ABSTRACT
This study combines text analysis and interviews to discuss several strategies for knowing and representing Taiwan and its history, which involve various kinds of gazes and audiences. A series of postcards for a local public reproduces antique maps that subordinate Taiwan to foreign political interests and colonial domination. The series diverts these outsider’s gazes for the local purpose of conveying a message related to the island’s subjectivity in history. At the same time, they uphold individual, sensorial experience as primary means for obtaining knowledge about Taiwan. A similar strategy is exploited by many tourist souvenirs for foreign consumers, which propose a ‘hands-on,’ performative epistemological mode and a micro-scale, community-based view of history. Such definitions of Taiwan, centered on ordinary material culture, individual experience and small-scale history, reflect global trends and foreign audiences’ expectations. They are also interlinked with local discourses and widespread in popular texts not related to tourism, intended for local audiences and promoted abroad by state institutions. The chapter’s conclusion critically appraises their de-colonizing potential and their contribution to debates on national culture.
