Taiwan and its memory spaces: the question of the national narrative

Every 2nd Monday of the month from 5pm to 8pm, from 13 November 2017 to 25 June 2018.

Room 1, EHESS, 105 Bd Raspail

This seminar will chart the different stages of an identity affirmation process expressed in Taiwan by what we might call “Formosan tropism”. Indeed, we will try to identify the historical and cultural framework within which an increasingly assertive insular identity, with regards to China, was developed and promoted. While observing these mutations of identity, in light of the debates that continue to accompany them, we will also chart the foundations of memory by exploring memory spaces in Taiwan itself. We will focus just as closely on places linked to the Republic of China, and thus related to the trajectory of the Chinese mainland, as to those places specific to Taiwan’s own historical and cultural experience. Our studies will deal with concrete, material and geographically located objects, but also with more abstract and diffuse incarnations of memory, such as political symbols, the terms and names for public and private spaces, figures from local and national history, the formulation of narratives, etc.

Seminar Videos

13/11/2017Skaya Siku

History, memory and identity in Taiwanese aborigine documentaries: an investigation of three first-generation directors

11/12/2017Jérôme Soldani

Between national discourses and local stories. Sports as markers of identity and social recomposition in the Taiwanese Austronesian communities.

08/01/2018Vladimir Stolojan

“Between “red hats” and “white hats”: how various associations for former prisoners of the White Terror tell the story of the victims’ experiences”.

14/05/2018Exterior Session

The seminar organized a joint session at the “Taiwan Indigenous memory and images” workshop at the Quai Branly museum.

2017-2018 Calendar

 

2nd Monday of the month from 5 pm to 8 pm, from 13 November 2017 to 11 June 2018. The session on 9 April is cancelled. Two additional sessions will be held on 20 November 2017 (Room 4, 105 bd Raspail 75006 Paris) and 25 June 2018 (Room 1, 105 bd Raspail 75006 Paris).

Monday 20 November 2017

(Skaya Siku’s presentation continued) The Austronesian community: looking back on the past in the context of the transitional justice process in Taiwan. (in French: « La communauté austronésienne ; le retour sur le passé dans le cadre du processus de justice transitionnelle à Taïwan »)

Monday 12 February 2018

Discussion on the question of political apologies in the context of the transitional justice process: putting the apologies presented by President Tsai Ing-wen into perspective through other experiences, both Taiwanese and French.

Monday 11 June 2018

Presentation by Wang Fu-chang (Research Fellow at the Academia Sinica’s Institute of Sociology in Taipei): “From Villages, Tribes to Pan-Aborigines : the Historical Changes of Aborigines’ Identities in Taiwan”

Presentation by Hsiao A-chin (Research Fellow at the Academia Sinica’s Institute of Sociology in Taipei): “Narrating National Chineseness in 1970s Taiwan : the Rediscovery of Taiwan New literature, Collective Memory of Anti-Japanese Resistance, and the Origin of « Taiwanized » Historical Rewriting”

Fieldwork grants

 

2017-2018 Grant Recipients:

  • Mister Lai Yoing (Master AMO – EHESS)
    Research topic: “What is the 1992 consensus?”
  • Ms. Wang Chien-hui (Doctorate  – Paris Sorbonne Nouvelle)
    Research topic: “Identity tropisms and the frontier of literary geography: revisiting the landscape of Taiwanese literature from the outside”

 

Jury Members:

  • Mister Emmanuel Lincot (Institut catholique de Paris/Faculté des lettres – IRIS)
  • Ms. Sandrine Marchand (Université d’Artois – ITEM/CNRS-ENS)
  • Ms. Samia Ferhat (Université Paris-Nanterre – UMR CCJ/EHESS)

Practical Information

 

The seminar takes place at the EHESS, Room 1 (first floor) at 105 Bd Raspail, 75006 Paris.

Access:

  • Metro, line 5, stop Saint-Placide
  • Metro, line 12, stop Notre-Dame des Champs