| Summary: | 碩士 === 東吳大學 === 社會學系 === 98 === This thesis aims to consider the “living sensuousness” in Taiwan as a member of Asia which has its own concrete history of modernization. I attempt to construct an antagonistic concept of Asia based on Taiwan and its relations to others. I look into the discourse of Japanese Asiaism which has been widely discussed in Japan, China, South Korea, and Taiwan. I thereby employ some related issues to build a conversation with Kuan-Hsing Chen‟s inspiring work „Asia as method: Toward Deimperialization‟, and articulate some discursive ingredients connect Asian Writing and Place concept.
Secondly, I start with Cresswell‟s definition of place as not only a fact but also a way of knowing the world. Then, I discuss three important writers‟ notions of place to elaborate the possibilities of knowing the world. Massey‟s relational notion of place emphasizes wider social relation which helps define place, and point out place is not a nostalgic concept. Dirlik discusses indigenism in the concrete experience of Taiwan which is a reconstitution of boundary of China as a nation-state. I also examine Escobar‟s Colombia experience to explore the third world‟s resistance against US. Both US and the third world are not unified concepts, neither is Asia.
Thirdly, I explore Japanese Asiaism, which is a set of debates including the meaning of Greater Eastern Asia War, overcoming the predicaments of modernity, and Asia as method. In second section, critical regionalism is a field which requests us to open everything we know, and try to articulate the local predicaments to the relational historical situation of neighbor states. It contains the context of local living sensuousness originated in the theoretical concepts and assumptions in the specific local configuration of modernity. Finally, return to Taiwan in Asia, I inquire the complexity of Chineseness, and the shen-ji problem of Taiwan within the frame of Asia.
Last but not the least, chapter four states the connections between Asian writing and place concept in the aspects of concept frame and problematic. I point out that „Asia as a place‟ is better with an approach of trans-national boundaries and uncoersive rearrangement of desires. Besides western theories and concepts, we have to acquaint with the living sensuousness and the histories of Asian nations and places. As such, whenever we are considering our local problems, we learn to take note of the wider social relations and to the possible formation of an alternative reference frame of Asia.
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