In their introduction to Comparatizing Taiwan, editors Shih Shu-mei and Liao Ping-hui propose analyzing the nation not as an individual area of study but as “a site and a product of relations with other entities and areas in terms of culture, geography, history, politics, and economy.” In the 13 chapters of this collection, leading scholars of Taiwan studies and world culture detail how the nation might be best understood vis-à-vis other countries, islands, economies, indigenous and settler cultures, and post-colonial societies.
Comparatizing Taiwan serves as a critique of traditional understandings of nationalism and geography. While, in conventional scholarship, the subject of Taiwan is most often brought up in relation to mainland China, the authors find other points of comparison. Readers of this work are challenged to think of Taiwan in relation to entities such as the Canadian province of Quebec or even relatively small Caribbean Islands. Through a comparative approach, the editors propose to “bring out the richness of Taiwan” and also “to offer a model for studying small nations.”
Breaking Down Exceptionalisms
In his thought-provoking opening essay, “Comparativism and Taiwan studies: Analyzing Taiwan in/out of context, or Taiwan as an East Asian New World Society,” Frank Muyard, an assistant professor at National Central University in northern Taiwan’s Taoyuan City, articulates the possibilities for employing a comparative approach in the study of the nation. Muyard sets a radical tone for Comparatizing Taiwan by challenging the notion that the country can only be compared with other Third Wave East Asian democracies such as South Korea, or with mainland China, given their presumed civilizational similarities.
Instead, he argues, new perspectives might be gained by contrasting Taiwan with New World territories that experienced multiple waves of colonialization like Quebec. As Muyard notes, in the case of both Taiwan and Quebec, one sees “the same oppression of the local and popular culture and language, a similar de-culturalization of the ‘native’ settlers, and similar stigmas of ethnic, class, and cultural inferiority.”
Alternatively, Hsiao Li-chun, an associate professor in the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures at National Taiwan University (NTU) in Taipei, offers the Caribbean as a point of reference to understand Taiwan’s relationship to modernity and coloniality and as a critique of the Euro-American biases of foreign language and literature departments at Taiwanese tertiary institutions.
Several of the essays within Comparatizing Taiwan give re-interpretations of Taiwanese literature. Wu Chien-heng, an assistant professor in the Department of English at National Kaohsiung Normal University in southern Taiwan, challenges conventional readings of Wu Zhuoliu’s (吳濁流) celebrated novel Orphan of Asia, a semi-autobiographical work completed in 1945 and set during the period of Japanese colonial rule over Taiwan (1895–1945). The orphan metaphor is often understood to represent Taiwan’s dispossession from China. Instead, Wu Chien-heng argues, one might understand the work as demonstrative of universal themes of the anti-colonial struggle.
Likewise, in her essay “The Archipelago of Taiwan literature: Comparative methods and island writings in Taiwan,” Huang Yu-ting seeks to decenter Taiwan literature from any singular understanding. Rather than being a single island, Taiwan literature should be seen as an archipelago, with an infinite and shifting number of relationships and meanings, she opines.
Meanwhile, Jing Tsu, a professor of modern Chinese literature in the Department of East Asian Languages and Literature at Yale University, examines Sinophone writing in Macau and the growing awareness of Hakka language and literature in Taiwan, again with an eye to adding further layers of complexity to literary studies.
Limits of Translatability
While comparison is the underlying theme of Comparatizing Taiwan, many works in the volume emphasize that similarity does not mean sameness. In her essay “Is feminism translatable?: Spivak, Taiwan, A-Wu,” Shih Shu-mei, who is a professor of Asian languages and cultures, comparative literature and Asian-American studies at the University of California, Los Angeles and holds the Hong-yin and Suet-fong Chan Professorship in Chinese at the University of Hong Kong, recounts and analyzes an actual encounter between Columbia University professor and post-colonial theorist Gayatri Spivak and a group of Taiwanese feminist academics and graduate students at a traditional teahouse in 2002.
What should have been a casual occasion for discussing seemingly familiar notions of feminist ideology became a lesson in the limits of translatability as tempers flared during the meeting. Shih interprets Spivak’s tirade against the local scholars as indicative of the “gaps” between Western feminists and Taiwanese scholars. She also offers an insightful analysis of the writings of Liglav A-Wu, an indigenous feminist in Taiwan.
In her contribution to the volume, Margaret Hillenbrand, an associate professor of modern Chinese literature at the University of Oxford, compares Pai Hsien-yung’s (白先勇) Taipei People with James Joyce’s Dubliners. While Hillenbrand finds uncanny parallels in both the form and context of the two stories, she notes that the “slivers of incommensurability” are also thought-provoking.
Broader Contextualization
Throughout Comparatizing Taiwan, one sees an emphasis on breaking down notions of nationalism and national exceptionalism. Wang Horng-luen, an associate research fellow at the Institute of Sociology at Academia Sinica, Taiwan’s foremost research institution, and an adjunct associate professor at NTU, contextualizes Taiwanese nationalistic sentiments within the broader currents of East Asia and finds that Taiwanese feelings of national grievance are not so exceptional but are common to the nationalisms found in the region, such as in Japan and South Korea. Wang proposes replacing feelings of resentment with compassion in order to build ties between peoples.
Karen Thornber, chair of comparative literature at Harvard University, proposes viewing Taiwanese environmental literature within a global context “to break down barriers of isolation, insularity, and exceptionalism.” As Thornber notes, “Although human societies, the environments in which they live, and the dilemmas facing both people and ecosystems are distinctive, they are not unique.”
In her innovative essay, “Body (language) across the sea: Gender, ethnicity, and embodiment of post-colonial modernity,” Faye Yuan Kleeman, an associate professor in the Department of Asian Languages and Civilizations at the University of Colorado, Boulder, traces the careers of two dancers from Japanese colonies—Choi Seung-hee (1911–1969) of Korea and Tsai Jui-yueh (蔡瑞月, 1921–2005) of Taiwan. As Kleeman notes, the dancers’ stories provide “a glimpse into how culture and knowledge was transmitted and appropriated, not only within Japan but throughout the empire in a way that had reverberations well into the post-colonial period.”
Both Choi and Tsai achieved fame yet struggled under the racist imperatives of imperial Japanese rule, particularly after the outbreak of war. Following the end of the conflict and national liberation, they were persecuted by their respective governments.
Choi spend her postwar years in socialist North Korea. Though she was given an official position, she was later purged by the Workers’ Party of Korea. Her fate was unknown until the early 2000s, when the year of her death was announced by the North Korean authorities. Tsai, meanwhile, was a victim of the White Terror, a period of political repression in Taiwan, and spent three years in prison on outlying Green Island. Ironically, though recognized as world-class dancers before the war, Choi and Tsai were treated as second-class citizens and denied their aspirations to cosmopolitanism in the post-colonial era.
Liao Ping-hui, Chuan Lyu Endowed Chair Professor in Taiwan Studies at the University of California, San Diego, analyzes the Taiwan travelogues of Satō Haruo (1892–1964). Through comparing the author’s works with other Japanese travel writings of the era, Liao uses Satō’s depictions of Japanese characters’ struggles to adapt to their new environment, particularly Taiwan’s heat and humidity, to re-evaluate the author’s relationship to Japanese imperialism.
In her essay, Liou Liang-ya, a professor in the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures at NTU, scrutinizes the emergence of sexual diversity studies in Taiwan during the 1990s. Liou highlights tensions between the gay movement and the identity politics that have contributed to the Taiwan Identity movement. For instance, she highlights a conflict over the municipal government’s decision to rename Taipei New Park, formerly a popular location among members of the gay community, as the 228 Peace Memorial Park to commemorate those who lost their lives in the February 28, 1947 anti-government uprising.
Liou concludes that scholars of sexual diversity studies, or queer studies, as the discipline is often known, should reconsider identity politics: “Rather than being always at odds with each other, as some leading queer scholars led us to believe, post-colonial and queer discourses have intersected with each other.”
In the concluding essay of the volume, “Taiwan after the colonial century: Bringing China into the foreground,” Wu Jieh-min, an associate professor in the Institute of Sociology at Academia Sinica, traces Taiwan’s economic development during the Japanese colonial period and then under the Republic of China government. Wu also addresses the country’s current relationship with mainland China and examines the influence that closer cross-strait ties are having on Taiwanese nongovernmental groups.
Challenges of Comparison
Comparatizing Taiwan will be of interest to scholars of Taiwan studies and those fascinated by the comparative analysis of culture. The volume moves readers’ understanding beyond the familiar, expanding the discussion of the country’s history, literature and identity. The comparative approach offers a refreshing rejoinder to academic nationalism and narrow area studies. In particular, Comparatizing Taiwan serves to move the study of Taiwan beyond both the universal claims of Western social science and the domineering pretentions of Sinocentrism.
The collection draws attention to the need to doubt the perception of a unitary culture and history of Taiwan. One sees a rich diversity of views and interpretations in the essays, not surprising given the multiple settlements, colonizations and confluences of cultures that have impacted the development of the island.
There is a raw, experimental quality to Comparatizing Taiwan as the scholars test the possibilities for using a comparative framework to better understand the country. As stated in the volume’s introduction, “These 13 essays are 13 acts of imagination.” This collection succeeds in pushing beyond familiar horizons, reimagining the study of Taiwan. Using the comparative approach, these scholars, and others, will continue to develop a broader understanding of the nation.
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Joseph Eaton is an associate professor of history at National Chengchi University in Taipei.
Copyright © 2015 by Joseph Eaton