Refashioning Cultural Authenticity: Taiwan

Abstract

Making inquiries into cultural identity in Taiwan is a complicated endeavor because the culture is closely tied to many cultures—principally Chinese, but also Japanese and American—to identify just the most significant. Naming these cultural others and defining a Taiwan cultural identity requires consideration and discussion of the historical discontinuity and cultural hybridization that resulted from both external and internal political and cultural machinations. The disconnection from native culture through migration (e.g., the 1949 exodus from China to Taiwan) and the imposition of a foreign culture through the fifty-year Japanese colonial rule have created for the different groups of people in Taiwan a serious and complex problem in defining not only their own but also collective Taiwan cultural identity. It is a double-edged struggle to overcome cultural displacement and authenticate cultural hybridity.