A STUDY of TAIWAN's NATIVIST LITERATURE by YU-LIN
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WRITING TAIWAN: A STUDY OF TAIWAN’S NATIVIST LITERATURE by YU-LIN LEE Under the Direction of Dezsö Benedek ABSTRACT Taiwan’s nativist literature, known as Taiwan hsiang-t’u literature, originated in the Japanese occupation when Taiwanese native authors strived to establish a “national” literature distinct from Japanese and Chinese literatures. Drawing on recent colonial/postcolonial theory, this project aims to investigate the process of writing in which the native tongue profoundly undermined the privileged status of the colonizer’s language and through which natives could articulate their colonial existence. It argues that the new conception of Taiwanese writing produced a new literature where the cultural “otherness” was traversed by the language and literature of the colonized. Concurrently, the practice of Taiwanese writing as a means of resistance to the writing of the colonizer constructed a new paradigm for Taiwanese “national” identity. The analysis is organized in three parts. The first part (chapters 1, 2, 3) raises central questions about the postcolonial studies of Taiwan in the context of colonialism. It provides a historical review of Taiwan’s colonized experiences. This historical review not only serves as an account of the rise of nativism in modern Taiwan, but it also constructs a different historical discourse from that rendered by the colonizers. The second part (chapters 4, 5, 6) presents the debates on nativist literature in modern Taiwan’s literary history in order to demonstrate how the nativist discourse was formatted and manipulated in a particular sociopolitical climate. The debates, based on the historical context, can be divided into three phases: 1) the Japanese occupation when natives were striving to legitimatize nativist literature; 2) the KMT rule when nativist discourse was primarily articulated as opposed to colonialism; and 3) the post-colonial period when nativist writing has tended to be recognized as a “national” literature. The third part (chapters 7, 8, 9) undertakes detailed analyses of many literary texts, focusing on such issues as colonial subjectivity, the use of dialect, and exile in Taiwan’s nativist writing. This study attempts to demonstrate the productive and ambivalent force of nativist discourse; it also seeks to shift the understanding of nativism from a nationalistic model of cultural authenticity toward a more radical postcolonial or postmodern perspective that emphasizes difference, plurality, and hybridity. INDEX WORDS: Taiwan literature, hsiang- t’u literature, nativism, minor literature, postcolonial studies. WRITING TAIWAN: A STUDY OF TAIWAN’S NATIVIST LITERATURE by YU-LIN LEE B.A. Fu Jen University, Taiwan, 1991 M.A. The University of Georgia, 1997 A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of The University of Georgia in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY ATHENS, GEORGIA 2003 © 2003 Yu-lin Lee All Rights Reserved WRITING TAIWAN: A STUDY OF TAIWAN’S NATIVIST LITERATURE by YU-LIN LEE Approved: Major Professor: Dezsö Benedek Committee: Ronald Bogue Betty Jean Craige Masaki Mori Hyangsoon Yi Electronic Version Approved: Maureen Grasso Dean of the Graduate School The University of Georgia May 2003 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I am indebted to the following individuals for everything they have done. To them, words are insufficient to describe my gratitude. First, I would like to express my heartfelt thanks to Dr. Dezsö Benedek, for his guidance, tolerance, and patience; Dr. Ronald Bogue, for his advice on my dissertation, especially for his extra efforts on correcting my writing. I also feel extremely thankful to my committee professors: Dr. Katharina Wilson, Dr. Betty Jean Craige, Dr. Masaki Mori, and Dr. Hyangsoon Yi, for their kind advice and comments that have shaped my research skills and improved my argumentation during the time of my writing. I also want to express my indebtedness to the Chiang Ching-Kuo Foundation for providing me with a full year of financial support which enabled me to concentrate my writing and ensued the completion of my dissertation. Finally, I want to acknowledge the immeasurable gratitude I owe to my family and my dear friend, Shan- Hui Hsu, for their patience, sacrifices, and supports. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ................................................................................................. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS.................................................................................................... v INTRODUCTION .............................................................................................................. 1 CHAPTER PART I: NARRATING HISTORY 1 A Frontier Tradition: Taiwan’s Colonial History and Society ....................................... 9 Ilha Formosa 福爾摩沙—The Beautiful Island......................................................... 9 The “Wild East”—Between the Mainland and the Island ........................................ 12 The Multi-ethnic and Multi-lingual Society ............................................................. 15 2 The Colonial Dilemma: Between Assimilation and Imperialization............................ 18 Doka 同化 and Kominka 皇民化—The Japanese Assimilation of Taiwan ............. 18 Becoming “Japanese”—The Crossing of Frontiers .................................................. 30 3 The Nationalist Re-sinicization: The Myth of a Chinese Nation.................................. 50 Re-sincization of the Taiwanese—The Rhetoric of Chinese Nationhood................ 50 The Politics of Identity Formation—The Rise of Taiwanese Cultural Nationalism 68 PART II: THE NATIIVIST DISCOURSE 4 Legitimatizing Nativist Literature: The Yen-wen yi-chih 言文一致 Movement .......... 76 Yen-wen yi-chih—The Discovery of the Colonial Self............................................. 76 v Establishing New Literary Canons—The Discovery of Landscape ......................... 86 5 Nativist Tradition: The Rhetoric of Hsiang-t’u 鄉土 Literature .................................. 92 Excessive Nostalgia—A Mode of Hsiang-t’u Discourse ......................................... 92 Nativist Resistance—Hsiang-t’u Literature as Resistance to Colonialism............. 103 6 Nativist Writing at the Crossroads: Taiwanese Writing and the Postcolonial Moment........................................................................................................................... 119 Literature as Politics—Nativist Writing in the 1980s and 1990s ........................... 119 The Debates on “Taiwan Literature” ...................................................................... 125 PART III: THE NATIVIST LITERATURE 7 The Dislocation of Empire: Identity, Exile, and Writing in Wang Ch’ang-hsiung’s 王昶 雄 A Raging Current 奔流 .............................................................................................. 147 8 Exile as Imagination: Re-writing Self, Nation, and History in Wu Chou-liu’s 吳濁流 Asia’s Orphan 亞細亞的孤兒......................................................................................... 168 9 Unfolding Empire: Re-membering in Chuwas Lawa’s 綢仔絲萊渥 So Remote the Romance 山深情遙......................................................................................................... 194 CONCLUSION: Global Fragments: Negotiating Taiwan Literature in a Global Context............................................................................................................................ 209 SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY...................................................................................... 214 vi 1 INTRODUCTION This project is a study of Taiwan’s nativist literature, a literature that announced a new mode of Taiwanese writing and fostered the concept of a history of “Taiwan literature” (台灣文學).1 Taiwan’s nativist literature, known as Taiwan hsiang-t’u 鄉土 literature, originated in the Japanese occupation when Taiwanese native authors strived to establish a “national” literature distinct from Japanese and Chinese literatures. Taiwanese native authors during the time found a striking divergence between the spoken and written languages and therefore advocated the reform of Taiwanese written language. As expressed by the endlessly repeated phase yen-wen yi-chih 言文一致, which literally meant “the unification of the spoken and written language,” native authors attempted to create a new Taiwanese written system in order to transcribe colloquial Taiwanese accurately. Yen-wen yi-chih thus became above all a new ideology of writing that consequently involved a profound appropriation of the privileged language. More significantly, yen-wen yi-chih was not simply a language reform movement; it in fact raised questions germane to the production of a “national” literature in which the native tongue is comprehended as an immediate representation of the national spirit. Historical 1 “Taiwan literature,” a English rendition of “T’ai-wan wen-hsueh 台灣文學,” is the conventional term to indicate the body of literature from Taiwan. Such terms as “literature from Taiwan” and “Taiwanese literature” are also available for the same body of literature. Sometimes these terms are interchangeable. Since different terms may denote different notions and significations, the concept of “Taiwan literature” has been an issue that arouses sprawling debates. The use of “Taiwan literature” here suggests a “national” literature of Taiwan. For a detailed discussion of the subject, see, for example, Tang Xiaobing, “On the Concept of Taiwan Literature” 379-422. 2 evidence has suggested that