ABSTRACT
Positioning Taiwan in a Global Context examines modern Taiwanese culture through the prism of global cultural interactions. Challenging the view of Taiwan as a product of transience and displacement, it highlights Taiwan’s subjectivity, viewing the island as a site of a global development that epitomizes both resistance and negotiation in the process of cultural flows.
The fourteen contributions by an international team of scholars investigate the multi-layered and multidirectional interplays between the island and the outside world, exploring the impact of complex cultural encounters on the construction, writing and rewriting of Taiwan in a global context. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, the topics covered range from Taiwanese literature, cinema, food culture and tourism to cultural geography, colonial history, and folk religion, with comparisons made with Japan, China, Hong Kong, the Philippines, and the West.
Focusing on continuous cross-cultural interplays, this book affords readers a deeper understanding of identity politics and a better insight into the fluidity, changeability, and constructionist nature of culture. As such, it will be will be of great interest to students and scholars of Taiwan Studies and Cultural Studies, as well as Asian film, literature and popular culture.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
part I|82 pages
Repositioning Taiwan
chapter 1|17 pages
Positioning ‘Taiwanese literature’ to the world
chapter 3|16 pages
It all starts in Hualien
chapter 5|16 pages
Indigenizing queer fiction and queer theories
part II|85 pages
Cultural flows and becoming
chapter 6|16 pages
From ‘Free China’ to sunny paradise
chapter 7|17 pages
The gourmet paradise
chapter 8|16 pages
Savage world, immortal island
chapter 9|17 pages
Let’s talk about love
part III|63 pages
The production and contestation of indigeneity