The Consensus and Dissonance in the National Imagination of Taiwan-form Polarization to Plural

• Main Authors: Chung-ning Chen, 陳中寧
• Other Authors: Huo-yan Shyu
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2008
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/5whb7h

碩士 === 東吳大學 === 政治學系 === 96 === Based on radical democracy theory, the study explores the intrinsic nature of Taiwan’s national identity. First, the study tries to set up a general framework of nationalhood construction discourses, and shows its relevance and significance to the radical democracy theory. Second, the study examines the differences of “national consciousness” between the people who identify themselves as Taiwanese and those who identify themselves as Chinese. It shows that these two groups of identifiers are polarized in the dimension of “China” national consciousness but there is little difference between them in terms of “Taiwan” national consciousness. Third, based on Q-methodology analysis, we found ＆there is found five discernable types of national identity -- Strong Taiwan independence, Weak Taiwan independence, ROC in Taiwan, Status quo, and Two China. However, these different types of subjects have one thing in common in which they all tend to disagree on the “one China” argument. For them, the People of Republic China embodies as “they-group.” The study makes two points as conclusions. First, Taiwanese and Chinese identity is not totally opposite. Second, “Taiwanese identity” carries different meanings for different people, even for them who are in the same category of national identity. For people in Taiwan, the the national imagination is “consensus” rather than “dissonance” by its very nature. Dissonance is found to relate to the contents of identification such as cultural, historical, ethnic origins and so on. There is then more consensus in the identification with the boundary of the state.