Ecocriticism in Taiwan

Identity, Environment, and the Arts

Edited by Chia-ju Chang and Scott Slovic - Contributions by Hannes Berthaller; Dean Anthony Brink; Kathryn Yalan Chang; Shiuhhuah Serena Chou; Hueichu Chu; Hsinya Huang; Peter I-min Huang; Rose Hsui-li Juan; Yu-lin Lee; Iping Liang; Iris Ralph; Robin Chen-hsing Tsai; Shu-fen Tsai and Ming-tu Yang

Ecocriticism is a mode of interdisciplinary critical inquiry into the relationship between cultural production, society, and the environment. The field advocates for the more-than-human realm as well as for underprivileged human and non-human groups and their perspectives. Taiwan is one of the earliest centers for promoting ecocriticism outside the West and has continued to play a central role in shaping ecocriticism in East Asia. This is the first English anthology dedicated to the vibrant development of ecocriticism in Taiwan. It provides a window to Taiwan’s important contributions to international ecocriticism, especially an emerging “vernacular” trend in the field emphasizing the significance of local perspectives and styles, including non-western vocabularies, aesthetics, cosmologies, and political ideologies.

Taiwan's unique history, geographic location, geology, and subtropical climate generate locale-specific, vernacular thinking about island ecology and environmental history, as well as global environmental issues such as climate change, dioxin pollution, species extinction, energy decisions, pollution, and environmental injustice. In hindsight, Taiwan's industrial modernization no longer appears as a success narrative among Asia's “Four Little Dragons,” but as a cautionary tale revealing the brute force entrepreneurial exploitation of the land and the people. In this light, this volume can be seen as a critical response to Taiwan's postcolonial, capitalist-industrial modernity, as manifested in the scholars’ readings of Taiwan's "mountain and river," ocean, animal, and aboriginal (non)fictional narratives, environmental documentaries, and art installations.

This volume is endowed with a mixture of ecocosmopolitan and indigenous sensitivities. Though dominated by the Han Chinese ethnic group and its Confucian ideology, Taiwan is a place of complicated ethnic identities and affiliations. The succession of changing colonial and political regimes, made even more complex by the island’s sixteen aboriginal groups and several diasporic subcultures (South Asian immigrants, Western expatriates, and diverse immigrants from the Chinese mainland), has led to an ongoing quest for political and cultural identity. This complexity urges Taiwan-based ecoscholars to pay attention to the diasporic, comparative, and intercultural dimensions of local specificity, either based on their own diasporic experience or the cosmopolitan features of the Taiwanese texts they scrutinize. This cosmopolitan-vernacular dynamic is a key contribution Taiwan has to offer current ecocritical scholarship.

Lexington Books

Pages: 238 • Trim: 6⅜ x 9½

978-1-4985-3827-5 • Hardback • June 2016 • $115.00 • (£88.00)

978-1-4985-3828-2 • eBook • June 2016 • $109.00 • (£84.00)

Series: Ecocritical Theory and Practice

Subjects: Literary Criticism / Asian / Chinese, Science / Environmental Science, Literary Criticism / Critical Theory / Ecocritical Theory

Ecocriticism in Taiwan

Identity, Environment, and the Arts

Hardback

eBook

Summary

Ecocriticism is a mode of interdisciplinary critical inquiry into the relationship between cultural production, society, and the environment. The field advocates for the more-than-human realm as well as for underprivileged human and non-human groups and their perspectives. Taiwan is one of the earliest centers for promoting ecocriticism outside the West and has continued to play a central role in shaping ecocriticism in East Asia. This is the first English anthology dedicated to the vibrant development of ecocriticism in Taiwan. It provides a window to Taiwan’s important contributions to international ecocriticism, especially an emerging “vernacular” trend in the field emphasizing the significance of local perspectives and styles, including non-western vocabularies, aesthetics, cosmologies, and political ideologies.

Taiwan's unique history, geographic location, geology, and subtropical climate generate locale-specific, vernacular thinking about island ecology and environmental history, as well as global environmental issues such as climate change, dioxin pollution, species extinction, energy decisions, pollution, and environmental injustice. In hindsight, Taiwan's industrial modernization no longer appears as a success narrative among Asia's “Four Little Dragons,” but as a cautionary tale revealing the brute force entrepreneurial exploitation of the land and the people. In this light, this volume can be seen as a critical response to Taiwan's postcolonial, capitalist-industrial modernity, as manifested in the scholars’ readings of Taiwan's "mountain and river," ocean, animal, and aboriginal (non)fictional narratives, environmental documentaries, and art installations.

This volume is endowed with a mixture of ecocosmopolitan and indigenous sensitivities. Though dominated by the Han Chinese ethnic group and its Confucian ideology, Taiwan is a place of complicated ethnic identities and affiliations. The succession of changing colonial and political regimes, made even more complex by the island’s sixteen aboriginal groups and several diasporic subcultures (South Asian immigrants, Western expatriates, and diverse immigrants from the Chinese mainland), has led to an ongoing quest for political and cultural identity. This complexity urges Taiwan-based ecoscholars to pay attention to the diasporic, comparative, and intercultural dimensions of local specificity, either based on their own diasporic experience or the cosmopolitan features of the Taiwanese texts they scrutinize. This cosmopolitan-vernacular dynamic is a key contribution Taiwan has to offer current ecocritical scholarship.

Details

Lexington Books

Pages: 238 • Trim: 6⅜ x 9½

978-1-4985-3827-5 • Hardback • June 2016 • $115.00 • (£88.00)

978-1-4985-3828-2 • eBook • June 2016 • $109.00 • (£84.00)

Series: Ecocritical Theory and Practice

Subjects: Literary Criticism / Asian / Chinese, Science / Environmental Science, Literary Criticism / Critical Theory / Ecocritical Theory

Author

Chia-ju Chang is associate professor of Chinese at Brooklyn College, The City University of New York.

Scott Slovic is professor of literature and environment and chair of the English Department at the University of Idaho.

Table of Contents

Introduction - Chia-ju Chang and Scott Slovic
Section One: Island Identities, Eco-postcolonial Historiography, and Alter(native) Strategies
1. Going Back into a Future of Simplicity: Taiwan Aborigines’ Sustainable Utilization of Natural resources - Ming-tu Yang
2. (W)ri(gh)ting Climate Change in Neqou Soqluman’s Work - Hsinya Huang
3. Taiwanese Mountain and River Literature from a Postcolonial Perspective - Peter I-min Huang
4. Taiwan Is A Whale: The Emerging Oneness of Dark Blue and Human Identity in Chia-Hsiang Wang’s Historical Fiction - Shu-fen Tsai
5. Agrarian Origin Stories, National Imaginaries, and the Ironies of Modern Environmentalism: On Chi-Po Lin’s Beyond Beauty: Taiwan from Above - Hannes Bergthaller
Section Two: Slow Violence, Creative Activism, and Environmental Movements
1. Toxic Objects, Slow Violence, and the Ethics of Trans-Corporeality in Chi Wen-Chang’s The Poisoned Sky - Robin Chen-hsing Tsai
2. Imagining the Great Pacific Garbage Patch and Spectacles of Environmental Disaster: Environmental Entanglement and Literary Engagement in Wu Ming-Yi’s The Man with the Compound Eyes - Rose Hsui-li Juan
3. If Nature Had a Voice: A Material-Oriented Environmental Reading of The Man with the Compound Eyes - Kathryn Yalan Chang
4. Imagining Catastrophe: Nuclear Issues in postwar Taiwan Literature - Hueichu Chu
5. Pre-texts for Tree-texts, W.S. Merwinand the Trees of Taiwan - Iris Ralph
6. Revisiting Resistance: Urban Foraging, Public Markets, and New Organic Landscape - Serena Shiuhhuah Chou
Section Three: Animal Fiction, Avant-garde Art, and Posthumanist Ecoaesthetics
1. What’s in a Plant?: The Transcorporeality in Yucca Invest Trading Plant - Iping Liang
2. Becoming-Animal: Liu Kexiang’s Writing Apprenticeship On Birds - Yu-lin Lee
3. Aesthetic Configurations and Qualia in Environmental Consciousness in Contemporary Taiwanese Poetry and Installation Art - Dean Anthony Brink
4. Utopia in Theatre: Mulian Rescues Mother Earth - Joy Shih-yi Huang

Reviews

This timely volume provides a clue to understanding the outpourings of environmentalism.... With the landmark publication of this volume, the study of Taiwan’s environmental literature and arts has emerged as a legitimate research field.
— The International Journal of Asian Studies

Ecocriticism in Taiwan is a remarkable collection of fifteen essays that expertly introduce and rigorously analyze the longstanding commitment of Taiwanese artists, academics, and activists to confronting local and global ecological challenges. Captivating sections on the alternative strategies exhibited by Taiwan’s aboriginal societies, creative activism and environmental movements, and avant-garde art and posthumanist ecoasethetics draw long overdue attention to Taiwan’s cosmopolitan vernacularism and contribute significantly to promoting a transnational environmental consciousness.
— Karen Thornber, Harvard University

In the 1990s, Taiwan embraced, nurtured, and globally networked the field of ecocriticism. In this long-awaited volume, Chang and Slovic bring the island’s most renowned ecocritical leaders together with fast-rising scholars to illustrate Taiwan’s significant and continuing contribution to the field. Among the thought-provoking topics and vexing issues discussed are Han Chinese poetry, Taiwanese aboriginal cultures and arts, women’s nature writing, food, deforestation, and documentary film. Readers will discover why Taiwan is rightly recognized as one of the intellectual epicenters of ecocriticism.
— Joni Adamson, Professor, Environmental Humanities, Arizona State University, and co-editor, Keywords for Environmental Studies

Taiwan has long been a powerhouse of global ecocriticism, but the full depth and breadth of scholarly work on the island has never been available to Anglophone critics - until now. The editors’ term ‘cosmopolitan vernacular ecocriticism’ encapsulates the impressive range of relationships to place, land, nation, and planet articulated in this wonderfully illuminating collection.
— Greg Garrard, University of British Columbia Okanagan