried to convince her, That was only your old excuse. You dont really hate mainlanders. She slowed down and turned toward me with a trace of suspicion. But I do hate them. Thats why I do this with you. I like reversing the world, I like the Taiwanese riding the mainlanders. This remark made me feel awkward. I forced a little, to make her feel the physical touch, then stressed, Our relationship is love, not some Taiwanese and mainlanders. The word love did calm her down. She swayed gently and foiled my forceful attack. Still she insisted, Love is love. But Im still on top of a mainlander. I felt her stubbornness was becoming unreasonable. With anger swelling, I couldnt help pricking the lie and telling her: she is actually riding a Taiwanese, not a mainlander. What followed was our rst ght since we got to know one another. At last I even pulled my penis out and began searching for my ID card with nothing on. This was really a ridiculous scene that the naked me should need an irrelevant little card to prove my lifes mode. That card said clearly that I was from Zhang, Taiwan. Having resolved this, we returned to bed and continued our incomplete intercourse. But I could feel her turning absent-minded. After all this, I couldnt help asking her, Dont you like this? She shook her head, tears trickling down, murmuring softly, I feel you are a tyrant today. . . . From then on, we never met again. I couldnt nd any excuse to approaching her. Yet strangely, the feeling of being pressed underneath in bed and having sex with her has always fascinated me. . . . Could you explain why?58
pos 8.1-01.Chen
5/1/00
1:03 PM
Page 41
41
Here the male protagonist is facing the female psychoanalyst, expecting her to answer. Perhaps we could propose the following answer: Here the rst-person narrator becomes more active, unwilling to shoulder the resentment of the Taiwanese toward mainlanders. When Taiwanese (the female protagonist being only a sign) attempts to reverse the world, to ride the mainlander, the male protagonist has to resort to the state apparatus (proving his Taiwanese-ness with his identity document) to retake his Taiwan males dominant enunciative position. As a result, she realizes that Taiwanese women are actually dominated by Taiwanese men, who play the tyrant, because he is no longer the mainlander and has become the dominant Taiwanese man, and I (the Taiwanese woman) am governed by my countrymen (tongzu ren). Having gained the knowledge that were all Taiwanese and having reached our victory day, they no longer seek each other, unable to nd reason to do so because the pleasure of reversal is gone. When Taiwanese is on top of Taiwanese (no matter who is up, who is down), the pleasure of conquering the former colonizer is past, and there is no longer the mainlanders superior position to be usurped. According to the narrator, once his Zhang origin is recognized, she becomes absent-minded, she loses the desire to exercise violence, even sheds tears as she recognizes the tyranny of the Taiwanese man, who cannot be the object of desire. To reclaim the mainlander identity at this point, one will have to reregister with the state apparatus to gain a new identity. Once Taiwans victory is achieved, the object, the rival in the sex war, is lost. To reread Yang Zhaos story in the mood of 1993 Taiwanese political society, we can draw a parallel between the attempt of the Taiwanese males, the colonized, to accomplish their historical mission by means of women (that is, the strong desire to topple and supplant the mainlander colonial male), on the one hand, and the disintegration of the Li-Hao regime and the rise of the Li-Lian regime, on the other. Yang Bo and Yang Zhao demonstrate a clear bourgeoisie male chauvinism, which is displaced onto the metaphor of sexual intercourse. Interestingly, Yang Zhaos novel seems to have touched upon the anxiety and the problem after the stage of supplanting (i.e., one Taiwanese on top of another). Yet by the time of his 1994 piece in the special edition, he has lost
pos 8.1-01.Chen
5/1/00
1:03 PM
Page 42
positions 8:1
Spring 2000
42
the critical thrust of the previous year and been incorporated into the regime. To push this point further on a metalevel, the writing subjects disguised unconscious projection is actually the Taiwanese males identication with the mainlander male. The inferiority complex of the colonized is dissolved through the recognition of the mainlander woman by the mainlander. This whole operation here is virtually identical with the logic of desire politics in Yang Bos Chinese male and Duras. In both cases, the purpose is to win the colonizers recognition and to supplant them. Yang Zhaos reversing this sexual relationship from Taiwanese male versus mainlander female to Taiwanese female versus mainlander male reects his heterosexual anxiety, which is fundamentally based on androgynous selferoticism. We need to fully develop the study of the psychohistory of achieving selfafrmation through sexual violence. We have looked at Yang Bos and Yang Shans construction of the mechanism of the formation of desire. Other novelists, such as Li Ang in The Labyrinth Garden and Chen Yinzhen in The Evening Shipping Truck, also deal with political issues in terms of sex. Within this triangular framework of colonized male, colonized female, and colonial patriarchy, the invisible third party (the male colonizer) is the object and enemy to be identied with and supplanted by the colonized male. At the pinnacle is certainly the father (colonizer); at one of the bottom points, the female is no more than the link between the colonized and the father. To borrow a term from Ashis Nandy, an Indian psychologist of colonization, it is a relation of intimate enemy between the two males positioned so differently in colonial culture.59 In the light of Eve Sedgwicks queer theory, it is the desire for homosocial bonding between heterosexual males. Intersecting these two theories, we can see that in colonial culture, the colonial and the colonized male live out their intimate love-hate relationship by sacricing the female in order to establish their connection.
3.4.4. EMPIRE , CAPITAL , RACE , SEXUALITY
The above analysis points to the deeper-layer psychoanalytic mechanism of the southward-advancing discourse in Yang Bos Mysterious Chinese, that
pos 8.1-01.Chen
5/1/00
1:03 PM
Page 43
43
is, the attempt to reverse the old order and reclaim self-identity on the basis of the subempire subject. This desire for recognition can be satised only by entering the previous colonial cultural imaginary and sexually dominating the other gender, the other race, and the other class. It is also in this structure that the class, race, and gender identity and positioning of the imperial subject is projected outward. The desire formation implied in the southwardadvancing discourse fully displays the interfaces and the overlapping of imperialism, colonialism, ethnocentrism, male chauvinism, and capitalism.
3.5. From Margin to Center: The Imperial Desire of the Nativist
The most important component of the special edition is the long article, appearing for three successive days, entitled From the Margin of China to the Center of Southeast Asia: A Forgotten History. Compared with Wu Michas academic position, Yang Zhaos operative discursive space is diversied and lively. Gu Xiuxian categorized it in the eld cultural critique. Tan Shi (1994) positioned it in literary criticism in the tradition of Ye Shitao and Chen Fangming. He also joined the Newly Rising Nation writing launched by the oppositional party chairman Xu Xingliang.60 More important is his self-claimed native leftist enunciative position, evident in his interview with Guanghua magazine.61 This is crucial because it can indicate how the ways that the native leftists encounter the conservative right-wing southward-advancing policy has intervened into their alternative voices. In other words, in todays Taiwan, the willingly accepted leftist hat should still have at least the residual value of taking the marginal position, exposing the relation of domination in the rightist political, economic, and cultural hegemony.
3.5.1. WHO IS
WE?
Like Wu, Yang Zhao also begins his writing/reading of history with President Lis visit to Southeast Asia. But he offers a relatively exaggerated version, in which Lis visit not only popularizes the southward topic but, all of a sudden, all Taiwan turns toward the South, eager to nd its future there. All of a sudden, Yangs own inated desire has become all Taiwans desire
pos 8.1-01.Chen
5/1/00
1:03 PM
Page 44
positions 8:1
Spring 2000
44
to seek a future in Southeast Asia.62 Obviously, he establishes himself as the spokesman for the entire Taiwanese people. In fact, all through his article, Yangs we, Taiwan, and Taiwanese are lumped together without any social distinctions, for example, in the sentence, Taiwan in its late-capitalist period is elevated to become capital-owners and exporters. The Taiwan of capitalists evidently does not include Taiwanese workers or aboriginals, a fact that undoubtedly also reects his own objects of identication. Southward-advancing holds the promise of resolving the collective Taiwanese anxiety over westward-advancing; here, Taiwan society clearly does not refer to the reunication camp, nor to feminists who are not involved in either the reunication or independence movements. Yangs totalizing treatment of the crucial subject terms not only erases differences but also replaces the diversity of public opinions with the desire of a certain group or individual. Ironically, Yang elsewhere attacks, asking, Why should the male position unquestionably represent all people?63 Unless we regard Yangs consistent use of we as ironic, we cannot possibly credit his article with any critical distance. In other words, if this were a parody, he would be aware of his own position and critical of southward-advancing. In the following analysis I will regard his we as the projection of the ideology and desire of which he is representative. Yang Zhao in the following is not only an individual but also the inection of a position.64
3.5.2. SOUTHWARD - ADVANCING IN THE FRAMEWORK OF THE
REUNIFICATION / INDEPENDENCE DICHOTOMY
Unlike the other authors, Yang points out the close connection between southward- and westward-advancing southward-advancing is an alternative to westward-advancing into mainland China. The important question is: Whose choice is this? That of capital? the state apparatus? native leftists? or the common choice? From the anti-imperialist perspective, advancing south, west, and east are all similarly representations of imperial expansion. What differences, then, does Yang presume? Yangs pseudo-materialist analysis focuses on capital accumulation and ow. But he does not ask the price of capital accumulation. Taiwan once
pos 8.1-01.Chen
5/1/00
1:03 PM
Page 45
45
accepted capital investment; now, in its late-capitalist period, the country has risen to consist of capital owners and investors. (But if capital investment signies late capitalism, three centuries ago imperialism had already reached the late-capitalist stage!) According to Yang, the difference is that we used to have little autonomy, had to accept others image of us, and had limited choices. Now we must produce our own understanding and construct our own worldview, in order to be condent enough to nd our own answers. Here Yang interpolates us with a nationalist urge, enlisting our devotion to the nation. Unavoidably, his tone smacks of irony. In my memory of state education, only the president, a company director, or a traditional intellectual would feel such a nationalist urge. Framed by a discussion of the direction of the ow of capital, Yangs enunciative position is identical to that of a state policy maker, revealing his extreme statist ideology, rather than the assumptions of the leftist marginalized within the social structure. In the above quotation, Yang puts forward his core thesis: Taiwan must construct a new worldview. But I would ask, What is the content of this worldview? What, moreover, is its function? In the next section, I will attempt to push toward an analysis of the sources and basis of Yangs worldview. As already mentioned, Yangs worldview construction is set against the backdrop of westward-advancing; that is, it is motivated to establish southward-advancing to balance westward-advancing. What he attacks here is the notion of a Greater China economic sphere composed of Chinese communities in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore and centered around mainland China. The reason is that it is a privileged set of frameworks in Taiwans attempted new worldview. Yang traces the cultural basis of this mainstream concept to long-standing Chinese nationalism, shaped and promoted by the state in the face of the West and Japan, and in the name of anti-imperialism and antifeudalism. In practice, this nationalism produces the following problems: (1) This CCP-controlled economic circle would fail to sustain economic growth and therefore cannot be trusted, and (2) Chinese nationalism can evoke neighborhood hostility. Due to these two problems, Taiwan [government, capital?] has been forced to rehash the old worldview. This new world picture conforms precisely to southward-advancing, that is, restoring Taiwan to Southeast
pos 8.1-01.Chen
5/1/00
1:03 PM
Page 46
positions 8:1
Spring 2000
46
Asia to Nanyang. Here Yang Zhao echoes Yang Changzhen, Wu Micha, and the two Lis and designates the function of southward-advancing as beginning to resolve Taiwanese societys collective anxiety and ambivalence over westward-advancing; its real signicance is not to achieve capitals interests but to declare that the Greater China economic sphere is not an inescapable fate. But Yang Zhao differs from Wu in that, whereas the latter knows where Taiwans true position is, the former regards the geological location as a cultural construction rather than the only scientic truth. But in his own construction, Yang chooses Southeast Asia over China as Taiwans home to return to, on the grounds that it is the product of collective psychology. Actually, however, he is not aware that it is his cultural construction that is forging this collective psychology, rather than the other way around. What I want to clarify is that collective psychology has no a priori essence but is itself constructed under specic historical conditions. This special edition exemplies the making of such a psychology and the agency of such making. Things become clearer if we understand Yangs projection of anxiety and ambivalence in the context of the Taiwanese power blocs incorporation and the mobilization involved in the reunication/independence contention. To the reunication camp, whether in or outside government, the logic of capital naturally leads to westward-advancing and ends in the unication of Taiwan and the mainland. To the independence camp, this same economic logic results in collective anxiety and ambivalence, even total loss. Thus, for both statist Taiwan independence and peoples Taiwan independence, southward advancing brings about resolution. This is why Yang can proclaim that its real signicance is assuring that the grand China economic sphere (i.e., unication) is not an inescapable fate, rather than securing mere economic prot. The real strategic motives behind the southward choice is not our concern here. Rather, it is important that in cultural discourse South and West form a binary opposition that echoes the independence/reunication binary on the ideological level, and this is not a leftist position. Their common point is exactly what Yang chastises as Chinese nationalism. Yet he does not explicitly point out that if westward-advancing is based on the ideology of Chinese nationalism,
pos 8.1-01.Chen
5/1/00
1:03 PM
Page 47
47
southward-advancing is then based on the construction of Taiwanese nationalism, that is, on the colonizeds desire to move from the margin to the center. And this move to the center clearly depends on the series of mirror-image binary oppositions in Yangs arguments: West versus South, China versus Taiwan, reunication versus independence, with implied correspondences.
3.5.3. THE DESIRE TO MOVE FROM THE MARGIN TO THE CENTER
If southward-advancing represents a new worldview with Taiwan (and its empire) at the center, to return Taiwan to Southeast Asia is to reverse the fatalism of the marginal and to materialize the strong desire for selfcenteredness, moving from Chinas margin to the center of Southeast Asia (nanyang). Yangs rewriting and remapping attempts to interpolate us (as reading subjects) into the national, collective imaginary, to retrieve the past episodes of glory, and to recenter ourselves, thus satisfying our deep psychological need, rather than reconciling ourselves to a marginal position. Yang repeats Wus chronicle in the framework of center versus margin. With the sole exception of the nal years of the Japanese (when Taiwan became no less than the cultural and economic center of Southeast Asia), Taiwan has consistently been marginalized in its experiences with the Dutch, the Ming and Qing dynasties, Japan, and the United States. This crucial point of rewriting history should be dealt with carefully. In the above discussion of Wus Taiwan-center theory, I have pointed out that this vision of map/imagination actually derives from imperialist cultural discourse. Here I shall go further, to point out that the center of Taiwancentrism in question in this geographical imagination was not Taiwan (Taipei), but the Japanese empire (Tokyo), with Taiwan situated as a transitional centering point. If it is only a matter of situating Taiwan in the center of the map, then Taiwan was, is, and will ever be the center, and there is no need to rewrite history. But what matters here is actually the psychoanalytic map of the national imaginary. Tragically, the anti-imperialist leftist is able to rewrite the history of Taiwan only by copying historical moments from the colonial cultural imaginary.
pos 8.1-01.Chen
5/1/00
1:03 PM
Page 48
positions 8:1
Spring 2000
48
It is exactly for the purpose of constructing the Taiwan-centric national imaginary that native leftists will make the painful reconciliation (Yangs term) and rewrite history. Yangs core idea is that since the latter part of the Japanese occupation, Taiwan has been a part of Japans national territory rather than a colony. This is indeed a painful choice. I have argued above65 that, caught within the colonizer/colonized relationship, the latters desire for the formers recognition often catapults the latter into the worldview of the former, a worldview that carries a particular conception of history. In The Wretched of the Earth, Fanon wrote, The settler makes history and is conscious of making it. And because he constantly refers to the history of his mother country, he indicates that he himself is the extension of that mother country. Thus the history which he writes is not the history of the country which he plunders, but the history of his own nation in regard to all that she skims off, all that she violates and starves.66 The adoption of the colonizers perspective of history by the colonized is the result of the unconscious psychoanalytic mechanism going beyond colonial education: The native never ceases to dream of putting himself in the place of the settlernot of becoming them, but substituting himself for the settler.67 Under these circumstances, the rewritten history adopts the imperialist perspective, and it exemplies again the tragedy of the imperialist blood owing in Taiwanese veins, delimiting the historical basis for constructing Taiwans new worldview.68
3.5.4. REWRITING HISTORY: THE ELEVATION FROM COLONY TO TERRITORY
Yangs strategic purpose in his writing of history is to justify the legitimacy of Taiwan-centrism from the Japanese imperialist perspective in order to promote the southward-advancing worldview. He takes issue with Yanaihara Tadaos 1929 classic, Taiwan under Imperialism. On the one hand, he agrees with the authors charge that the Japanese invaded and exploited Taiwan. On the other hand, he declares, We cannot ignore the fact that Professor Yanaiharas famous work dealt only with the early phase of coloniza-
pos 8.1-01.Chen
5/1/00
1:03 PM
Page 49
49
tion, and that all the data were collected before 1927. Yang Zhao suggests that 1927 is a watershed in the Japanese occupation of Taiwan and that thereafter, due to the inland extensionism, colonial Taiwan became the center of the southward advance and therefore underwent rapid industrialization; consequently, Japan relinquished its colonial exploitation of Taiwan, in order to control Southeast Asia more effectively. With the gradual implementation of the Japanese southward-advancing policy, Taiwan was elevated from a typical colony to become an extension of the Japanese inland and the center of Southeast Asia; this elevation inuenced both the daily life and consciousness of ordinary people and, in the process, weakened the intensity of their resistance. Is it true that the elevation into a national territory of the Japanese state and the change in Japans governing techniques necessarily discredits Yanaiharas accusation and endows Taiwan with subjectivity? Yang Zhao implies this without spelling it out. But if this is true, Hong Kong had long since ceased to be a British colony, for British control was much more subtle than that of the Japanese imperialists. (Under the British Commonwealth ag, Hong Kong was turned into a British base in Asia.) In this light, the nativist left rewriting of history for the purpose of establishing Taiwan as the center of Southeast Asia has the trade-off effect of exonerating the Japanese Empire. Surely this is too high a price. Does the historical rupture simply suggest that post-1927 Taiwan escaped the most repressive colonial governmentality? The fact is that the Japanese suppression of the Taiwanese left after 1927 never ceased, but intensied. According to Zhang Yanxian, in 1931 Taiwanese Communists were arrested and imprisoned by the colonial government, and various resistance movements were also suppressed, rather than spontaneously disappearing, as Yang has it. Having prompted Taiwan to move to the central position, Yang continues advancing southward, suturing Taiwan and Southeast Asia. Complementing Yang Changzhen and Liu Kexiangs naturalism, Yang Zhao puts forward a culturalism on an empirical basis. This is manifested not only in the construction of wealthy Taiwanese buildings with a Southeast Asian avor but also in the fact that Taiwan, as a part of Southeast Asia, is deeply impressed on the Japanese colonial mind. By the early 1940s, further, Taiwan had nally become Japans center in Southeast Asia.
pos 8.1-01.Chen
5/1/00
1:03 PM
Page 50
positions 8:1
Spring 2000
50
Before concluding, Yang interestingly cites a postwar observation, noting that some believed that if Taiwan is ambitious enough, it should take over Japans past trade position in Southeast Asia (and thus continue the cause of imperialism?). Yang concludes that whether forced or not, this was a unique transition point in Taiwans history, the only episode when it had the potential to rid itself of the fatalism of the margin and move to control the center. Yang rewrites Taiwanese history from the recent perspective of what he calls the Japanese revisionist colonial historian. His purpose is no more than to dene Taiwan as a part of Japan, of Southeast Asia, rather than the periphery of China; only through southward-advancing can Taiwan reemerge once again as the center of Southeast Asia.69 Yang goes on to argue that even though the theoretical basis for southward-advancing is derived from Taiwans colonial experiences, Taiwan at the time was no longer a typical colony. The colonial perspective is therefore valid, as long as the move from the painful margin to the central position is ultimately accomplished. Yangs rewriting can be seen as part of a wave that is reafrming the Japanese occupation movement in Taiwanese historical studies. The special 1994 issue of Japanese Digest, Taiwan under the Sun Flag, has precisely such a purpose. For example, Li Hongxi, the issue editor, lists the achievements of imperialist Japan in such areas as law, education, police, hygiene, and industry.70 This empiricist argument is ridiculous. In fact, the legal system imposed by colonialism only forced an ideological connection with local society. The purpose of such arguments is simply to retrieve lost history through an objective stance, a claim that conceals its authors separatist nationalism. By the same logic, one might afrm the American imperialist incursion and post-1949 Nationalist occupation. This selective rewriting is based on separatist ideology: it divorces Taiwan from China by foregrounding Taiwans relationship with Japan and downplaying that with the mainland. With respect to the Nationalist Great China ideology, Taiwanese nationalism is the mirror image, a twin brother.
pos 8.1-01.Chen
5/1/00
1:03 PM
Page 51

3.5.5. THE GRAB - IT LEFTISTS : NATIVE NATIONALISM
51
All the arguments in the southward-advancing special issue refer to the imperialist, colonial past, but without any reection on Taiwans southwardadvancing policy as reproducing the old colonialist expansionism. We might have expected Yang Zhao, the self-proclaimed native leftist, to at the very least point out this new historical current and raise some alarm, even if he did not attack the new imperialist stance. On the contrary, his apology for the governments policy is even more consciously trenchant, compared with the other authors in this special issue. Does this mean that we (the pan-leftists) have misconstrued the native leftist, have failed to see that the subjectivity of the leftists in Taiwan inevitably echoes the state apparatus/capital/the subempire? In short, are we forced to reconsider the native leftists? In An Experiment with a Taiwan Leftist Perspective, Yang Zhao puts forward a reasonably clear denition of the native leftists. He begins by severing native and leftist: In the idealist framework, the consistency I seek rests on two premises: one is native, the other is leftist.71 For Yang, this leftist is not the traditional conception (i.e., anticapitalist and against all forms of oppression), or a subject position in a given social space, or an identication or a commitment, but grab-it-ism (na-lai zu-yi); perhaps the leftist stance that has long been a critical force surveying the capitalist order can be grasped as a tentative new link with the world.72 Even more interestingly, for him, the leftist, roughly speaking . . . stresses distribution and equality as the central principle, rather than productivity and effectivity. That is to say, the leftist here is divorced from Marxism, and especially from political economy. Nobody is entitled to discredit anothers self-styling as leftist, since there is no universally accepted denition. But from the worldwide leftist depression emerges a bizarre Taiwanese grab-it leftism, which is not involved in issues of class, counterhegemony, or imperialism but rather echoes capital and the state apparatus, thus leaning toward the road to govern.73 Although the leftist is not uniformly dened, it is certain that whoever serves the capitalist male chauvinist regime is in fact rightist and not a leftist; Yangs native leftist is therefore identical with the Taiwanese rightist.
pos 8.1-01.Chen
5/1/00
1:03 PM
Page 52
positions 8:1
Spring 2000
52
If the Left is grabbed, the premise and priority referent and stance are the native. Since the designation leftist is only something to be donned, it can be changed or abandoned with the changing situation. This fact also partly explains the native leftists complicity with the Taiwanese rightist. What, then, does native mean? Yang denes it on two levels: rst, as a kind of judgment, also an expression of a position, starting from the understanding of the native Taiwan and taking appropriate action; second, it is not an essentialist nativism, courageously encountering all the elements that have inuenced this area, and, drawing on the experiences with Japan and the Nationalist governments, reestablishing a consolidated multitudinous nation vis--vis Japan and China. As a corrective to the old, narrow-minded nativism, Yangs new version demands a new worldview. Only through acknowledging that contemporary Taiwanese society and culture result from a pastiche of elements of different origins can one selectively refashion Taiwans future, which is, in my words, to establish a new nation-state.74 Herein lies Yangs nationalist proclamation. To be native is to selectively understand the alien culture and society from the native Taiwanese perspective, that is, to develop the stance of being based in Taiwan, thinking about China, facing the world from the interfaces of Taiwan-Chinaworld and native-alien.75 This Taiwan-centrism is not unique to Yang Zhao. Rather, it reects the mentality of certain Taiwanese intellectuals in general. On another level, Yang verges on the ridiculous by regarding TaiwanChina-world as internationalism.76 His internationalism, however, has nothing to do with the internationalist leftist tradition but simply means the internationalization of capital and touristic resources. This clearly suggests the projection of his rightist enunciative position. With this self-centric nationalism in mind, we can better understand that the native Left/Right chooses to abandon the leftist stance and to echo the national policy of southward-advancing for the purpose of establishing a new nation-state. Moreover, Yang Changzhen and Liu Kexiangs naturalism, Wu Michas Taiwan centrism, Yang Bos ethnocentric desire for recognition, Yang Zhaos imaginary construction of the margin-tocenter trajectory, and the whole project of the southward-advancing spe-
pos 8.1-01.Chen
5/1/00
1:03 PM
Page 53
53
cial issue can thus nd a position in the ideology of the mainstream. This explains structurally why this group of cultural discourses can complement the polity.
3.6. Taiwanese Nationalism Co-opted
The Taiwanese nationalist congurations of history based on Taiwan consciousness cannot be unied. Rather, different narratives reect different ideological positions. Nevertheless, these different positions for the most part agree that Taiwan consciousness derives from the long-term confrontation with the colonizers. Most narratives therefore turn on race, ethnicity, nationality, and the state as constitutive of Taiwan consciousness.77
3.6.1. THE PITFALLS
OF THE
TAIWAN CONSCIOUSNESS NARRATIVE
The narratives centered on Han people largely agree that Taiwans history is a history of colonization,78 which leads to the claim that Taiwans history is four hundred years long and that the aboriginal peoples ve-thousandyear history is only a prehistory.79 Therefore, strictly speaking, the fourhundred-year history actually amounts to aboriginal peoples four-hundredyear deprivation of subjectivity. This is manifested in Taiwan Aboriginal Peoples History. In the seventeenth century, before the Dutch and Spanish invasions, Taiwan aboriginal people were still the only masters on the island.80 Only later does Taiwanese history become a history of domination by successive colonial regimes coming from the outside. From the perspective of the aboriginal people, the colonization of Taiwan can be declared to be coming to an end only when they are again masters of the island. Likewise, for the working class, for homosexuals, and for women, only when they acquire subjectivity can decolonization be realized. Of course, these perspectives cannot be the position of the dominant nationalists. But the slighting of class, gender, and other marginal perspectives, combined with the sole attention to ethnicity, race, and nationality, is a major blind spot of the bourgeois male Han nationalists. Once ethnicity and nationality become the main concerns, arguments become narrowminded.81 Other considerations become minor and supplementary, even
pos 8.1-01.Chen
5/1/00
1:03 PM
Page 54
positions 8:1
Spring 2000
54
disappear. Take Shi Mings renowned Taiwanese Four-Hundred-Year History, for example; on the one hand, Shi adopts the class perspective, criticizing the nationalist leaders during the Japanese occupation period as coming from landlord, bourgeois, or petit bourgeois backgrounds and dividing the post-1949 Nationalist-controlled Taiwan into the categories of exploiting class and exploited class.82 On the other hand, he still concludes thus: In the February 28 revolution . . . the connections with the Chinese due to common descent were nally terminated. Taiwanese nationalism, i.e., aspiring for Taiwans independence and liberation, defending its nationalist interests, and being concerned with other nationalities futures, at last emerged as the single highest principle.83 Under this single and highest principle, the pan-class issue fades into the background. Similar narratives are also evident within academic studies of ethnicity and nationalism, which seem to be unable to keep a critical distance from the ofcial construction of this ethnic categorization. Wang Fuchangs study of ethnic merging follows the commonly accepted ofcial categorization84 based on provincial differences to indicate non-Taiwanness and thereby thrusts class, gender, and aboriginal status into the background. It is to be expected that future sociological work will question such ofcial categorizations and thus eventually challenge the ofcial story and its social effects. Zhang Maogui explores Taiwanese nationalism by drawing on Andersons notion of the nation as an imagined community.85 He also uses the notion of the tribal idol to explain the rising Taiwanese independence movement in the late 1980s.86 He adopts Shi Mings class perspective without asking who constructs the tribal idol; nor does he ask who builds the imagined community, or inquire into the class, gender, and ethnic belonging of the people articulating.87 It is hoped that these questions will be asked in future research in order to avoid the discursive effect of legitimizing the power bloc in the nation-building movement.88 In summary, in analyzing nationalism, we must investigate its articulating agent, as well as the interested groups and the historic blocs, in terms of their class, gender, and racial belongings, rather than naively attributing it to a collective cultural desire. In other words, we must abandon generalizing rhetoric and turn to the question of who constructs, appropriates, and co-opts nationalism and nationalist identity and who benets. As the
pos 8.1-01.Chen
5/1/00
1:03 PM
Page 55
55
Puerto Rican theorist James M. Blaut puts it, National struggle is indeed class struggle. It is a form of class struggle for state power and is not an autonomous force.89 Blaut suggests that nationalism can be the colonizeds resistance to the colonizers but also can be the proletariats alliance strategy for the purpose of obtaining power; alternatively, it is the national bourgeoisies displacement strategy for the purpose of easing their internal conicts or managing crisis. In a relevant analysis, Ernesto Laclau takes Nazism to be a populism of the dominant class. Stuart Hall likewise sees Thatchers neoconservatism as authoritarian populism.90 In a similar vein, Singapore feminists Heng and Devan have criticized the Singaporean nationalist suppression of women and minorities; they conclude by emphasizing that women, and all signs of the feminine, are by denition always and already antinational.91 After the mid-1980s, gay people also put forward a queer nation as a challenge to nationalist identity.92 Taiwanese queer discourse further points out that peoples homosexual predilection is more international, with no regard to nation, race, and complexion.93 And nally, Taiwanese lesbian feminists have even observed that we live in different countries, in different lands.94
3.6.2. THE THEORETICAL STRUCTURE OF TAIWANESE NATIONALISM
From this angle, we may see a different picture of Taiwanese nationalism. Taiwanese nationalist history can indeed be charted from the perspective of pan-class, with its content and form, agent and subject changing over time.95 But this kind of history is rare in existent academic narrativizing in Taiwan. From the 1635 aboriginal rebellion against the Dutch invaders,96 Taiwan has been plunged into a continuous liberation movement in which the major contention is the class struggle between colonizers and colonized. This has been carried on through Zhen Chengongs domination during the Ming dynasty, the Manchurian rule in the Qing dynasty, and continuing up until the turning point of the nationalist movement under the Japanese. Under the postWorld War I inuences of national self-determination and socialism, Taiwanese Communists began to put forward the notion of an independent Taiwans nation-building, which marked the beginning of the theorization of Taiwanese nationalism.
pos 8.1-01.Chen
5/1/00
1:03 PM
Page 56
positions 8:1
Spring 2000
56
After World War II, the Nationalist government initiated another colonization of Taiwan,97 as an external polity (Li Denghuis term). It wrenched Taiwan from Japan, then xed it into the American neocolonialist structure. According to the ofcial record, the Han people have been divided into Taiwanese (ben-shen-ren) and mainlanders (wai-shen-ren) since 1945.98 The suppression of the 28 February movement was diffused and gave rise to a long-lasting ethnic-provincial conict (shengji maodun) that intensied Taiwanese consciousness. By then, the Taiwanese nationalist movement was premised on the I-other division in accordance with the Taiwanese versus non-Taiwanese provincial difference. During the white horror control of the 1940s and 1950s, Taiwanese leftist nationalism was wiped out, and the Taiwan national independence movement was galvanized around the new American and the old Japanese colonizers. Subsequently, the nationalism spearheaded by the dominant ruling class constructed the Chinese Communists as the common enemy in order to legitimize its domination. Fighting against Communists therefore became both basic national policy and the common sense of mainstream ideology. American and Japanese imperialists were no longer the nationalist movements targets. This new, imaginary enemy existed for forty years, throughout the mutual isolation of the two governments and until the suspension of martial law, when the Red Chinese enemy was concretized, in particular through the events of 4 June. Fighting the Communists thus became the prime arena for the operation of Taiwanese nationalism, bequeathing to the present day the persistent Chinese nationalist, antiCommunist sentiment. The 1970s saw the rise of the nativist literature debate, which foregrounded such contentions as the China complex versus the Taiwan complex, Chinese versus Taiwanese consciousness, and Chinese identity versus Taiwanese identity; this debate stimulated further discussions of Taiwanese nationalism within the social space.99 Under the internal and external pressures that became evident as social forces were aggregated and the futility of recovering the mainland became clear, the Nationalist government began its nativizing transformation as promoted by Jiang Jingguo. The emphasis was shifted to taking root in Taiwan there was no more talk about resisting the CCP and Russia,
pos 8.1-01.Chen
5/1/00
1:03 PM
Page 57
57
only discussion of national unication. This was the beginning of the Taiwan Nationalist Party, whose basic structure was completed amid the 1993 Li-Hao contention, when the nonmainstream elements of the so-called Chinese Nationalist Party were defeated this was what Shi Huimin, vice director of the Nationalist Partys cultural committee, called silent revolution. The demolition of the Central Party Committee building in 1994 symbolized the end of an era. From the Taiwanese nationalist perspective, the focus of the ve-year silent revolution (19881993) was the provincial ethnic differences between mainland China and Taiwan, which escalated into the contradiction of national identity. Meanwhile, the internal conicts within power blocs were diffused downward, triggering the provincial (Taiwan) complex. Taiwanese consciousness, constructed throughout the years of Taiwanese nationalism, was at this time sutured with the sign of Li Denghui. Chen Fangming acutely comments on the Li complex in criticizing the Nationalist independence (taidu) tendency: The only thing that makes Li into the nodus of the complex is his birth in Taiwan. Other than this, he has nothing to do with Taiwanese society or the peoples sentiment. Li can curry the favor of the Taiwanese simply through his Taiwanese birth to the sorrow of the Taiwanese.100 For the self-conscious Taiwanese, after several hundred years of colonial experiences, the desire to replace the colonizers is exceptionally intense. The visible signs included a political stage crowded with mainlanders until the appearance of Li Denghui a concrete example of being ones own master. In the current context, where ethnic politics is the premise to the absence of class consciousness, Li Denghui of Han min-nan, bourgeois, heterosexual, and male takes over and swallows up the heated Taiwanese nationalist energy and the Taiwanese consciousness. Being the articulating agent, his ascension led to a revision of the national constitution, the general reelection of Congress, the attempt to join the UN, and the building of the new nation. In terms of ideology and the desire structure, when Li employed a sentimental rhetoric the chairman of the Nationalist Party (the sorrow of Taiwanese) and articulated his frank words (the Nationalist Party being an external polity), the base of the opposition party collapsed and was entirely co-opted.
pos 8.1-01.Chen
5/1/00
1:03 PM
Page 58
positions 8:1
Spring 2000
58
To sum up, the Jiang family effected great harm on Taiwanese society through its Chinese chauvinism. It imposed a partisan culture on the country through such parts of the ideological state apparatus as education and the media and transformed Taiwans modernity through an essentially fascist inculcation.101 On the one hand, the Jiang family tried to rid Taiwan of Japanese colonial culture. But on the other hand, it intervened into every social realm through a white terror totalitarianism that led to incorrigible distortion in the collective psychostructure, distortion that can still be seen in todays modes of communication, in interpersonal suspicion, and in alienation. Such fascist cultural forms as the patriarchal mindset, the whisper campaigns, the labeling of others as either friend or enemy, and surreptitious defaming still operate in Taiwanese society, especially among those who grew up during the white terror period. (The opposition parties and social movements were similarly plagued.) All these are the results of the Jiangs brand of Chinese nationalism. On the other hand, such a high-pressure cultural strategy also triggered the resistant Taiwanese consciousness and deepened the paranoia of being constantly suppressed and colonized, a complex that developed gradually from individual rebellion (psychological, individual action) to a more general level in the public sphere. As the opposite of Chinese chauvinism, Taiwanese nationalism resists the dominant hegemony. Simultaneously, it has also mirrored and duplicated the Chinese subconscious structure, attempting to build the new national culture through the top-down operation of the state apparatus rather than giving more autonomous space for subaltern groups in order to establish a cultural, as opposed to the nationalist, subjectivity. The Jiang familys Chinese chauvinist structure lives on in Taiwanese nationalism. In fact, Lis Taiwanese (min nan) Nationalist chauvinism crystallized the adversarial framework of the Taiwan versus mainland ofcial denition. From the historical-theoretical perspective, it put a full stop to anti-establishment nationalism. Now, for the rst time, Taiwanese nationalism has become the tool of the dominant ruling class; oppositional consciousness is converted into the affective foundation of the new nation-building pursued by the power bloc, to the sorrow of the Taiwanese people as a whole. The Taiwan Nationalist
pos 8.1-01.Chen
5/1/00
1:03 PM
Page 59
59
Party has co-opted the Taiwanese consciousness developed over several hundred years and adopted the strategy of ghting for power and for the acknowledgment of Taiwanese identity. At this stage, the Taiwanese nationalism centered around the state apparatus/capital has served only to combat the resurfacing of Chinese nationalism.
4. The Postnationalist Cultural Imaginary and the New International Localism
In this section, I will summarize the analysis of southward-advancing cultural discourse by returning to its social, political context; I will then deconstruct and next reconstruct Taiwanese nationalism. Finally, I shall return to my opening problematic on Third World cultural studies. Meanwhile, I will attempt to reinforce my point about popular democracy and about a new internationalist localism, repositioning nationalism and putting forward the de-nation or postnation as an alternative proposition.
4.1. The Imperialist Eye/I
The articulating function of the imperialist eye should at this point begin to be clear. Cultural discourse as the subempires eye viewing the world and as the new worldview constructed through the discourse of southwardadvancing are actually types of inspection with the eye of the old empire. In sections 3.3 and 3.5 I analyzed the common angle of the new subempire and the old empire. The map of the old Japanese empire nakedly manifests the cultural imaginary under the imperialist eye. This eye, crystallized and internalized through the historical process, resurfaces sixty years later as the eye of the subempire. Strictly speaking, however, there is a difference in the position of seeing between this new eye and the old one. A worldview (a view of the world) presupposes the location of the body, and implies the viewing subject Iwithout which there is no viewing of any world. The geopolitical location and the subject position of the I overdetermine both the world perceived by the eye and the world-structuring cultural imaginary. The old empires I refers to Tokyo, the southward-advancing headquarters during
pos 8.1-01.Chen
5/1/00
1:03 PM
Page 60
positions 8:1
Spring 2000
60
the 1920s and 1930s: Japanese, male, and bourgeois. The subempires I, however, is 1990s Taipei, southward-advancing and formerly the Japanese imperialist headquarters: today Han, min-nan, heterosexual, male, and bourgeois. Their historical difference lies only in their geopolitical location and ethnic identity. The southern Han people replace the Japanese, but the respective political unconscious of these groups shares a common projection of ethnocentrism. The important thing is that we see the historical inheritance, including both rupture and continuation. The cultural imaginary constructed by the old empires I is internalized in the body of subempire, forming his self, his worldview, and his imaginary.
4.2. Nation/State/Empire: The Hegemonic Trinity
We can now propose an answer to the questions posed earlier regarding the ideological implications, sources, genealogy, and operation of this southwardadvancing discourse. First, what are the cultural and political implications of southwardadvancing? As a manifestation of subimperial formation, southwardadvancing gained the full support of the advancing discourse, which provided a theoretical basis from the geological, historical, and literary points of view. Second, what is the operating mechanism of the southward-advancing discourse? What are its content and form? The strategy of interpolating the imperial subject lies in establishing historical, geographical, and cultural connections with the target of colonization (Southeast Asia and Nanyang) and with previous colonizers (Holland, China, Japan, and, tangentially, the United States). This enables self-denition, that is, the establishment of Taiwans historical and geographical relationship with the other through remapping and rewriting history, so as to discover the new status and identity of Taiwan. Third, what is the historical origin of southward-advancing? The discovery of Taiwans new identity comes almost completely from the cultural imaginary constructed by imperialists at the historical transition. The previously colonized make use of the colonizers cultural imaginary in the move to become the new colonizer. This involves accepting the colonizers
pos 8.1-01.Chen
5/1/00
1:03 PM
Page 61
61
perspective. Taiwan-centrism, Taiwan as the center of Southeast Asia, the Wallace line, and Duras all these bear the obvious imprint of the colonial empire. This means that decolonization is far from unrolling. On the contrary, it only sutures with southward-advancing policy by returning to Taiwanese history for evidence to justify the new Taiwan-centrism. The resources it draws on come from the cultural imaginary constructed by imperialism, not from the struggle between the colonized and the colonizer. This is what strikes me as the saddest and most painful result of my analysis. We can infer that in writing Taiwans history, decolonizing not only demands resistance; furthermore, only within the dialectical relationship between the colonizer and the colonized can the conditioned quality of resistance, and its identication with the colonizers, become clear. Indeed, this is the rst step of decolonization. Fourth, what is the ideological structure of the discourse under discussion? The co-opting of the colonial complex by the ruling class, which led to the mutual annexation of Taiwanese nationalism and statism, that is, colonial imperialism. On the ideological level, this constituted the desire and the legitimization for forming the Taiwanese subempire. To sum up, the southward-advancing discourse that supports subempire must be repositioned in Taiwans current political map. Under the pressure of global capitalist reconguration and Taiwans internal political struggles, the challenges from the opposition parties and social forces and the restructuring of political economic power (as formulated by the state apparatus) is a tripodal grand-scale project, including nation-building, state-(re)making, and empire-forming. The articulating agent of this trinity of hegemonic politics is the patriarchal, Han-min-nan-chauvinist, national bourgeoisie. Its unifying principle is to take Taiwan as the base, co-opting the social forces released after the suspension of the martial law and the dissolution of the old dictatorship. The hegemonic operation of the nationalist principle is the inheritor of the Jiang familys strategy of constructing the CCP as the imaginary other in order to establish the capitalist Republic of China and its brand of Chinese nationalism. Similarly, Taiwanese nationalism continues to target the CCP as it tries to unify Taiwan by covering up class, gender, and racial contradiction and to t Taiwan into the American neocolonialist structure, the better to exploit international labor,
pos 8.1-01.Chen
5/1/00
1:03 PM
Page 62
positions 8:1
Spring 2000
62
the environment, and the natural resources, all of which are disempowered within the global capitalist structure.102 In this light, southward-advancing and its cultural discourse constitute an important link in the hegemonic project; the discourse conjoins the Taiwanese consciousness forged over a long period of time, interpolating the desiring subject into nationalist subject position and making her/him proud of Taiwans expansion, and reinforcing the authority necessary for the remaking of the state, as it forms the subimperial consciousness in a way that will ensure economic prots but also gain a footing on the international stage and thus build the new nation-state. Constrained by so many interests, it is not surprising that the opposition Democratic Progressive Party has to not only endorse the project in which its interests are incorporated but also actively provide it with theoretical weapons (with the hope of reversing the principle of economic unication resulting from the westward-advancing project, that is, of gaining independence from the Chinese mainland). As early as Jiang Jingguos time, the Republic of China (ROC) was already a nation-state. The new nation (the Republic of China in Taiwan) is no more than a remaking of the state apparatus, co-opting oppositional forces, which leads not to a new nation, only to a new state. Inscribed within such an all-front strategy, the operation of cultural discourse is conned to rewriting history. Recent years have been ooded with such new versions of history in Taiwan studies, for example, on such issues as reexamining the 28 February movement, the Formosa Incident, and white terrorism. Meanwhile, the mainstream cultural institutes focus on massively constructing history, as indicated in Time Again Together in The World (Tianxia), the chronological history compiled by the National Policy Center, the new lm history produced for the ROCs fortieth anniversary, TV histories, and so on. This massive rewriting signies the current struggle for the power to interpret history. This interpretation is clearly future-oriented, not simply a retracing of the past. Much historiography originates from an individual political position or ideology, for the purpose of independent nation-building or reinforcing the power structure. Its most important function is to selectively organize the popular memory. Such memory is not objective but constructed and reconstructed through such history-(re)writing. This collective memory may manifest itself directly
pos 8.1-01.Chen
5/1/00
1:03 PM
Page 63
63
or indirectly in the political realm. In terms of fashioning the national identity and restructuring Taiwans history, ultimately all parties are doing the same thingnamely, building the new nation-state. As the whole project of rewriting history is selective, one of its means is to erase the injurious historical record, exemplied in demolishing the Central Party Committee building. Actually, as far as the KMTs erasure of history is concerned, what needed most urgently to be destroyed was perhaps the presidential ofce building, due to its connections with and status as the historical sign of the Japanese colonial headquarters as the external polity. The two buildings face each other in the center of Taipei City. The historical rewriting launched by the Taiwanese KMT is calculated to bulldoze the painful memories of the past forty years, to start over from scratch. Nevertheless, such an overhaul relies on past violence and authoritarian control and therefore undermines its original attempt. Counterhegemonic discourse could now propose that the old 28 February monument be enlarged and moved into the present space. Looking at the old imperialist headquarters, the KMT government headquarters, and the future so-called Taiwanese republic, the rulers are forced to remember past events and to encounter this historical memory every day.
4.3. Deconstructing/Reconstructing Nationalism: Postnation and Poststate
With these historical experiences in mind, any antihegemonic discourse and practice should reconsider whether Taiwan nationalism is not complicit with the powers that be. In the following section, I will raise some theoretical points. First, as Ernesto Laclau argues, nationalism has no essence but is classspecic.103 It also takes different forms in accordance with geography, history, time, and space. European nationalism was the basis of imperialism and colonialism, even of the extreme of racist fascism. After national independence, Third World nationalism, which was at one time anti-imperialist and anticolonialist, has tended to revert to a reliance on neocolonialism. The Filipino nationalist theoretician Constantino points out that Third World nationalism could be
pos 8.1-01.Chen
5/1/00
1:03 PM
Page 64
positions 8:1
Spring 2000
64
a struggle against oppression, a defensive, not an offensive weapon, a democratic, not an anti-democratic impulse. . . . Beginning as anti-colonial consciousness, nationalism is renewed in the period of neo-colonialism to combat types of metropolitan exploitation, in effect resuming the struggle for independence, this time in the economic arena. Finally, nationalism should graduate to wider and deeper social struggles, to eradicate all forms of exploitation.104 Thus, progressive nationalism should resist all forms of oppression, especially economic exploitation within the neocolonialist structure. Taiwans march southward is exactly the kind of neocolonialism that Philippine nationalism resists.105 Our reection on various forms of Taiwanese nationalism shows that they not only withdraw from resisting patriarchy, racism, the heterosexual system, class domination, and neocolonial imperialism (that of America and Japan); they also aspire to make Taiwan into a subempire in its own right. Second, many theories have shown that all forms of nationalism claim that nationalist interests are absolutely prior to other kinds of interests.106 This commonly accepted ofcial nationalism erases the interests of different social subjects. If a political movement does not care to differentiate peoples interests, it can only be neo-statism,107 which pursues the suppression of other groups interests and values. Fanon points out that if nationalism is not enriched, deepened by a rapid transformation into the social and political needs, in other words, humanism, it leads up to a blind alley.108 It is precisely because Taiwanese nationalism divorces itself from the needs of various social subjects that it is so easily co-opted by the state apparatus. Third, nationalism with the aim of nation-state-building is often unaware that the nation-state itself is an invention of Western imperialism. During the Wests period of expansion, the nation-state was constructed as a symbol of modernity and progress validating Western civilization and legitimizing its colonialism. Combined with developmentalism and the modernization ideology, the nation-state became a normative concept and an index of modernization.109 To adopt an independent nation-state as the goal then looks suspiciously like falling prey to the imperialist eye. Is the nation-state the only way out for the Third World? Is there any alterna-
pos 8.1-01.Chen
5/1/00
1:03 PM
Page 65
65
tive? We have seen that there are few cases in the Third World where nation-state-building fares well and avoids ethnic conicts. These are inescapable questions for nationalism. Yet current nationalism differs from the previous, anti-imperialist type; its purpose is internal unication and erasure of the internal other. In other words, it is introverted rather than extroverted. Fourth, self-centered nationalism is premised on a defensive, narcissistic mechanism and the law of the jungle and is therefore not conducive to any mutually benecial dialogic mode. Fanon lamented the continuously restaged tragedy of the Third World decolonizing project: From nationalism, we have passed to ultra-nationalism, to chauvinism, and nally to racism.110 More regrettably, as J. A. Hobson pointed out as early as 1902, nationalism can easily turn into imperialism: It is a debasement of this genuine nationalism, by attempts to overow its natural banks and absorb the people near, or the distant territory of reluctant and inassimilable people, that marks the passage from nationalism to spurious colonialism on the one hand, and Imperialism on the other.111 There is no necessary connection between racism and nationalism, or between nationalism and imperialism. Nevertheless, the trajectory of desire from individualism, racism, nationalism, statism, and colonialism to imperialism constitutes history per se unless political ethics intervene to destroy and transform the narcissistic mechanism or, alternatively, the denationalizing, new internationalism is developed to internalize the other, forging a hybrid intersubjectivity, and thus effects a process of becoming instead of accumulative being. In this context, new international localism based on dialogical alliance of popular democracy can resolve the dilemma, loosening the imposed nation-state category on the epistemological level; emphasizing the dialectic of local and international on the methodological level; resisting all hegemonic operations on the political level; internalizing the other on the ethical level; deconstructing the myth of primordial sentiment on the level of desire. In other words, it amounts to an alternative beyond the nationalism-imperialism paradigm.112 In this context, nationalism is a mediation of the local-international dialectic rather than an integrating principle. A nationalist liberation movement, accordingly, is only one among multiple fronts of social struggles, legitimate but not prior to all others in essence. This reconstructed nationalism cannot
pos 8.1-01.Chen
5/1/00
1:03 PM
Page 66
positions 8:1
Spring 2000
66
be easily co-opted by the power bloc and can therefore be a respectable liberating force. As Meaghan Morris formulates it, Im an internationalist, because Im a feminist. For women, workers, indigenous peoples, and homosexuals, it is only when they break through the national boundary that they can then form alliances with others and strengthen themselves. On this strategic level, there is no boundary between the First, Second, and Third Worlds. The areas rich in resources provide weapons for local struggle. The AIDS manual How to Make Love, for example, combines the U.S. AIDS studies conducted by Cindy Pattern and the situation in Taiwan and has proved to be a bombshell of sorts for the ofcial and general sex panic and homophobia.113 Similar nonstatist border-crossing also happens in the social movements of aboriginal peoples and the laborer class. This kind of cross-boundary praxis can be termed a postnational114 cultural imaginary from the margin. Here, post means (1) breaking the rigid lines of nationalist imagination, and (2) exploding the myth of the necessity of the nation-state, and (3) imagining something beyond the nation its space is full of broken nations constructed by suppressed social subjects after they have succeeded in subverting supposedly impregnable nationstates. One example noted above is Queer Nation, established in New York to clear a space for gays.115 Other possibilities include the Orchid Island Nation, Gau-Xiong Nation, workers nation, womens nation, aboriginal peoples nation these broken nations do not rely on grabbing the state apparatus and are therefore not statist and nationalistic but represent the nation without nationalism, in Julia Kristevas terms.116 Only through articulation politics among these broken countries can the bourgeois class structure, patriarchy, the heterosexual system, and racial chauvinism be toppled. I must emphasize here that these broken nations are neither based on grabbing a state apparatus nor anarchic. They recognize the factual existence of the state and its constitutive power on the social formation. But they attempt to develop their autonomous forces beyond the state and the commercial system and to play games with these agents both through cooperation and through struggle. Broken nations are not state-phobic but recognize themselves as the extension of the popular democracy, proliferating itself on the margin of the system and insisting on independence from it.
pos 8.1-01.Chen
5/1/00
1:03 PM
Page 67
67
4.4. Returning to the Third World
The positive effect Taiwans southward-advancing discourse might have consists in stimulating local, antihegemonic discourse and in deepening the understanding of the Third World structural position. The trajectory of colonialismdecolonialismre-neocolonialism shows that the ideological basis of the subempire could come into being because no decolonizing reection is fully under way; rather, the imperialist cultural imaginary is inherited. It remains to be asked whether other subempires, such as Singapore, Korea, and Hong Kong, face the same problem, in particular the local operation of the cultural-ideological mechanism. Some scholars are beginning to describe North Korea (which could be even more a subempire than Taiwan) as a quasi empire precisely in terms of its reproduction of the imperialist expansion. Hong Kong is somewhat different, but along the same lines as Taiwan. On the one hand, until recently it was still a traditional colony. On the other hand, its local capital also ows out, making it a new colonizer. Furthermore, the outgrowth of its commercialization is an important East Asian cultural industry (lm, music, satellite TV, etc.). What is the theoretical signicance of this rare historical phenomenon? To say the least, decolonizing reection is clearly the direction for future cultural studies. Rewriting history and recharting the map are important strategies in the Third World nationalist imagination.117 But the Third World critical discourse (including cultural studies) need not follow the delimitations of nation-state. It can also start from such a subject position as the broken nations of a certain class, gender, or minority (including gay people) and can reach to encompass common Third World experiences, as well as displaying different histories and maps. The praxis of PP21 (Peoples Plan for the 21st Century) proves both the ction of national boundaries and their own dispensability as a mediation between those suppressed subjects in the Third World. Finally, I want to stress that Third World cultural studies need not copy the traditional Western humanities paradigm of establishing a mega, universal, abstract theoretical framework. On the contrary, discourse originating from disturbing phenomena or problems confronted in reality, based
pos 8.1-01.Chen
5/1/00
1:03 PM
Page 68
positions 8:1
Spring 2000
68
on an analysis and theoretical interpretation so as to intervene in the real world, might prove to be more powerful and liberating. This is the political epistemology of Third World cultural studies. Interventional analysis is our best weapon. The self-reection and reconstructed liberation are our bases. Translated by Yiman Wang
Notes
5 6
After nishing this essay I learned of the existence of an English-language work titled similarly to this article. See Mary Pratt, Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation (New York: Routledge, 1992). For a more complete discussion of this issue, see Kuan-Hsing Chen, Meiti wenhua pipande renminminzhu tiaoyi luxian [Media and literary criticisms peoples democratic escape route] (Taipei: Tangshan, 1992), and Jiedu wenhua diguozhuyi [Jie-du cultural imperialism], preface to John Tomlinson, Cultural Imperialism, trans. Feng Jiansan (Taipei: Zhongguo Shibao, 1994). See Kuan-Hsing Chen, Voices from the Outside: Towards a New Internationalist Localism, Cultural Studies 6, no. 3 (1992): 167183, 192196, 238248; Meiti wenhua pipande renminminzhu tiaoyi luxian [Media and literary criticisms peoples democratic escape route]; and Jiedu wenhua diguozhuyi [Jie-du cultural imperialism], preface to John Tomlinson, Cultural Imperialism. ARENA is the acronym for Asian Regional Exchanges for New Alternatives, which was founded in 1982 as an international nongovernment organization and is now based in Hong Kong. Please see Simon During, ed., The Cultural Studies Reader (London: Routledge, 1993); and Lawrence Grossberg, Cary Nelson, and Paula Treichler, eds., Cultural Studies (New York: Routledge, 1992). Its senior editor is Tani Barlow. For a discussion of globalization, see Guillermo Gomez-Pea, The New World (B)order, Third Text 21 (19921993): 7179; Richard Falk, Democratizing, Internationalizing, and Globalizing: A Collage of Blurred Images, Third World Quarterly 13, no. 4 (1992): 627640; and Kevin Robins, Tradition and Translation: National Culture in Its Global Context, in Enterprise and Heritage: Crosscurrents of National Culture, ed. John Corner and Sylvia Harvey (London: Routledge, 1991). A representative is Homi Bhabha, whose articles of the last few years are included in The Location of Culture (London: Routledge, 1994). For other important articles, see Gayatri Spi-
pos 8.1-01.Chen
5/1/00
1:03 PM
Page 69
69
10
11
12 13 14 15
16
vak, The Postcolonial Critic: Interviews, Strategies, Dialogues (New York: Routledge, 1990); Post-Colonialism (special issue), Social Text 3132 (1992). Indian subaltern studies is usually regarded as postcolonial discourse. See Ranajit Guha and Gayatri Spivak, eds., Selected Subaltern Studies (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988). For a critique of postcolonialism, see Masao Miyoshi, A Borderless World?: From Colonialism to Transnationalism and the Decline of the Nation-State, Critical Inquiry 19 (1993): 726751; and Arif Dirlik, The Postcolonial Aura: Third World Criticism in the Age of Global Capitalism, Critical Inquiry 20 (1994): 328356. Stuart Hall, The Local and the Global: Globalization and Ethnicity and Old and New Identities, Old and New Ethnicities, in Culture, Globalization, and the World-System: Contemporary Conditions for the Representation of Identity, ed. Anthony D. King (Binghamtom, N.Y.: Department of Art and Art History, State University of New York at Binghamton, 1991); Hall, The Question of Cultural Identity, in Modernity and Its Futures, ed. Stuart Hall, David Held, and Anthony McGrew (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1992), 274316; and Hall, Cultural Studies and the Politics of Internationalization, in Stuart Hall: Critical Dialogues, ed. David Morley and Kuan-Hsing Chen (London: Routledge, 1995). The Chinese version, translated by Jiansan Feng, is published by Times Publishing House. For more detailed criticism, see my introduction to the Chinese version, Defusing Cultural Imperialism. See Carl E. Pletsch, The Three Worlds, or the Division of Social Scientic Labor, circa 19501975, Comparative Studies in Society and History 23, no. 4 (1981): 565596, and Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures (London: Verso, 1992), 287318. For studies on global capital, see Frederick Clairmonte, The Political Economy of Transnational Power, in Partisan Scholarship, ed. Peter Limqueco (Manila: Journal of Contemporary Asia Publishers, 1989), 320343. For the rst four points, see Harry Magdoff, Imperialism: From the Colonial Age to the Present (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1978), 140, 242244. Miyoshi, A Borderless World?, 728. For an Asian leftist analysis of Asia see Kumar David and Santasilan Kadirgamar, eds., Ethnicity: Identity, Conict, Crisis (Hong Kong: ARENA Press, 1989). The most typical case of the transformation of colonies into neocolonies is the African continent. The division of new nation-states conforms almost exactly to the old imperialist colonial divisions. Also see Michael Hechter, Internal Colonialism: The Celtic Fringe in British National Development, 1536 1966 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975) for a discussion of internal colonization. Strictly speaking, internal refers to the inside of a nationstate in the geographical sense. From the postnational perspective, however, there is no difference between internal and external. See section 4.3. See Edward Soja, Postmodern Geography: Representation of Space in Critical Social Theory (London: Verso, 1989), 1073.
pos 8.1-01.Chen
5/1/00
1:03 PM
Page 70
positions 8:1
Spring 2000
70
17 Cultural studies is generally weak in studies on imperialism and colonialism. This more or less reects the advantageous geopolitical position of its practitioners. 18 Subempire is a new phenomenon. Certain Korean scholars describe Korea as a quasi empire. This was pointed out by Chen Yinzhen in an 11 June 1994 Cultural Studies Seminar. I accepted the suggestion in my revision, in order to drop the -ism and thus the confusion caused by imperialism. 19 For opposing views, see Xu Zongmei, Nanxiang re fuhua meiguiyuan? Fansheng guonei nanxiang zhengcede duihua shengtai [Reections on the discursive ecology of the southward advance policy], Zhongshi anbao [China evening times], 1994, and Huang Yuling, Nanxiang jiujin wei nazang? [Southward advance, what for?], Zhongguo shibao [China times], 31 March 1994, 9. 20 For the theorization of imperialism, see V. I. Lenin, Imperialism in the Highest Stage of Capitalism (New York: International, 1939); Magdoff, Imperialism; J. A. Hobson, Imperialism (1902; reprint, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1965); and Rosa Luxemburg, The National Question: Selected Writings of Rosa Luxemburg (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1976). 21 Whether America is an empire (and in what sense) is not my concern here. For discussions of these questions, please see the famous work by Herbert Schiller, Mass Communications and American Empire, 2d ed. (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1992). 22 China Times, 21 February 1994: 12. This was the current economy ministers term. 23 See Wu Yongyis criticism of Back Alley Studios production of the documentary Taiwan Friends. 24 Gerald Tan, The Next NICs of Asia, Third World Quarterly 14, no. 1 (1993): 5773. 25 Ibid., 63, 65. 26 For the collaboration of national capital and the state apparatus, see Jenn-hwann Wang, Taiwan xin zhengshang guanxide xingcheng yu zhengzhi zhuanxing [The state, capital, and Taiwans political transition], Taiwan shehui yanjiu [Taiwan: A radical quarterly in social studies], 14 (1993): 123164. 27 See the chapter Three Worlds Theory in Ahmad, In Theory, 287318. 28 For recent discussions on current and next-generation NICs, please see Tan, The Next NICs of Asia. 29 Orientalism is usually translated as dong fang zhu yi (theory on the East). This of course is not accurate; Orientalism actually suggests prejudices implied in perceiving the East from the West-centric perspective. 30 Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1993), 7. 31 Ibid., 9. 32 See E. J. Hobsbaum, Nations and Nationalism since 1780: Programme, Myth, Reality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), and Qiu Yafei, Guozu yigou qingjiede fanzuxing ji qi renzhi gouxian [The atavism of the nationalist complex and its cognitive pitfalls], Daoyu bianyiyuan [Isle margin] 8 (1993): 6879.
pos 8.1-01.Chen
5/1/00
1:03 PM
Page 71
71
33 Huang Meiying, Biandongde guojie yu zujie [The changing boundaries of nations and states], Zili Zaobao [Indepentent daily], 2 August 1993. 34 Some may object that my analysis is an overcorrection and that the writer was only writing with passion, to the detriment of critical thought. But it is precisely this passion that reveals desire in the psychoanalytical sense. 35 In this article, I for the most part follow Antonio Gramsci, Louis Althusser, and Halls line of seeing ideology as a system of representation through which the social subject understands the world and lives in it. 36 Renjian supplement, China Times, 2 March 1994. 37 See Principal Lis statement in Lifayuan Bulletin (1994). My analysis of Principal Lis part focuses on the editing of the Renjian supplement and has nothing to do with Lis motivations. 38 See Tani Barlow, Colonialisms Career in Postwar China Studies, positions 2, no. 1 (1993): 224267. 39 Peripheral areas is unclear in its reference. But the illustrations and captions indicate that the phrase includes China and Japan. The next days front page contains a picture whose caption reads, The close connections between China, Japan, and Southeast Asia. The phrases ambiguity opens up the possibility of interpretation: does the unnameable project subconscious anxiety, hostility, or the Oedipus complex? This imaginary other is the basis of an ideological operation that I will discuss in further detail later in the essay. 40 Fred Yen Liang Chius study shows that Taiwan was mentioned in Chinese history as early as 230 A.D., in Power Manipulation in the History of the Three Kingdoms as yizhou; in History of Shui Dynasty as LiuChiu Country; in the Song dynastys Rose Collection as tian bi she ye; and in the Chen Dis 1602 Record of the East Borders as Taiwan to the Ming imperialist government. See Fred Y. L. Chiu, Some Observations on Social Discourse Regarding Taiwans Primordial Inhabitants (unpublished ms., 1994). For a discussion of this period of Taiwans history, see Cao Yonghe, Taiwan zaoqi lishi yanjiu [Studies in early Taiwan history], fourth ed. (Taipei: Lianjing, 1994). 41 Nationalism in Southeast Asia is complicated by elements of class, religion, and race and therefore takes different forms. For the local relevant critiques on nationalism in Thailand, Indochina, the Philippines, and Burma, see Teresa Encarnacion and Eduardo Tadem, Ethnic Self-Determination and Separatist Movements in Southeast Asia, in David and Kadirgamar, Ethnicity, 7094; for Malaysia see Jomo Kwame Sundaram, Nationalist Alternative for Malaysia?, in Partisan Scholarship, ed. Peter Limqueco (Manila: Journal of Contemporary Asia Publishers, 1989), 213232, and Zawawi Ibrahim, Ethnicity in Malaysia, in David and Kadirgamar, Ethnicity, 126142. 42 Renato Constantino, The Philippines: The Continuing Past (Quezon City, Philippines: Foundation for Nationalist Studies, 1990), 1415. 43 Geok Boi Lee, Syonan: Singapore under the Japanese (194245) (Singapore: Singapore Heritage Society, 1992), 1215.
pos 8.1-01.Chen
5/1/00
1:03 PM
Page 72
positions 8:1
Spring 2000
72
44 Sundaram, Nationalist Alternative for Malaysia? 219. 45 Lee, Syonan, 127130. 46 Renato Constantino, The Philippines: A Past Revisited (Pre-Spanish1941) (Quezon City, Philippines: Foundation for Nationalist Studies, 1992), 5860. 47 Renato Constantino, The Making of a Filipino: A Story of Philippine Colonial Politics (Quezon City, Philippines: Malaya Books, 1991), 289. 48 Renato Constantino, Nationalism and Liberation (Quezon City, Philippines: Karrel, Inc., 1988), 3738. 49 Independently of Charles Darwin, and just before the publication of Darwins Origin of Species, Wallace developed a theory of evolution. More interestingly, as a socialist, Wallace objected to the social Darwinists abuse of evolutionary theory. See Greta Jones, Social Darwinism and English Thought: The Interaction between Biological and Social Theory (Sussex: Harvester Press, 1980), 1034. For evolution and imperialism, see Richard Hofstadter, Social Darwinism in American Thought (New York: Braziller, 1965), especially the chapter on racism and imperialism. I am grateful to Fu Dawei for providing me with this information. 50 For related academic works, see Wu Micha, Taiwan jindaishi yanjiu [The study of modern Taiwan history] (Taipei: Daoxiang, 1991). 51 This is cited from Wang Zhenhuans title. His is virtually the only critical argument; it analyzes the negative impact of southward-advancing policy on working-class people in the context of capital. 52 For the local hostility to the image of the Chinese, see Leo Suryadinata, Primubi Indonesians, the Chinese Minority and China (Kuala Lumpur: Heinemann, 1975), and Constantino, The Philippines: A Past Revisited. 53 The southward-advancing discourse allows neither position nor space for women, who may indeed not even want this position. Does the fact that all the articles are written by heterosexual males mean that women are not qualied to address this issue? My own explanation is that women critics refuse to be complicit in this discourse. 54 See Nancy Hartsock, Money, Sex, and Power: Toward a Feminist Historical Materialism (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1983). 55 Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks (New York: Grove, 1967), 63. 56 See Ien Ang, Buhui shuo Zhonguohua [On not speaking Chinese], trans. Shi Yi-min, Zhongwai Wenxue [Chung Wai literary monthly], 7 (1992): 4869 for a discussion of the negative results of the identication with Chinese culture for overseas Chinese. 57 Yang Zhao, Wangshi zuiyilu [A memorial note on the past], Lianhe Wenxue [UNITAS: a literary monthly] 101 (1993): 8889. 58 Ibid., 90. 59 Nandy followed Fanons Black Skin, White Masks. 60 Zhang Juanfen, Xu Xinliang jiang chushu tan xinxing minzu [Xu Xinlang will publish a book on The Rising Nation], Zhongguo Shibao [China times], 31 March 1994. 61 Li Guangzhen, Pipan lunshude jianbinYang Zhao zhuanfang [The vanguard of criti-
pos 8.1-01.Chen
5/1/00
1:03 PM
Page 73
73
62
63 64
65 66 67 68 69
70 71 72 73 74
75 76 77
cal discourse: an interview with Yang Zhao], Guanghua 2 (1994); Yang Zhao, Linjiezhanshangde sisu [Thinking on the critical mass] (Taipei: Zili Wanbao, 1993). Yang Zhaos orthodox historical training at Taiwan University and Harvard is evidently also at the foundation of his argument. See Yan Shannong, Gaoxuan lianjiande shaoian xiake qiantan [A commentary on A Dissidents Note] Guanhua 2 (1994): 8688. Yang 1995, 15. This is not a personal accusation. In his 1993 The Worldview of the Native Leftist, Yang emphasizes Taiwan, China, and the world and the native, the alien culture. Southeast Asia is never clearly on his map (The Worldview of the Native Leftist, 16), unless it is in fact the world. See section 3.4. Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth (New York: Grove, 1968), 51. Ibid., 52. Fanon was only half correct here. The analysis of the southward-advancing special edition reveals the dream of becoming the colonizer. According to Yu Minxiu, the imperialist mindset did not originate only in Taiwan but is the result of China and Taiwans special doctrine of the endless grand country. A Cornell University Asian Studies professor of Japanese descent, Naoki Sakai, has pointed out that Yang Zhaos revisionist historians were all rightists seeking retrospectively to justify Japanese imperialist expansion. See Sakai, Subject and/or Shutai and Inscription of Cultural Difference (paper presented at the Reexamining Cultural Imaginary of Modernity symposium, National Tsing-Hua University, Taiwan, 1994). Editors introduction, Riben Wenzi [Japan digest], Taiyang qixiade Taiwan [A special issue on Taiwan under the sun ag], 1994. Yang, Linjiezhanshangde sisu, 1213. Ibid., 15. For Yang Zhaos recent discussion of native and leftist, see the interview in Guanghua 2 (1994): 9192. Lu Zhenhui proposes an interesting differentiation of the new and old nativists: the old he terms indigenous independence, while the new are foreign imported independence. Yang Zhao is an exact epitome of the latter. Quoted in the KMT Nationalist 1992 election documents. Yang, Linjiezhanshangde sisu, 710. For arguments on different classes and ideologies, see Wu Sanlian and Cai Peihuo, Taiwan minzu yundongshi [A history of Taiwan nationalist movement] (Taipei: Zili Wanbao, 1971); Shi Ming, Taiwanren sibai nian shi [The four hundred years history of Taiwanese] (Taipei: Pengdao Wenhau Gongsi [Pengdao Culture Co.], 1980); Shi Xinyi, Women dou shi taiwan minzu ernu: Taiwan minzu yu taiwan minzu zhuyi [We are all sons and daughters of the Taiwanese nation: Taiwanese nation and Taiwanese nationalism], Taiwan xin wenhua [Taiwan new culture] 16 (1988): 6991; and Yang Bichuan, Rizhu shidai taiwanren fankangshi [A history of the Taiwanese resistance during the Japanese occupation] (Taipei: Daoxiang, 1988).
pos 8.1-01.Chen
5/1/00
1:03 PM
Page 74
positions 8:1
Spring 2000
74
78 Qiu Guifen, Faxian Taiwan: Jiangou Taiwan houzhimin renshu [Discovering Taiwan: constructing Taiwans postcolonial discourse] (Bijiao wenxue huiyi, 1992), 1. 79 Shi-mi 1980, 11. 80 Yijian Zhaoluer and Lawagao Laigelake, Taiwan yuanzhuminzude fazhan shi [The history of the development of Taiwans aboriginal nations], Lieren Wenhua [Hunters culture] 16 (1992): 33. 81 Monique Wittig, The Straight Mind and Other Essays (Boston: Beacon Press, 1992). 82 Shi Ming, Taiwanren sibai nian shi, 10591064. 83 Ibid., 1096. 84 Wang Fuchang, Shenji ronghe de benzhiyige jingyan yu lilun de tantao [The essence of ethnic integration an empirical and theoretical discourse], in Proceedings of the Conference on Provinciality, Ethnicity and National Identity (Taipei: National Policy Center, 1993), 29. 85 Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1991). 86 Ibid., 614. 87 Miyoshi criticizes Anderson for failing to ask who imagines the community (A Borderless World?, 732). 88 For a detailed sociological critique, see Chao Kang, Xiaoxin guojiazu: pipande sheyun ji shiyunde pipan [Watch out for the nation: critical social and critique of social movements] (Taipei: Tangshan, 1994). 89 James M. Blaut, The National Question: Decolonising the Theory of Nationalism (London: Zed Books, 1987), 24, 57100. 90 For details see Kuan-Hsing Chen, Huayuanlide laihama [The toad in the garden Stuart Hall on Thatcherism], Dangdai [Contemporary] April 1988. 91 Geraldine Heng and Janadas Devan, State Fatherhood: The Politics of Nationalism, Sexuality and Race in Singapore, in Nationalisms and Sexualities, ed. Andrew Parker et al. (London: Routledge, 1992), 356. 92 Queer Nation was established in New York in 1990. See Margrette Cruikshank, The Gay and Lesbian Liberation Movement (New York: Routledge, 1992), 176177. The Freedom Newspaper published by a Taiwanese lesbian group made Queer Nation the topic of its second issue. 93 Li Youxin, Nantongxinglian dianying [Gay mens cinema] (Taipei: Zhi-wen, 1993), 8. 94 This quotation is not literalized (wenzi hua). 95 Class here does not necessarily conform to the orthodox sociological term. I extend and combine Pierre Bourdieus notion of class habitus as the composition of social, cultural, and economic capital and Wittigs feminist view of women as epitomizing the dominated class. Pan-class here takes into consideration the multilayered relations of domination. I thank Ke Zhimin for help in clarifying the concept of class. 96 Shi Xinyi, Women dou shi taiwan minzu ernu, 83 and Lin Huazhou, Lishishangde
pos 8.1-01.Chen
5/1/00
1:03 PM
Page 75
75
Yuanzhumin [Aboriginals in history], Lieren Wenhua [Hunters culture] 16 (1992): 45. 97 Even the nationalist Chinese should acknowledge this as internal colonization. Kuan-Hsing Chen has combined the two complex terms of race and class in an interesting reading of Taiwans modernity,Jiedu wenhua diguozhuyi. 98 Marshall Johnson, Classication, Markets, and the State: Constructing the Ethnic Division of Labor on Taiwan (Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago, 1990), 120. 99 Both ofcials and nonofcial people joined this debate. In the mid-1980s, a debate centered on literature was again launched outside the parties. See Shi Minhui, ed., Taiwan yishilun zhanxuanji: Taiwan jie yu zhongguo jie de zong juesuan [An anthology of the debate on Taiwan consciousness: the nal account of the Taiwan complex and the China complex] (Taipei: Qianwei, 1988). 100 Chen Fangming, Taiwan neibu minzhude guancha [Observations on democracy inside Taiwan] (Taiwan: Independence, 1990), 140. My research shows that both Li complex and the sorrow of Taiwanese were coined by Chen Fangming. 101 Kuan-Hsing Chen, Jiedu wenhua diguozhuyi. 102 My interpretation is an extension of Chiu Yafeis study of nationalism, Guozu yigou qingjiede fanzuxing ji qi renzhi gouxian. 103 Ernesto Laclau, Politics and Ideology in Marxist Theory (London: Verso, 1977), 143198. Laclau now resides in London. 104 Constantino, Nationalism and Liberation, 2223. 105 My 1993 eldwork in the Philippines, during a conference, showed that Filipino intellectuals, both in and outside the academy, were offended by Taiwans advance into the Subik Gulf, calling it imperialism. My writing draws on their opinions, for which I thank them. 106 John Breuilly, Nationalism and the State (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985), 3. 107 Wu Yongyi, Yizizhichade bentupai he bentu zuopai [Just one word difference between nativist and native leftist], Daoyu bianyuan [Isle margin] 9 (1994): 104. 108 Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, 204. 109 For English-language writings on nationalism and national modernization, please see Anderson, Imagined Communities; Breuilly, Nationalism and the State; Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983); Hobsbaum, Nations and Nationalism since 1780; Hobsbaum and T. Ranger, eds., The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983); Etienne Balibar and Immanuel Wallerstein, Race, Nation, Class: Ambiguous Identities (London: Verso, 1991); Anthony D. Smith, Theories of Nationalism (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1983); and Homi K. Bhabha, ed., Nation and Narration (London: Routledge, 1990). For recent discussion on the nation-state in conjunction with modernization, see John Tomlinson, Cultural Imperialism (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991), 68100. Classics in the study of imperialism include Hobson, Imperialism; Lenin, Imperialism in the Highest Stage of Capitalism; Luxemburg, The National Question; and Magdoff, Imperialism.
pos 8.1-01.Chen
5/1/00
1:03 PM
Page 76
positions 8:1
Spring 2000
76
110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117
Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, 156. Hobson, Imperialism, 6. See Kuan-Hsing Chen, Meiti wenhua pipande renminminzhu tiaoyi luxian. I thank Ni Jiazhen, the head of the AIDS working group for Awakening Foundation, for providing me with materials. This term came out of discussions by Chiu Yanliang and Wu Yongyi. Cruikshank, The Gay and Lesbian Liberation Movement. Julia Kristeva, Nation without Nationalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993). Anderson, Imagined Communities, 163185.
Copyright of positions is the property of Duke University Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use.

The Imperialist Eye - Taiwanpoco

Enviado por

Dados do documento

Descrição original:

Título original

Direitos autorais

Formatos disponíveis

Compartilhar este documento

Compartilhar ou incorporar documento

Opções de compartilhamento

Você considera este documento útil?

Este conteúdo é inapropriado?

Direitos autorais:

Formatos disponíveis

The Imperialist Eye - Taiwanpoco

Enviado por

Direitos autorais:

Formatos disponíveis

pos 8.1-01.

positions 8:1 2000 by Duke University Press

1. The Problematic of a Third World Cultural Studies

Chen The Imperialist Eye

Chen The Imperialist Eye

Chen The Imperialist Eye

Chen The Imperialist Eye

Chen The Imperialist Eye

Chen The Imperialist Eye

Chen The Imperialist Eye

Chen The Imperialist Eye

3.2.1. THE SIGN VALUE OF THE BLACK TIDE

IMPERIALISM AND SOUTHEAST ASIA

Chen The Imperialist Eye

Chen The Imperialist Eye

Chen The Imperialist Eye

3.2.5. XEROXING THE IMPERIALIST CULTURAL IMAGINARY

Chen The Imperialist Eye

Chen The Imperialist Eye

Chen The Imperialist Eye

Chen The Imperialist Eye

WOMAN : SEXUAL TRIUMPHALISM

Chen The Imperialist Eye

Chen The Imperialist Eye

REUNIFICATION / INDEPENDENCE DICHOTOMY

Chen The Imperialist Eye

Chen The Imperialist Eye

Chen The Imperialist Eye

Chen The Imperialist Eye

Chen The Imperialist Eye

TAIWAN CONSCIOUSNESS NARRATIVE

Chen The Imperialist Eye

Chen The Imperialist Eye

Chen The Imperialist Eye

Chen The Imperialist Eye

Chen The Imperialist Eye

Chen The Imperialist Eye

Chen The Imperialist Eye

4.4. Returning to the Third World

Chen The Imperialist Eye

Chen The Imperialist Eye

Chen The Imperialist Eye

Chen The Imperialist Eye

110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117

Você também pode gostar