Chih-ming Wang and I coedited a timely forum, “Against Empire: Taiwan, American Studies, and the Archipelagic,” published in the current issue of American Quarterly.
I thank the authors – Wen Liu, Anita Chang, Funie Hsu, Yukari Yoshihara, Judy Tzu-Chun Wu, and Leo Tsu-shin Ching – for their thoughtful and generative essays. I hope that this forum continues to open the door for more critical scholarship re: Taiwan and Taiwanese/Americans and analogous topics in American studies and related fields. AQ editor Mari Yoshihara: “The forum’s conveners and contributors place Taiwan in the historical and contemporary US imaginary to engage the triangulated politics of the United States, the People’s Republic of China, and Taiwan that have been overdetermined by US military empire. As the essays not only illuminate the implications of coalition politics in the larger Asian and Pacific island worlds but also reflect on the origins of American studies in Cold War politics, the forum has a great deal to teach for American studies scholars beyond those specializing in Taiwan, Asia, or the Pacific.”
Contents:
Introduction by Wendy Cheng and Chih-Ming Wang
Refuting the Silences of Taiwanese/American History: The Case of Chen Yu-hsi by Wendy Cheng
Postwar American Studies in Asia and Its Prehistory: George Kerr and Taiwan as an American Frontier by Yukari Yoshihara
Taiwan’s Bilingual Policy: Signaling In/dependence and Settler Coloniality by Funie Hsu
Making Our Best Move with Audrey Tang and Taiwan’s Digital Democracy by Anita Wen-Shin Chang
From Independence to Interdependence: Taiwan Independence as Critique, Strategy, and Method toward Decoloniality by Wen Liu
The Centrality of Islands and Taiwan as Method by Judy Tzu-Chun Wu
Beyond Nation and Empire by Leo T. S. Ching
Wendy Cheng 