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Authenticating Strategies in Taiwan’s Nation-Building Process
Organizer: Michael Rudolph, Heidelberg University, Germany
Chair and Discussant: Paul Katz, Academia Sinica,
In their introduction to the volume Syncretism/Anti-Syncretism: The Politics of Religious Synthesis, Charles Stewart and Rosalind Shaw (1994) argue that “claims of ‘authenticity’ may be disconnected from notions of purity. They depend instead on the political acumen of cultural ‘spin doctors’ … who convert given historical particularities and contingencies to valued cultural resources. If we look at cultural discourses in Taiwan, we will realize that national and local elites of different political affiliations try to direct people’s perception of authenticity into certain directions, often using this as a way to legitimize their own authority. In some of the cases, this is done by mobilizing or manipulating collective memories that are linked to the historical and social experiences of particular cultural groups, often at times when certain individual memories have already disappeared or are just fading. In other cases, political and intellectual elites try to forge ‘Taiwanese subjectivity’ by stressing an integrative, ‘non-differential identity’ that promotes modern democracy and humanitarian values in the world. In this panel, participants of different disciplines reflect on the authenticating strategies used by political and societal elites in Taiwan’s nation-building process. While Bosco and Liu examine the tactics used by township elites in Pingdong County, Chan scrutinizes the creation of Taiwan culture in community construction projects in Yilan County. Schneider gives an account of the challenges and difficulties Taiwan’s historiography was faced with after the political paradigm change of the late 1980s. And Rudolph concentrates on the role of revitalized and re-invented aboriginal rituals as means of authentication for local and national elites.
Discovering Tradition and Authenticity: The Growth of a History and Folklore Association in a Taiwanese Township
Joseph Bosco and Huwy-min Liu, Chinese University of Hong Kong
Taiwan residents have become much more interested in Taiwanese culture, heritage, and local history since democratization began in 1987. Taiwan studies has become an academic discipline and a section in bookstores, and local intellectuals have begun collecting and writing local histories. Whereas before 1987 there was very little local interest in local history (any such research then being done by university-based scholars), since then the government, private benefactors and associations, and local leaders and activists have become interested in cultural preservation and heritage. This has led to the preservation of buildings, to the establishment of museums, and the recording and publication of oral histories. This paper examines the complex ways in which the interest in local history is tied to the globalization of Taiwan and to the debate over Taiwanese identity. The paper focuses on Wandan Township in Pingdong County, where a local association of preservationists, artists and environmentalists publishes newsletters and books and holds exhibitions and demonstrations. Members also publish newspaper columns and run a web site. Activists are only loosely connected to traditional political factions and current parties, and yet are a political force. This paper examines the authenticating strategies used by township political and societal elites in Wandan, and how it relates to the process of nation-building at the national level.
Commemorating the Past in the Present: Cultural Imagination through the Integrated Community Building Project in Taiwan
Selina Ching Chan, Hong Kong Shue Yan University
This paper examines how “authentic” community cultures are invented in Taiwan for the purpose of nation building. These community cultures are constructed as a result of the efforts of a number of parties - government officers at the Council for Cultural Bureau, County Cultural Bureau, cultural workers at NGO and NPO, intellectuals, businessmen, local cultural workers and the villagers themselves. This paper will take the case of the Baimi and Zhenzhu communities in Yilan to examine how different parties are involved in creating the past and building the community niche. Local heritage, landscape, souvenirs are analyzed to understand how they have become representations of Taiwan’s culture in the past ten years. The politics of display and narration will also be examined through understanding the boom of local small-scale museums and investigating the objects displayed there. I argue that Taiwan’s heritage has been remembered and further authenticated through the popularization of these communities as sightseeing places for domestic tourists.
Searching for a "New" History: Changes and Challenges in Taiwanese Historiography since 1987
Axel Schneider, Leiden University
Since the beginning of liberalization in 1986/87 Taiwan's historical profession has explored new fields of research hitherto stigmatized such as the history of Taiwan. With the increasing political conflict over the question of Taiwanese independence vs. reunification the history of Taiwan moved to the centre of debates on national identity. New school curricula were designed putting more emphasis on previously suppressed local history that now carried the potential of becoming the "new" national history. This yet unfinished process of moving away from the old China-centered interpretation of the past was from the very beginning complicated by several factors: (1) It was part and parcel of a mundane political fight for power between competing political actors (KMT, DPP, New Party etc.). (2) It was central for the larger battle in Taiwan over the definition of the future national and cultural identity and the foundations of political legitimacy that went far beyond the day-to-day power battles. (3) And it manifested problems of how to write national history under the conditions of a modern democracy, i.e. how to reconcile the demands for a new national history that by implication had to establish a new dominant hegemony, while at the same time arguing for ethnic and normative plurality. Taking the history schoolbook discussions and several general histories (Tongshi) as example this paper will explore the interaction between these different factors.
Authentication through ‘Old’ or ‘New’ Traditions? The Re-emergence of the Ancestor Gods in Contemporary Rituals of Taiwan’s Austronesians
Michael Rudolph, Heidelberg University
While the Taiwanese government on one hand side pushes technical, social and political modernization (like for instance the consolidation of the island’s young liberal democracy), it encourages on the other hand the development of a multicultural national identity that is independent from China and free from the quasi-colonial pressures of the recent past. The resulting state-supported nativist traditionalism adapted by various political and societal elites, however, is not suitable for all ethnic groups on the island equally and collides with the religious identity developed by indigenous people in recent times. Further, it is often instrumentalized by members of political parties and other interest groups in a way that jeopardizes original democratic ideals and challenges the authority of the state. I try to elucidate the dilemma described here by focusing on the contemporary rituals of Taiwan’s Austronesians where animal sacrifices connected to the former head hunting religion and shamanist performances gain increasing popularity in the last few years as representations of the ritual repertoire of collectives. As I will show, however, such performances do not so much indicate the identification with an ancient cosmology but rather have “functional indexical uses” (Tambiah 1979) in so far as they express and negotiate contemporary social concerns and power claims and operate as authentication tools on different levels.