Identity, Writing, and the Other:Han People's Writing on Aborigines Since 1980s

• Main Authors: Chih-ChunLiu, 劉智濬
• Other Authors: Feng-Huang Ying
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2011
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/48427798949163009768

博士 === 國立成功大學 === 台灣文學系碩博士班 === 99 === This paper proposes that Han people’s writing on the aboriginal is a process where the Han people pursue self-identity by writing the “Other.” The deepest driving force comes from the desire of the writer to find out who he/she is, even though the desire may sometimes be not consciously recognized. In historical review, identity has been one of the most critical issues that cannot be simply ignored. In addition to the switchover of political sovereignty and identity in the last century, Nativist Literary Debate in the 1970s triggered the confrontation and rivalry between “Taiwanese Consciousness” and “Chinese Consciousness”. Consequently, individual ethnic Han group formed its own fraction of historical memory which simultaneously overlapped with and separated from that of another ethnic group and thus build up different imagined community. Just like that identification is a way of production and representation practices, “Other” is produced through representation; in this paper, the author suggests that “self-identify” of the Han writer and the “Other Image” of the aboriginal is represented in the same writing context in a synchronic way of mirror-image overlapping. The variation and adjustment of Han identity is a persistent process which always involves with the production and representation of the aboriginal and the Han self-image. Also noteworthy is that “Other” in the Han people’s writing on the aboriginal often represents Han people of the “alien” ethnic group. Sometimes, the existence of the aboriginal “Other” is used to foreground the negative image of the Han “Other,” whereas at other times the Han people use the aboriginal “Other” to show their broad-mindedness and tribal tolerance. The “Other” in the Han people’s writing is actually plural and multiple. Based on previous literature, this paper follows two dimensions for research development, which consist of (1) excavation of the writer’s identity intentions: by textual close-reading, we pursue the hidden discourse of the writer, and we also refer to creative texts and other discourses of the same writer for further discursive evidence; (2) clarification of Han-Aboriginal and intra-Han relationships: these two ethnic relationships bear close and complex dialectical intertextuality, when writing on the aboriginal, the Han writer often left the trace of intra-Han tribal dialogues. This study is also the author’s self-exploration. As a descendant of the Han immigrants, the author extends and intensifies his self-inquiry after a long-term period of reading, comprehending, and investigating the Han people’s writing on the aboriginal. Supposed that literature writing and reading is again and again a process simultaneously toward self and the other, writing and reading is in the least sense a process showing how self-identity is constructed and that those others are projections of the self-identity in pursuit. Desire to be the “Ideal Other” and aversion to “Abhorrent Other” are to great extent compensation and avoidance; to gaze/glower at others is just a means to shift from identity anxiety; and, seeing others while seeing his/herself may mark the beginning to the relief of anxiety