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Reading history and political illustration in Taiwan popular culture
Abstract
This study is considered an exercise in new cultural history, one in which the representational nature of written history is offered through the prism of several literary genres and narratives that carry ideological implications. The article argues that cultures develop a collective imagination, explicable as narrative forms. This will be illustrated by zooming in on three specific culturally defined visual representations: manga drawing, picture book and textbook illustrations. The first example introduces a manga used for educational and didactic purposes that singles out the representation of one aspect of intellectual history from the Japanese colonial period (1895-1945). The second example draws on contemporary situations and depicts a socio-political satire through the icon of textbook visuals. The third visual is taken as a representative example of Taiwan local manga that taps into the craftily cultivated tradition of socio-political satire. As suggested by Roland Barthes' rhetoric of image, each case study pays special attention to the orthography in the linguistic and symbolic messages that accompany the comic art. Itamar Even-Zohar's interpretation of culture planning allows us to link these three case studies under a common denominator: a strong generational undercurrent in their production, which is embedded in the material structure of the publishing world and in the socio-political institutions of the authors. Against the background of this generational demarcation perception in popular culture, this article seeks to evaluate some of the observations that have brought about the inclusion of Taiwan manga in scholarly research activities associated with East Asian comic art.
Within the context of contemporary Taiwan, the question of national identity is still a very current issue. The following chapter focuses on one of the problems that the church faced after it changed its theological position and opposed the Guomindang government. In 1945, Taiwan became part of the Republic of China. The Guomindang government, however, considered native Taiwanese citizens disloyal, overly influenced by the Japanese colonial regime, and inferior to incomers from mainland China, at least until such time as they had been ‘re-Chinafied’, fully Chinese again. Although many of Taiwan’s inhabitants, particularly the Hoklo and Hakka peoples, belong to the wider Han Chinese ethnic group and are considered culturally ‘Chinese’, re-establishing ‘Chineseness’ in political structures and broader cultural matters became official policy. The Presbyterian Church promoted local languages as well as a distinct Taiwanese identity. The chapter therefore analyzes the strategies used by the PCT to promote local languages and create a new discourse on national identity.
This article explores a recent stage of the national project in Taiwan as reflected in comic books. It compares historical comics and graphic memoirs as lieux de mémoire (according to Pierre Nora) and as stories that define Taiwan, situated between the historical apparatus and cultural memory (in Marita Sturken’s terms). It argues that the memoirs’ higher potential appeal is based on their relevance to contemporary concerns, on building links between the wu nianji 五年級 (fifth-grader) generation and present-day youth, and on depicting history as recoverable through elements of everyday life. The article also highlights borrowings from existing discourses of national history in the analyzed memoirs and their new contributions thereto: a focus on the postwar period; a strong generational consciousness; an idea of historical continuity as embodied in present everyday life; a nonantagonistic approach to national history that transcends ethnic and political divides and positions Taiwan in the midst of global flows; and a nonelite view of Taiwan’s most recent history grounded in popular culture.
This paper extends analytical strengths of the institutionalist approach by examining recent nationalist politics in Taiwan. The study is, then, not simply another application of the institutionalist approach to a specific case; rather, the case itself may shed new light on our understanding of nations and nationalism by contributing to ongoing theoretical development. Simply put, the major argument holds that the existence of a nation is hinged upon an ensemble of intersecting institutions that can be classified into civic-territorial and ethno-cultural types; both types of institutions, moreover, have to articulate on both domestic and international levels. If either type of institution fails to articulate at either level, the existence of the nation will be jeopardized, and an identity crisis may ensue. This was precisely what happened in Taiwan during the 1990s with the escalation of nationalist politics. Previously, I have shown how political institutions in Taiwan - officially (yet rarely) known as the "Republic of China" (ROC) - failed, and led to chaotic national identifications. In this paper, I shall instead focus on the crises of ROC's cultural institutions, which eventually contributed to an escalation of identity crises in Taiwan.