About Jessie Kuo's guest lecture
Since the early 1990s, people in Taiwan have increasingly claimed to be ‘Taiwanese’, and have been seeking international recognition of Taiwan’s status as an independent sovereign state. The politics of identity in Taiwan, whether cultural or national, fictive or real, have manifested themselves in various ways. These range from intellectual debates over the history or language of the island, to the performance of identity in everyday life, and to the expression of identity in the political arena, where political parties or movements strive to enrich their political projects with proposals on issues related to collective identification. The position of Taiwan has also become an ambiguous issue nowadays, and the identity complex of its people already started from the Japanese rule and the postwar period. The difficult deadlock between the small island and other countries, including China and Japan, was reflected in various visual presentations of the mass culture in Taiwan. This session is primarily an exploration of some of the ways in which ‘Taiwan’, ‘Taiwanese-ness’, or ‘Taiwanese identity’ have been staged, articulated, and negotiated in the visual culture. Caricatures and comic illustrations will be selected as an example of seeking for identities in a (un)conscious way, together with some film clips related to the theme of Taiwan identity. The languages adopted in these creations will also be a centre of focus to discuss the ideology behind the visual scenes.
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Spotlight Taiwan Project |
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