International Center for Cultural Studies

年輕學者亞際文化研究計畫五人小組論壇側記

2021-06-28

2020-12-22
年輕學者亞際文化研究計畫五人小組論壇
Young Scholars Forum on the Research Projects of Inter-Asian Cultural Studies

1. Mind the Gap: Doing Postcolonial Studies of East and Southeast Asia
Desmond Sham/ IACS faculty.
岑學敏/亞際學程專任教師 JUSTINA

2. The 1970s Inter-Asia Perspective: From Taiwan to the Philippines
1970年代的亞際視野：以台菲參照為例 Hui-Yu Tang/ICCS Post-Doctoral Fellow.
唐慧宇/文化研究國際中心博士後研究員 JUSTINA

3. "The Cold War Globalisation and its (dis)contents: Rethinking the
Post-war Taiwanese Modern Theatre." Ko-Lun Chen/ICCS Post-
Doctoral Fellow.
陳克倫/文化研究國際中心博士後研究員 CYRIS

4. The politicizing roles and the religious 'ambiguity' of (irregular)
migrants in Asian Democracies. Poonam Sharma//ICCS Post-
Doctoral Fellow.
浦南/文化研究國際中心博士後研究員 JUSTINA

5. From Transcultural Modernity to Cold War Modernity: Homosexual
Literature as an Example
從跨文化現代性到冷戰現代性：以同志文學為例
Ray Tsai/ IACS faculty. 蔡孟哲/亞際學程專任教師 CYRIS

For this week’s lectures, a forum was organized as a platform for five young scholars from
ICCS to share with us their current research projects. The different research approaches and
methodologies demonstrated in the presentations of Professor Desmond Sham and Professor
Ray Tsai, as well as Post-Doctoral fellows Hui-Yu Tang, Ko-Lun Chen, and Poonam
Sharma, lured a vibrant discussion from the floor at the end of the forum.

Professor Desmond Sham, now part of the faculty of IACS, set out the forum with his
research titled “Mind the Gap: Doing Postcolonial Studies of East and Southeast Asia” on
post/colonialism and decolonization in Hong Kong. Sham embarked the research with a
geopolitical portrayal of “Hong Kong As a Port City”. In his critical analysis, instead of
inspecting Hong Kong as the Southern tip of China, he repositioned Hong Kong as a former
British colonial city in Southeast Asia in order to multiply more reference points for Hong
Kong such as Singapore, Penang and Malacca. He remarked such recalling of Hong Kong's

role in the British colonial period allowed him an approach that challenged the nationalist and
ethno-nationalist discourses about Hong Kong. Not only did it offered a different route for
the nationalist discourses, but it also offered a different way to depict Hong Kong as one of
the nodal points in maritime trade networks, offering insights to discourses regarding to
colonial maritime logistics. Furthermore, Sham invoked collaborative colonialism proposed
by Hong Kong scholar Law Wing Sang to point out the task of his own critical analysis was
to problematize anti-imperialist colonialism discourses and to establish a “decolonial turn” in
cultural theory and its influence on contemporary art in his own dissertation. Sham’s critical
analysis attempted to problematize or subvert the West vs. East dichotomy that was often
imposed on colonized states/cities in postcolonial studies, setting a critical tone for the rest of
the forum.

Following the decolonial turn in cultural theory and its impact on contemporary art suggested
by Professor Sham, Post-Doctoral fellow Hui-Yu Tang took us into a closer look at what
socio-political and social-historical impact could do to art with her research titled “The 1970s
Inter-Asia Perspective: From Taiwan to the Philippines”.

Through Tang’s discussion of the socio-political background of Nativist cultural movement
and its emergence in Taiwanese art scene, her research engaged with the works of cultural
magazines, artists and art critics such as ECHO magazine(漢聲), artworks and critics by Wu
Yao-Zhong(吳耀忠), Chiang Hsun(蔣勳), Li Shuang-Ze(李雙澤). Her research was initiated
into a dialogue of art movements between Taiwan and Philippines by a short story written by
Li Shuang-Ze in 1977 titled “A Dialogue with a Filipino College Student”. This story was
about conversations between the writer himself and a Filipino student of which involved
major social-historical themes of the Philippines, questioning the notion of “developing
countries”, English education in the Philippines and Philippines’ role in Spanish-American
war. Li’s writing provided a clue for Tang to implicate the east-west synthesis that was(and
still is) dominant in the art scene in Taiwan, and opened up a third-world perspective in the
1970s. Furthermore, Tang aimed at building a comparative model in art history that would
not exclude internal differences, and creating a linkage between Taiwan and Philippines
through investigating cultural and artistic works in the 1970s’. Apart from that, Tang also
problematized the notion of “Inter-Asia” that helped us all rethink Southeast Asian studies in
a global context.

The third presenter was the ICCS Post-Doctoral Fellow Ko-Lun, Chen. His presentation
perspicaciously examined how the Taiwanese modern theatre reacted to its historical
background and changed by the flowing of the ideology. He used the examples of Wang Mo
Lin, Tian Chi Yuan and LI Huan Hsiung to explain the intellectual history of modern theatre
in Taiwan.

"The Cold War Globalisation and its (dis)contents: Rethinking the Post-war Taiwanese
Modern Theatre.", under this topic, Chen is trying to find out the theatrical modernity in East
Asia and make the historical analysis . In the early 1990s, there was only the traditional
theatre and kabuki but no concept of modern theatre. Under the globalisation in post World
War II and the cold war, educated reform themselves in theatre by reformism and
revolutionism and use theatre for gathering people, by the method of identitarian and
nationalism.

The following was the short history of the post-war theatrical development in Taiwan. Under
the influences of the legacy of the modernisation of Japan theatre, the drama of imperial

colonial literary regime, the legacy of May-Fourth movement from China, they focused on
promoting fighting consciousness, shaped in the contemporary form containing combat
literature and anti communist theatre. They were also influenced by the western classic and
post war Avant Garde, to create a complex compound.

The research by Chen tidied up those important nodes of the history of Taiwan modern
theatre, with the west-tide thesis which is naturalising exteriority and the revolutionary Thesis
that is naturalising interiority. He is still figuring out the new-born locality and the discursive
or non-discursive part inside this mystery, disconsidered part in modern history.

Our fourth speaker Poonam Sharma, an ICCS Post-Doctoral fellow whose research, similar
to the second speaker Tang, was also a comparative study that aimed at finding a middle
ground within Southeast Asian studies. Sharma’s research specialization focused on
migration studies, citizenship and immigration policies and secondarily on post-colonial
theories. Her doctoral thesis titled “The Invisible Politicized Roles and Religious
Disorganization of Bangladeshi and Nepali Migrants in West Bengal and North-easy India”,
Sharma’s research set off for an investigation in India’s citizenships and migrants, and
gradually came to a broadened scale to studying other Asian nations as well in her current
research. The initial focus of her thesis was to study the migration of irregular Bangladeshi
and Nepali migrants to East and North-eastern parts of India, in order to highlight the unequal
religious treatments and the politicized roles of these two groups of migrants. She argued
migrants, as “unwanted” subjects in a society, could change roles and their identity would not
be fixated.

Sharma first investigated the narrative of Bangladeshi migration by inspecting past historical
events, such as the British colonial rule period and the division of Bengal Presidency in India,
as well as the formation of the identity “Bangladesh”. The investigation was enriched by a
qualitative research method. Sharma’s contact and interviews with around 60 migrants and
the field work she did in different countries such as Indonesia, Vietnam, Malaysia and Hong
Kong had broadened her understanding of migrants’ issue in Asia. Hence, more questions
were raised regarding to identity and citizenship due to her travels and contacts. The
problematization of “identity” emerged in the midst of her research resonated with the works
by our first speaker Professor Sham, in which they both found a certain dichotomy
questionable in postcolonial critical theory.

The last presenter was Ray Tsai, who is the IACS faculty from this semester. Tsai’’s
presentation, titled “From Transcultural Modernity to Cold War Modernity: Homosexual
Literature as an Example” unpacked the historical story of the key concept and the discourse
of “Homosexual” during the period of modernation in the China.

Mainly his research is about the Chinese homosexual literature after dynasty Qing. He
analysed the article by modern politician Hu Qiuyuan, which titled “Research on same-sex
love” for repondsing the article by Yang Youtian titled “The problem of same-sex love".
Based on the discussions among them and affected by the formation of the nations, national
needs came out. The shape of homosexual love built, at the same time, the shape of
homosexual literature built also.

He would like to continue trying to broaden the discussion about the foundation of Chinese
modernity and deepen the analysis on the transnational culture influence especially how the

translation affected them, by the language usage and its historical background, which are still
affecting the public now.