The Margins of Becoming: Identity and Culture in Taiwan (Studia Formosiana)

In recent years the question of identity has become paramount in public and academic discourse in and about Taiwan. The formation of a Taiwanese identity has to be undertaken vis-a-vis the Chinese mainland and within a pluralistic and highly heterogeneous society. Contesting images of what exactly Taiwanese identity is and of how people can put it into praxis are negotiated along a multitude of global, regional and local borders as well as competing political, economic, cultural, ethnic etc. interests. This book deals with a variety of facets of identity in Taiwan and explores processes of identity construction within different frameworks. It covers aspects of language, politics of memory, education, media, literature, and epistemology and delivers a critical account of the margins that delimit the process of Taiwanese identity formation on different levels, or in a positive reading, of chances and options in re-negotiating the Taiwanese subject. At the same time this endeavour is heavily influenced by discourses of marginalisation and resistance, which until now both foster the formation of Taiwanese identities rather than a homogeneous identity.