An Explanation
Nov. 23rd, 2002 03:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rfmcdonaldEarlier, I'd said that the journal to which the below URL linked could be useful for my Honours project.
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/pos/toc/pos8.1.html
Now, an explanation why.
That URL links to an on-line version of the journal positions: east asia cultures critique issue 8.1 (Spring 2000). The first article in that issue is Kuan-Hsing Chen's "The Imperialist Eye: The Cultural Imaginary of a Subempire and a Nation-State."
The associated Library of Congress headings suggest that this article deals with:
These definitions suggest only a limited reading of the article, which is (in part) a criticism of academic Taiwanese nationalists, and their wholehearted embrace fo capitalist modernity in a reaction to the theoretically non-capitalist People's Republic. Chen borrows from Fanon and other theorists to suggest that Taiwan--once a Japanese colonial periphery in the 1895-1945 period--is itself aspiring towards some sort of hegemonic position in Southeast Asia replicating earlier patterns of imperialism:
"The policy of “advancing toward the south,” promoted by the Taiwan state and endorsed by the opposition party, has had an enthusiastic response from the “public sphere” since early 1994 and is applauded and propagated by scholars, politicians, and capitalists generally. The scattered dissenting voices focus on the unsatisfactory conditions of southern countries: unstable societies, backward infrastructures, inefficient governments, skyrocketing real estate prices, and rising salaries as the disadvantages of advancing toward the south. (It is noteworthy that transnational capitalism has
described Taiwan’s investment environment in exactly the same terms.) Both pros and cons, however, are framed by the narrative structure of “southward-advancing,” which allows no room for metacritical re.ection in the discursive field. As a matter of fact, advancing toward the South, West, and East projects exactly the same desire as that of imperialist expansionism in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In short, the Taiwanese Empire is being formed."
Taiwan--according to Chen's reading, at least--is now a full-fledged member of the semi-periphery aspiring towards its own imperial hinterland.
The potential parallels with Canada in my reading--Canada as a construct of the Anglophone St. Lawrence valley, trying to incorporate outlying areas and cultures like the Canadian shield, the French Canadian peasantry, and Nova Scotia into Canada on its own terms--are quite interesting. I'll have to print it off.
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/pos/toc/pos8.1.html
Now, an explanation why.
That URL links to an on-line version of the journal positions: east asia cultures critique issue 8.1 (Spring 2000). The first article in that issue is Kuan-Hsing Chen's "The Imperialist Eye: The Cultural Imaginary of a Subempire and a Nation-State."
The associated Library of Congress headings suggest that this article deals with:
- Culture -- Study and teaching.
- Imperialism.
- Taiwan -- Civilization.
- Nationalism -- Taiwan.
These definitions suggest only a limited reading of the article, which is (in part) a criticism of academic Taiwanese nationalists, and their wholehearted embrace fo capitalist modernity in a reaction to the theoretically non-capitalist People's Republic. Chen borrows from Fanon and other theorists to suggest that Taiwan--once a Japanese colonial periphery in the 1895-1945 period--is itself aspiring towards some sort of hegemonic position in Southeast Asia replicating earlier patterns of imperialism:
"The policy of “advancing toward the south,” promoted by the Taiwan state and endorsed by the opposition party, has had an enthusiastic response from the “public sphere” since early 1994 and is applauded and propagated by scholars, politicians, and capitalists generally. The scattered dissenting voices focus on the unsatisfactory conditions of southern countries: unstable societies, backward infrastructures, inefficient governments, skyrocketing real estate prices, and rising salaries as the disadvantages of advancing toward the south. (It is noteworthy that transnational capitalism has
described Taiwan’s investment environment in exactly the same terms.) Both pros and cons, however, are framed by the narrative structure of “southward-advancing,” which allows no room for metacritical re.ection in the discursive field. As a matter of fact, advancing toward the South, West, and East projects exactly the same desire as that of imperialist expansionism in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In short, the Taiwanese Empire is being formed."
Taiwan--according to Chen's reading, at least--is now a full-fledged member of the semi-periphery aspiring towards its own imperial hinterland.
The potential parallels with Canada in my reading--Canada as a construct of the Anglophone St. Lawrence valley, trying to incorporate outlying areas and cultures like the Canadian shield, the French Canadian peasantry, and Nova Scotia into Canada on its own terms--are quite interesting. I'll have to print it off.
