ABSTRACT
On May 28, 2011, Huang Chun-ming, an eminent fiction writer in Taiwan, was invited to deliver a keynote speech at a literary conference in commemoration of the hundredth anniversary of the country, held at the National Taiwan Library of Literature. In the middle of his speech, Huang was interrupted by a protest from an academic who teaches in a department of Taiwanese language and literature. The protester displayed a banner which declared, “You should be ashamed for not using authentic Taiwanese language for your writing!” Taken by surprise by this impolite interruption, the highly respected writer, at age seventy-six, responded with a verbal attack upon the accuser. The young professor, claiming verbal assault, filed a lawsuit after failing to receive any kind of apology from the writer. Underlying this affair is a conflict about the definition of agentic subjectivity and its representations in local cultural products.
