Dienstag | 10.00 Uhr | Taiwan Lecture Series, Part I: Cosmologies of Difference on the Taiwan Frontier: Chinese Colonial Discourse in Comparative Perspective: Chen Di’s Record of Formosa (1603): A Chinese Anti-Imperial Text in Global Perspective Leigh Jenco (London School of Economics) Turning finally to the specific case of Taiwan, this lecture examines Chen Di’s Record of Formosa (Dongfan ji), the first text in any language to offer a firsthand account of the indigenous societies of Taiwan. It is also significant in light of our analysis in the previous lectures, because Chen offers one of the few examples of the “contingency” view of human difference examined in Lecture 1. Emma Teng and others have identified Chen’s Record as a key representative of Chinese colonial discourse and its various tropes of hierarchical difference. Yet I argue that Chen’s Record does not contribute to this fraught imperial narrative as directly as some have claimed. To the contrary, Chen offers one of the few examples of a Chinese anti-imperial argument, built from his scholarly commitments to a historicized view of the past and elaborated in contrast to other, more prevalent neo-Confucian justifications for the pacification of Taiwan. Building on a broader understanding of Chen’s biography and his extant works, I argue that Chen reads the perceived cultural differences of indigenous peoples with an imperial center as evidence of the fragility and reversibility, rather than inevitable superiority, of a historical story that produces the outcome of “civilization.” Chen Di rejects the historical timeline that confines indigenous people to some primitive stage of human development, but also goes further to suggest that they might be understood as forging their own contingent history that exists parallel to, rather than behind, that of a civilizational center. By placing the Formosan indigenes along a different timeline altogether, Chen’s historical narrative resists the colonial temptation to align them with Han Chinese forms of development. Adresse Centre for Asian and Transcultural Studies (CATS) CATS 010.00.01 Voßstrasse 2 69115 Heidelberg Homepage Veranstaltung https://www.zo.uni-heidelberg.de/sinologie/research/tls/taiwanlec19s_de.html Veranstalter Centre for Asian and Transcultural Studies (CATS) Homepage Veranstalter https://www.cats.uni-heidelberg.de Kontakt contact@cats.uni-heidelberg.de Alle Termine der Veranstaltung 'Taiwan Lecture Series, Part I: Cosmologies of Difference on the Taiwan Frontier: Chinese Colonial Discourse in Comparative Perspective': This year’s Taiwan Lecture Series offers object lessons with objects from Taiwan in the Museum of Ethnology (Seeing Taiwan), a lecture series with renowned LSE Historian Leigh Jenco on colonial Taiwan (Thinking Taiwan), and finally a workshop and concert with Taiwan composer Chen Shih-hui and famous Sheng-Player Wu Wei (Hearing Taiwan). Students who would like to take this class for credit will participate in all activities related to the class. They will each analyze and introduce one object, and they will prepare abstracts of the readings for the lecture series and the music workshop. At the end, students will write a seminar paper. Montag, 22. Juli 2019, 10.00 Uhr Leigh Jenco (London School of Economics) Montag, 22. Juli 2019, 14.00 Uhr Leigh Jenco (London School of Economics) Dienstag, 23. Juli 2019, 10.00 Uhr Chen Di’s Record of Formosa (1603): A Chinese Anti-Imperial Text in Global Perspective Leigh Jenco (London School of Economics) Dienstag, 23. Juli 2019, 14.00 Uhr The Dangers of Republican Freedom in Dutch Colonial Formosa, 1624-1662 Leigh Jenco (London School of Economics) |