Towards a Queer Island Disidentification of Taiwan
2014; Routledge; Volume: 28; Issue: 4-5 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/09528822.2014.929880
ISSN1475-5297
Autores Tópico(s)Japanese History and Culture
ResumoAbstractPolitical traumas and ethnic antagonisms in Taiwan emphasize the need for a reconsideration of the intervulnerable relation between island imaginaries and mainland ideological violence. Premiered at Metropolitan Hall in Taipei City on 28 October 2011, Golden Bough Theatre's musical Pirates and Formosa presents images of pirates of different races and genders surviving on the island, theatricalizing an islandscape that challenges the official, Kuomintang-advanced, historical grand narrative that has relied upon Confucian gender norms and the exclusion of women as subjects of nation-building processes. Combining local queer debates and camp discussions with island theories, this project sees the performance as a queer, de-hegemonic, and postcolonial discourse, which fashions a queer island disidentification that undoes the truth-claims of nationalist identitarianism and queers the Chinese-centrist identity as the ‘descendants of dragon’ that the Kuomintang has promoted for the past sixty years.Keywords: Fan-Ting ChengTaiwanCampdisidentificationislandqueerpiracypostcolonialismimaginariesinsularityGolden Bough Theatre Notes 1 This article follows the local and scholarly conventions of putting family names first unless the person's name is better known in a different form in the West. Chinese names are rendered in Hanyu Pinyin Romanization system, but Taiwanese names follow the Wade-Giles system. The author's/artist's preference is always respected. The hybridity of the Romanization subtly echoes the identification conflict discussed in this article. 2 From the playbill of Pirates and Formosa 3 Kuomintang, also translated as the Chinese Nationalist Party, is the current ruling political party in Taiwan. 4 See the Citizen 1985 ( 1985 ) official website at: http://pttcitizen1985.blogspot.tw/, accessed 19 July 2014. 5 The Cross-Strait Relationship refers to the relations between mainland China and Taiwan separated by the Taiwan Strait, and especially the relations between their respective governments, the PRC and the ROC.6 June Yip, Envisioning Taiwan: Fiction, Cinema, and the Nation in the Cultural Imaginary, Duke University Press, Durham, North Carolina, 2004, p 67 The 228 Massacre was an anti-government uprising in Taiwan that was violently suppressed by the Kuomintang Government and resulted in the massacre of numerous civilians.8 Opera (pronounced as O-peh-lah) is translated from the Japanese pronunciation of opera.9 Descendants of the Dragon is the name of a song (1978) by Taiwanese composer Hou Dejian (). The song, basically expressing nostalgia for the mainland, was composed at the time when the US government terminated diplomatic relations with the ROC due to its recognition of the PRC. The ROC government's promotion of the song made it extremely famous, and it has become the synonym of an imagined Chinese spirit.10 I use the term as an inclusive idea that emphasizes the diverse networks and interactions among different racial/social groups on the island as opposed to the singular normative connection between Taiwan and China.11 Michael Warner, ed, Fear of A Queer Planet: Queer Politics and Social Theory, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 1993, p xiii12 Confucius, Four Books, James Legge, trans, Paragon Book Gallery, Chicago, 196913 The well-known Kuomintang-produced proverb ‘be an energetic student, be a righteous Chinese man’ (, ) was very popular before the 1990s.14 Confucius, Confucius: Confucian Analects, The Great Learning & the Doctrine of the Mean, James Legge trans., Dover Publications, New York, 197115 The Kuomintang's attempt to use Confucian philosophy to claim political legitimacy was first embodied by its Chinese Cultural Renaissance Movement launched in the mid-1960s. In his online article ‘The Three Mistakes by the Kuomintang Promoting of Four Books and Five Classics’, 2011, Cao Chang-Qing () argues that the Kuomintang's promoting of Confucian philosophy before the presidential election in 2011 reveals the government's authoritarianism developed from Confucian collectivism. See the article at: http://caochangqing.com/big5/newsdisp.php?News_ID=2544, accessed 19 July 2014.16 Judith Butler, Bodies That Matter, Routledge, New York, 1993, p 230; Eve Sedgwick, Touching Feeling: Affect, Pedagogy, Performativity, Duke University Press, Durham, 2003, p 7117 Fran Martin, Situating Sexualities: Queer Representation in Taiwanese Fiction, Film and Public Culture, Hong Kong University Press, Aberdeen, Hong Kong, 2003, p 518 The word Bien Tai (), which means ‘perverse’, is used on the BDSM Nation official website, http://www.bdsm.com.tw/.19 Hans Tao-Ming Huang, Queer Politics and Sexual Modernity in Taiwan, Hong Kong University Press, Aberdeen, Hong Kong, 2011, p 220 Ibid, p 421 Liu Jen-Peng and Ding Naifei, ‘Reticent Poetics, Queer Politics’, in Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, volume 6, issue 1, 2005, pp 30–5522 Ibid, p 1123 Josephine Chuen-juei Ho, ‘Queer Existence Under Global Governance: A Taiwan Examplar’, in Beyond the Strai(gh)ts: Transnationalism and Queer Chinese Politics, Positions: Asia Critique, special issue, vol 18, no 2, 2010, pp 537–55424 The name Alwida might come from Awilda, a mythical female pirate in fifth-century Scandinavia.25 This character, a Han pirate whose last name is Cheng, recalls the pirate Zheng Zhilong (), the father of the Formosan King Koxinga () in the seventeenth century.26 Wu Ze Tian (), the female emperor of the Tang dynasty, is often described as a typical Huoguoyaonu in official histories and in much Chinese literature.27 Shui Dingdang's style resembles the image of the most famous video-game female character Chun-Li () in Street Fighter II (, 1991).28 Taiwanese dialect – Taiyu () – usually refers to Minnan only.29 In Islands in History and Representation, Rod Edmond and Vanessa Smith highlight the complex and interdependent dynamics between islands and mainlands. Pirates and Formosa offers ways to reconsider the relationship between Taiwan and China, which reveals how the island of Taiwan plays a fundamental role in decolonial and disidentificatory processes.30 William Wan, ‘China Still Focused on Taiwan, Pentagon Report Finds’, Washington Post, 24 August 201131 Personal interview 'Response to Questions Submitted by Deutsche Welle', with the then president Lee Teng-Hui, by Dieter Weirich, Gunter Knabe and Simone de Manso Cabral from Deutsche Welle, 9 July 199932 Ai, as the first syllable of the royal family name Aisin Gloro () in the Qing Dynasty, denotes the Qingness of the character Aiyaya; the meaning of the Chinese expression ‘aiyaya’ is similar to the expression ‘oops’ in English.33 See note 7; Wang Rong-Yu here replaces the Kuomintang-advanced ‘dragon’ identity with a newly constructed insular disidentification.34 Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday life, University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1988, pp 36–3735 The term Taike () was originally constructed as a negative word that denigrates local cultures and languages. Recently, the term has turned into a disidentificatory word proudly used by new generations to differentiate from Sinocentrist identity; Formosa, literally meaning ‘beautiful’, is a Portuguese colonial name for Taiwan.36 On 8 September 2013, Taiwan Civil Partnership Rights Alliance launched a petition called ‘Duoyuanchengjia, Wojhihchih (, )’ that calls for the legitimization of queer civil rights by amending the civil code of Taiwan. As a result of the petition the bill was ultimately successfully handed over to the Legislative Yuan for examination in October of the same year.37 Yeh Tzu-Hua () beautifully weaves Sontag's camp notion into her discussion of Opera. Part of my research is influenced by her work. See Yeh Tzu-Hua, The Unforgettable Loved One: Golden Bough Theatre's Opera Aesthetic ( – ), Preaudience Press, Taipei, 2011, pp 274–281.38 Susan Sontag, ‘Notes on “Camp”’, in Against Interpretation, Picador, New York, 2001, pp 275–29239 Moe Meyer, The Politics and Poetics of Camp, Routledge, New York, 1994, pp 5–1140 Ibid, p 941 Sue-Ellen Case, ‘Tracking the Vampire’, in Differences, vol 3, no 2, 1991, pp 1–2042 Wang Chun-Chi, ‘Re-exploring Camp Aesthetics from Contemporary Taiwanese Queer Films: Taking Splendid Float and Formula 17 as Examples’ (, )’, paper presented at Cultural Studies Association, Taipei, 201243 See Ben Xu ()'s article ‘Drag Politics, Resistance of the Weak, and Camp Aesthetics (,)’, in Theoretical Studies In Literature and Art, vol 5, 2010, pp 59–67.44 Also see Eric Ching-Yao Luo ()'s dissertation ‘Queering Across the Border at the Crossroads: The Queer Discourse, Body/Voice Politics and Cultural Practice in Taiwan (1990–2002)’, National Chiao Tung University, 2005.45 Nakasi is a traditional popular music form in Taiwan, usually associated with the working-class culture of the old tea parlours and drinking bars.46 Hung Hung, ‘Wild or Rough National Imagination: Pirates and Formosa ()’, on Performance Critics Platform, online journal, 2011. See the article at: http://pareviews.ncafroc.org.tw/?p=1188, accessed 19 July 2014.47 Yu Hui-Fen, script of Pirates and Formosa, unpublished48 Diana Taylor, The Archive and the Repertoire: Performing Cultural Memory in The Americas, Duke University Press, Durham, North Carolina, 2003, p 20
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