Organizer and Chair: Marshall Johnson, University of Wisconsin, Superior
Discussant: Tani E. Barlow, University of Washington
The development of the East Asian NICs and market-driven social forms in China highlight new social and cultural phenomena that are not well explained by established theories of neocolonialism and neomodernization. The emergent cultural and economic power centers of East Asia are more complex than the notions of imperial outpost or local modernity allow. This panel brings recent scholarship from Taiwan, Hong Kong, Korea and China to bear on the relationship between these new hegemonic centers and their peripheries. Despite important differences among the papers, important common ground is developing and in turn contributing to the post colonial dialogue. In each instance, the papers reveal a pattern of outward cultural and financial expansion conditioned by a prior dependency of the subimperial states and reshaping internal relations of domination.
The Imperial Eye
Kuan-hsin Chen, National Tsing-hua University
Chen's paper goes beyond the Orientalist frame to explore the discourse of "Moving South" in Taiwan's expansion into Southeast Asia.
Sub-Orientalism and the Sub-Imperialist Predicament
Fred Yen-liang Chiu, Baptist University, Hong Kong
Taking Said's Orientalism as a point of departure, this paper develops the replication and reformulation of imperial forms of power in the discursive spread of Chinese nationalism into Taiwan Aboriginal domains. Applying the author's notion of "dragon and phoenix" modes of identity formation, the paper locates sources of resistance to scholarly reflexivity as well as the dominant tropes of aboriginal incorporation. Analyzing the development of this Chinese academic discourse, the paper offers a conceptual link to the expansion of the post-colonized into new peripheries. Sub-orientalism is treated as being colonized and at the same time being colonized.
Northern Strategy and Nation Discourse in South Korea
Song-il Choi, National Taiwan University
This paper begins by situating the 1990s nation discourse of East Asia and asks if the notion of Third World is losing its utility in East Asia. In particular, the paper traces the genealogy of nation discourse in Korea from national liberation to chauvinism and a national orthodoxy syndrome. After reviewing the spread of nationalist popular culture the paper turns to an outward focusing of nationalism and capital, the ethnically Korean areas of Northeast China. Analyzing the new "northern strategy" as part of a Greater Korea Economic Zone, the paper also shows its relation to territorial imagination. The investigation focuses on the Yian Bian Chao Xian Zhoo Municipal state and nationalist discourse/action. Based on field work among Koreans in Dongbei, the paper develops a critique of South Korean nationalism in Yian Bian which is in turn related to the crisis of ethnic mythology.
The Politics of Categorization
Kang Chao, Tung-Hai University, Taiwan
This paper studies the logic of the construction by the Other of a new "Other." This process, crucial to sub-imperial expansion, is explored in an urban village setting. The author contends that the processes of categorical subordination have a clearly gendered dimension and so seeks to explain how two kinds of politics emerge in men's daily life categorization of women. Two political modes are identified. A politics of exploitation develops a normative standard for the evaluation of women that meshes with men's interests in contemporary Taiwanese economic and family structures. A politics of ressentiment refers to minority young men's adjustment to their ethno-national identity by stigmatizing young women of the same ethnic group as "promiscuous" while lauding young women of the ascendant group as "virtuous." The author proceeds to question the prenotions underlying ethno-nationalist categorization and explores the interplay between class identity, cohort, gender, status group, and ethnic identities emblematic of this post-colonial development.