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Taiwan’s Tumultuous Past and the Conflicted National Self

The Taiwan issue is a multi-faceted Gordian knot compounded by contested ethnic and political interests, Cross-Strait relations with China, and unresolved legacies bequeathed from the historical past.  Solutions to the issue seem more elusive than ever. All the while, domestic arguments rage and tensions soar. This talk shifts the focus away from contemporary politics to the tumultuous past and the legacy termed the “conflicted national self”. Its theme is Taiwan’s identity formation during the Nationalist (Kuomintang) era and post-Martial Law Taiwan.  Stories and novels from xiangtu wenxue (native soil literature) and bentu or pro-Taiwan literature illustrate the way the identity evolved. Further concepts include hegemony, becoming (Japanese, Chinese, Taiwanese), Orientalism, 228 (Ererba) and the White Terror (Baikong), and unification versus independence. The speaker draws on her experience living in Taiwan during the Nationalist era and her recent publication Taiwan’s Modern Identity Reimagined: Becoming Taiwanese (Routledge, 2026).

Speaker
Rosemary Haddon is a retired lecturer in Chinese at Massey University, New Zealand. Her recent publication, Taiwan’s Modern Identity Reimagined – Becoming Taiwanese (2026), was published by Routledge. Rosemary’s Ph.D. (UBC, 1992) introduced nativist literature (xiangtu wenxue) to the Anglophone western world. The thesis bridges China and Taiwan. In 1993, she took up a Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Australian National University before moving to New Zealand, where she lectured in Chinese at Massey University. Her academic interests extend to China and Taiwan as well as colonialism, gender, identity and art. Rosemary witnessed first-hand the human right abuses during the Martial Law period (1949-1987) in Taiwan.