As I mourn the waning days of my "sabbatical" and the feeling that I haven't achieved as much as I should, I'm distracting myself by reading up on some things that might help me figure out the conclusion of the paper I'm working on. (So technically, that's probably not a distraction.) I came across notes on a 2018 lecture by Allen Chun, author of a book I'm finding useful--Forget Chineseness: On the Geopolitics of Cultural Identification. I tried to find the lecture, whimsically entitled "Forget Allen Chun," on YouTube, but it's evidently not available.
I did come across this 2023 lecture by Chun at ANU, which I intend to watch when I get a chance.
Here's the abstract of the lecture:
Social Visibility and Political Invisibility: The Ethnography of a School in Nationalist Taiwan
Beginning as a year-long ethnography of a school in Taiwan in 1990, it provides a concrete point of departure and framework of political-cultural practice for understanding the historical evolution of a system of socialization that resides at the basis of an ongoing process of national identification. This process of national identification has roots in cultural ideology as shaped by changing Nationalist policy and practice to the present. 1990 is also a crucial juncture for viewing a transition from a sinocentric politicizing regime to a Taiwanizing one. My analysis of the school in time and practice, both in the context of education as curriculum and social organization, establishes in my opinion a different critical perspective on contemporary Taiwan. At the same time, it serves as a new paradigm for critical ethnography in cultural studies.
I am interested in this because of its content, of course, but also because I was briefly in Taiwan in 1990 and then returned for a longer (7-year) stay in 1992. (At some point during that period, I did get a chance to hear a talk by Chun at the Academia Sinica, I believe it was. I don't remember his topic, but I remember that he cited Johannes Fabian.) I'll comment on the talk after I've had a chance to view it.
Update, a few minutes later: OK, where's the talk? This is only the question-and-answer session. Strange...
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