• Abstract and Figures
• Public Full-text

THE CULTURAL CONSTRUCTION OF TAIWAN IN THE LITERATURES OF TAIWAN, CHINA, AND THE UNITED STATES A dissertation submitted to Kent State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. by Yu-Fang Lin April 2017 Dissertation written by Yu-Fang Lin B.A., National Chung Hsing University, 2002 M.A., Washington State University, 2004 Ph.D., Kent State University, 2017 Approved by Dr. Babacar M’Baye , Co-Chair, Doctoral Dissertation Committee Dr. Masood A. Raja , Co-Chair, Doctoral Dissertation Committee Dr. Robert Trogdon , Members, Doctoral Dissertation Committee Dr. Mei-Chen Lin Dr. James Tyner Accepted by Dr. Patricia Dunmir , Interim Chair, Department of English Dr. James L. Blank , Dean, College of Arts and Sciences TABLE OF CONTENTS .............................................................................................................. iii PREFACE ...................................................................................................................................... iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ............................................................................................................. v I. INTRODUCTION: ON TAIWAN, HISTORY, AND IDENTITY ........................ 1 A BRIEF POLITICAL HISTORY OF TAIWAN ................................................... 8 METHODOLOGY ................................................................................................ 13 II. CHAPTER ONE: WANG CHEN-HO’S ROSE, ROSE, I LOVE YOU: ILLUSION, CULTURAL EROSION, AND GLOBALIZATION ........................................... 25 SATIRE OF THE TAIWANESE ELITE .............................................................. 33 HIERARCHIZATION AND CAPITAL: TAIWAN AND THE UNITED STATES ................................................................................................................. 49 COMMODIFICATION OF TAIWANESE BODIES .......................................... 60 III. CHAPTER TWO: CHAN KOONCHUNG’S THE FAT YEARS: SCIENCE FICTION, CHINESE NATIONALISM, AND GLOBAL CAPITAL .................. 69 LAO CHEN AND TAIWAN ................................................................................ 78 FANG CAODI, LITTLE XI, AND TWO APPROACHES TO UNCOVERING THE TRUTH ......................................................................................................... 85 THE OPERATION OF CHINESE NATIONALISM AND GLOBAL CAPITAL .................................................................................. 97 IV. CHAPTER THREE: BRENDA LIN’S WEALTH RIBBON: LOCATING GLOBALIZED IDENTITY IN TAIWANESE-AMERICAN LITERATURE .. 113 ISSUES OF WRITING ASIAN AMERICAN IDENTITIES ............................. 116 iii THE IMAGE OF MAO DUN ............................................................................. 119 THE IMPORTANT FIGURE OF MEIGUO AH-MA ........................................ 121 CONFRONTING DIFFERENCE IN THE ANCESTRAL HOMELAND ......... 127 GLOBALIZED IDENTITIES ............................................................................. 135 TAIWAN AS HOMELAND ............................................................................... 141 V. CONCLUSION: LOOKING AHEAD: MAKING SPACE AND SHARING STORIES OF THE HAKKA ............................................................................... 148 REFERENCES ............................................................................................................................ 153 APPENDICES A. ENDNOTES ........................................................................................................ 165 iv PREFACE In this dissertation, I follow currently accepted scholarly practices in the way that I write Romanized Chinese names, which is to follow the naming practices embedded within a given work or in respect to where a person named is from. In Taiwan and China, names are written with the surname first and the given name last. For example, my surname is Lin and my given name is Yu-Fang. In Taiwan, I am Lin Yu-Fang, but in the United States, I go by Yu-Fang Lin, because I had to adapt to Western practices. In general, I write Chinese names as surname-given name instead of given name-surname unless the name is specifically in print as given name- surname. For example, authors Wang Chen-ho and Chan Koonchung’s names are given in print as surname-given name, but Brenda Lin’s name is written in print as given name-surname. I write their names in my dissertation in the way that they write them. Also, I write some Chinese character names in full using their surname-given name to avoid confusion. To do otherwise, would be to violently alter names in a way that would run counter to accepted practices. While this might be confusing at first to Western audiences, I attempt to provide the greatest clarity to readers by using the full names of Wang Chen-ho and Chan Koonchung when referring to them, and providing contextual cues and appropriate repetition of a person’s full name or surname. v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank Professor Masood Raja for inspiring me to take on this challenging yet fulfilling project; Professor Babacar M’Baye for his valuable advice and encouragement; and Professor Robert Trogden and Professor Mei-Chen Lin for their time, questions, and suggestions on my project. I give special thanks to my mentor at Washington State University, Professor Emeritus Alexander Hammond, who made me feel like this was all possible. Also, I would like to thank my parents for their long-term support without which my dream of completing a Ph.D. in the United States would not have come true. Finally, thanks go to my husband Jason W. Ellis and our two cats, Miao Miao and Mose, whose combined love and reassurance got me through tough times and across the finish line. vi 1 INTRODUCTION ON TAIWAN, HISTORY, AND IDENTITY Most postcolonial studies focus on issues of race, inequality, and sovereignty, among others, in primarily Africa and Southeast Asia, and neglect the recent history of a country like Taiwan, whose colonial past was not primarily dominated by Western rule, but instead by Japan and China. Many of these studies do not pay sufficient attention to Taiwan’s ongoing battle to gain autonomy from its former imperial powers. Complicating matters, Taiwan wrestles with its economic ties to the United States and China, which exert a strong influence on its political, social, and economic conditions. Taiwan, like many developing countries, negotiates the impact with its former colonizers and expanding multinational corporations. But, more importantly, Taiwan struggles under the weight of international diplomacy and transnational neoliberal policies within the networks of global capital. For centuries, western nations have interfered in military, political, and economic issues in China. After World War II, Taiwan—the newly established Republic of China, separated from the mainland by the Taiwan Strait, continued to deal with political and military threats from the Chinese mainland and political manipulation by the United States. Taiwan has remained a crucial ally for the United States, first to fight against 2 Communism, and, second, to control China’s political and military influence in the region. These all place Taiwan in a figurative strait between the East and the West, which questions the very claims of this territory as an independent nation-state. Focusing on three Asian literary texts, namely, Wang Chen-ho’s Rose, Rose, I Love You (1998), Chan Koonchung’s The Fat Years (2009), and Brenda Lin’s Wealth Ribbon: Taiwan Bound, America Bound (2004), this dissertation explores the complexity of the constructions of Taiwan and Taiwanese identity in these works. Drawing on these literary texts from the late- twentieth and early-twenty-first centuries, this dissertation’s purpose is to examine the cultural construction of the modern nation-state of Taiwan. It contributes to the study of the situation that Carlos Rojas calls Taiwan’s position as a “(redoubled) colonial subject” which “defamiliarizes and challenges the ontological legitimacy of the category of the nation-state itself” (1). My dissertation follows the discursive study of the emergence of modern-day Taiwan in order to make sense of it being a “(redoubled) colonial subject.” Caught in the middle space between the East and West/China and the United States, Taiwan and its people struggle to be Taiwanese and to make sense of what that might mean. At the same time, the polar opposites—Communist China and the Democratic United States— likewise try to define what Taiwan is according to their own national interests. Hence, Taiwan is a unique case of cultural construction of place, because the narratives about the territory are created elsewhere and within its border. Moreover, these narratives about Taiwan are in conflict with one another at the ultimate risk of being subsumed within the greater narratives of the Chinese and United States superpowers. Further complicating the matter are the facts that there are different opinions about Taiwan by its own people; their differing views propel the 3 imaginative work of Chinese and Taiwanese immigrants in the United States. All of these stories and narratives play a role in the cultural construction of Taiwan. The construction, manipulation, and dissemination of these multiple narratives about Taiwan raise a number of questions regarding the nation’s place in the global network of ideas and capital. The constitutive narratives of Taiwan are embedded within the global capital network of globalization,

Load more

  182

Copy Link