타이완 문화연구의 쟁점과 전망 ― 문화연구라는 정향(定向)과 인터아시아적 전화 문제

Abstract

This paper examines the current status and the future prospects of cultural studies in Taiwan as a way of capturing the ‘figure’ to understand the history of Taiwanese cultural studies since the 1980s. Here, the ‘figure’ refers to the ‘dialectics of seeing’ in Benjamin’s sense which is established through in the constellation between the past and present. What trajectory has Taiwanese cultural studies followed in Taiwanese society and what questions can it pose to Korean cultural studies? I would argue that to answer these questions is to read those that have not been written via the relocation of similarity, to achieve a new language for interpretation and mutual understanding of reference systems, and to set up the foundation of an inter-Asian relationship. A few notable historical moments, such as the experience of Japanese colonialism and independence, America's dominance of the Cold War world system, and similar situations of division,compressed modernization driven by the Third World model, the experience of discipline by authoritarian regimes and, most of all,the critical moment of 1987 that led to the lifting of martial law in Taiwan and the establishment of the 1987 system in Korea,make us understand the common arguments of nationalism,modernity, and state violence in both countries. The comparison of the two countries through concrete phenomena enables us to reflect on the structural location and modernity of the Third World: that is, Asia and its subsequent historical experience that contributed to the rather ‘unique’ or central phenomenon in modernity’s construction of Asia. However, the 'reflection' has been achieved through a comparison of Asia to the West, recognised as ‘universal’,in order to examine its backwardness. As a result, it has been the source of an unbalanced Asian academia. Any knowledge production or attempts to introduce cultural phenomena in an academic way ignores the tension between different countries and is likely to produce the ideological effects of power inequality that speak for cultural identity(uniformality) by becoming simply theoretical journeys or settling into a cultural diversity position. Therefore, this paper focuses on the relocation of similarity between Korea and Taiwan in order to understand the issue of historical continuity and the isomorphous structure of the two countries throughout the modernized journey of colonialism and the Cold War that has been somewhat overlapped. Cultural studies in Taiwan is still in progress with the purpose of defining locality and research continues to mediate between different fields and relocate itself in various locations. It is Taiwanese cultural studies that determines the level of cultural practices based on the relationship between culture and society, or historically constructed cultural or power relationships. By uncovering a new form of cultural production, Taiwanese cultural studies suggests a new trajectory for (re)conceptualising Asia as a mutual reference system and leads to the deterritorized self-expanding nature of Taiwanese cultural studies. It has to be argued that such an open structure accepts various reference systems via the construction of constant tension within the antagonism of ‘the Southward advance discourse’. On the other hand, this open structure has the possibility of being influenced by China and Chinese society which could become another ‘universal’. In this sense, the work of deconstructing another mythical imagination, an imagination of multi-layered correlation, needs to be continued. Moreover, it is the time to capture ‘the figure’ of the trajectories of the ‘relocation of similarity’initiated and mostly driven by Chen, Kuan-Hsing in Taiwan. Is Taiwanese cultural studies looking through imperial eyes, another knowledge reconstruction post for the southward advance discourse?Or is this a emerging point of spatial practices heading towards a model of new equal relations in the world?