This essay will explore from the perspective of a Taiwanese artist living different cultures (Taiwan and the UK) how to address Taiwanese identity in the UK. It will explore the construction of identity in a cross- cultural context through contemporary ceramic practice. As a Taiwanese woman living and working in ‘in between ’ cultures (Taiwan and UK) I have recognized how challenging it is to survive in western society.
My PhD, which is practice- led in ceramics, deals with the predicament of identity. My supporting research investigates Taiwanese women ceramists with a particular focus on notions of gender: Taiwan continues to be a patriarchal society. Traditionally, women in Taiwan have always relied on male – dominated social rituals as this defines their identity in life.
My contemporary practice provides a platform of freedom from which I can escape and review tensions. Who am I and how can I develop my studio practice research in ceramics in order to find ways of working that express and communicate my situation?
I use ready-made objects to create a dialogue between the different political power platforms. My aim is to combine old documents and maps behind contemporary issues such as the Taiwanese Sunflower movement, traditional Taiwanese wedding customs and Taiwanese smells such as camphor. I like to mix up the cross culture predicament, releasing dangerous emotional feelings to try and understand the Taiwan condition.
Additionally I draw on oral history methodology as I collected first hand information from Taiwan. The artist conducted interviews for a disappearing culture from the Amis earthenware tradition in Taiwan. I created a ten minute documentary film to show the pottery making process. Furthermore I used my female perspective to analyse why only females in the Amis tribe were allowed to touch clay and how modernity has affected their traditional way of life.
Additionally my aim in my work is to unpack Taiwanese cultural identity in the colonial and post colonialism worlds. I decide to use volcanic glazes and porcelain to construct cross culture process. Time and space changes, many objects are situating / shifting in different systems. Sometimes similar objects take on different meanings such as bananas, Chinese paws, Chinese medicine, spoons and rose petals.
Taiwan will need to survive in the western society context, this does not mean to just become other. It needs to try not to limit its potential and possibility. Taiwanese people need to be positive to deal with our past and look forward to the future. In turn we have seen our country occupied by Spain, Holland and Japan and we have a very sensitive relationship with the Chinese government. Taiwan needs to figure out our traditional cultural values and try to understand Taiwanese history to be able to believe in ourselves. Nowadays Taiwan seems to be living in a colonial period or post-colonial atmosphere.
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You up; I down - Orientational metaphor concerning to ancient Egyptian kingship in royal iconographies and inscriptions
Shih-Wei HSU/PhD in Egyptology, Freie Universität Berlin, DE
The most common use of a metaphor is as a figure of speech, in which one object is usually compared to another object. However, in the last three decades, the prominent discussion of metaphor is “that metaphors are, as far as their cognitive force is concerned, elliptical similes”. In 1980, Lakoff and Johnson proposed the “conceptual metaphor theory”, which means that the metaphor is actually pervasive in our everyday way of thinking, speaking and acting. Three kinds of cognitive function of metaphor are a) structural metaphors, b) ontological metaphors and c) orientational metaphors.
Orientational metaphors, which are the main topic of this paper, give a concept of spatial orientations. They arise from the fact that we have bodies of sort we have and that they function as they do in our physical environment: up-down, in-out, front-back, on-off, deep-shallow and central-peripheral. The relationship between the king and his enemy can be regarded by orientational metaphors, for instance, the UP-DOWN orientation: The king is up – GOOD IS UP, HIGH STATUS IS UP, LIFE IS UP, CONTROL IS UP, ACTIVE IS UP and ORDER IS UP; his enemy is down – BAD IS DOWN, LOW STATUS IS DOWN, DEATH IS DOWN; LACK OF CONTROL IS DOWN, PASSIVE IS DOWN and CHAOS IS DOWN.
The ancient Egyptian kingship has been researched by different aspects, but not by the aspect of orientation metaphors. This paper focuses on orientational metaphors, which appear both in royal iconographies and inscriptions. They help people to understand not only types of relationships between the king and his enemies, but also other layers of meaning behind these relationships.
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Mythology of Tai-Ke in The Golden Bough Theatre’s Opela Hi
Shu-Ping HUANG/PhD Candidat in Theater, Université Paris 8, FR
Known for its series of pieces in the name of ‘Opela’ or “Tai-Ke”, the Golden Bough Theatre, a group of contemporary theatre , has captured precisely the cultural atmosphere since the 1990s in Taiwan. It successfully creates some kind of popular theatre which is claimed to be the representation of real Taiwanese’s spirit.
Since the Golden Bough Theatre’s creation of the “ Taiwan Opera: Female Robin Hood Pai Hsiao Lan” in 1996, it has become, in a few years, the spokesman for this ‘traditional' popular theatre. These pieces are full of clichés and stereotypes, but strangely they still get the attention and the appreciation of the newspaper reporters and some theatre scholars.
As a matter of fact, these clichés originally meant to be criticized by the specialists become unexpectedly the objects which help to arouse and reform the collective memory in Taiwanese society. That is the reason why the audience can relate themselves to the story and satisfy their nostalgia.
We can also find from these stereotypes a reduced and “essentialized” Taiwanese image, reinforced by the Golden Bough Theatre.
When Chen Shui Bian was elected as president in 2000, the quest for the authentic Taiwanese culture became a hot topic.
Take the person’s characters for instance; rustic, boorish, provincial are considered to be real Taiwanese. As for the presentation of art, bright and colorful are the most used images. When it comes to the style of performance, simple, funny and animated are the principal characteristics.
We can summarize these above-mentioned examples as the phenomena of “Tai-Ke”. Some of the images and roles of Golden Bough Theatre correspond to this “Tai-Ke” fashion. Since it is acclaimed to be the best theatre of Tai-Ke, it gets also the legitimacy to represent the real Taiwanese.
This paper will examine firstly the Golden Bough Theatre’s ‘Opela’ series through the roles, the music, the costumes, the conversations and the advertisements. Secondly, the research goes on to discuss the cultural and social context behind the works. Finally, by rethinking the stereotypes and the clichés in the theatrical performance, this study will reconsider how the mythology of Taiwanese society has been made.
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The Cultural Identity of Taiwanese Visual Arts in the 20th century
Jye-ni TSAY/PhD Candidate in Cultural Sociology, EHESS, FR
As a result of the successive cultural colonizations in the last century, the Taiwanese identity problem becomes a complex topic that attracts considerable researchers internationally.
This research intends to deal with a theme which connects the identity issue and the visual arts. We presuppose first an existence of a collective aesthetics which is based on the history, the geography and the custom of each country. Since the state built not only the political and the economic boundaries, but also the cultural boundary formed by the national education and the effect of centralized mass media, consequently, the cultural expression tends to be homogenized within a scale of nation. That is why, for example, we could distinguish the different national aesthetic among the participating countries at the Venice Biennale, although the form performing the contemporary art is quite internationalized.
Some Western art critics find that the Taiwanese artists are familiar with the forms of the expression of Western art. However, most of the works of Taiwanese visual arts manifest evidently an unwillingness to express an insular character. Accordingly, it is difficult to distinguish a collective style of Taiwanese arts in the world of contemporary art.
The character of Taiwanese art is away from a national or a local characteristic. But what caused this result? Moreover, as the conflict of national identity is appearing evidently on the island, in very few creations, a divergence of aesthetics among the Taiwanese artworks can be aware as well.
The effect of the successive cultural colonizations might induce the historic context of this distinctive Taiwanese phenomenon. This research will focus on the expression of the Taiwanese artworks during the 20th century. Through the studies of the works, the speeches and the debates that form the dominant taste of the Taiwanese visual arts, as well as their roles in identity competition, the research aims at explaining a more “subtle” cultural expression of the visual arts from the perspective of identity studies.
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Not Ready for Negotiations: Problems of Chinese Preparations and Sino-Soviet Treaty in 1945
Chia-Lien HUANG/PhD Student in Russian History of the 20th and 21st Centuries, Moscow State University, RU
Lack preparations for negotiations with Soviet Union (USSR) is the one of the main factors caused lots of controversies over Sino-Soviet Treaty of Friendship and Alliance for the Republic of China (ROC), but few people took notice of it before. Chiang Kai-shek and his men did understand neither what kind of exact benefits they wanted to gain from Soviet Union nor why Joseph Stalin desired to make his Yalta Agreement come true in Far East. Hence, there was little cooperation between two countries after signing the treaty of Friendship and Alliance. The essay is going to prove the causal relations between preparations and result of negotiations in 1945 by new released documents from Russia and Taiwan.
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The Origin and the Construction of the Current Social Values in Taiwan – A Ponderation with Taiwanese Labors' Body Images
Guan-Chun LIN/PhD Candidate in Sociology, Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg, DE
Since the economic boom in the 1960s, Taiwan has become an island with the post-modernity consumerism. Nowadays, its society looks joyful and vivacious. But many researches have revealed that more and more Taiwanese people are unhappy and unhealthy due to their unsatisfaction with working and living conditions. The narrative interviews of this paper have revealed that the body of the labors has been formed as a superintended, disciplined, exploited and dedicated object, which is utilized as a social and economical capital.
If the current social model is unfavorable, why it could exist and shape people’s behaviors and body images constantly? In which way the social values have been (re-)formed? How could we criticize the present phenomenon in a correct way and find the solutions for their induced problems? Through the narrative interviews of blue and white collar workers and the literature reviews focused on western sociology of the body, Chinese traditional and modern body concepts as well as Taiwan’s social and economical transitions, a deeper insight into these questions has been gained in this paper.
According to the analysis, this study has come to the following points:
1. The same as the “structured theory” of the western sociology, the classical Confucianism and Taoism regarded the body as “a product of the social structure” and “a producer of the society”. Nevertheless, the classical Chinese notion has been misrepresented during the feudal period, the Japanese colonization, the coercion after war and the capitalization in recent decades. Since then the body is merely an object, which is scanty of self-responsibility and active will to construct the social structure.
2. Although the classical Chinese concepts are still preserved in Taiwan, Taiwanese people’s thoughts and body concepts are also formed by the influences of the cultural, social and economical transitions in each phase. The individual body is therefore regarded as an object, which is dominated by the external system, culture and values. Moreover, the social responsibility of every individual is relieved to others. Today, most of the subjects in Taiwan behave in accordance with their class belonging as well as their economical, cultural and social capitals. The structuralist body images have been developed softly and unconsciously.
3. Taiwan society is built upon the classical Chinese culture as well as the local political, economical and social changes. All of the phenomenon and the social problems have their own historical and social context. Both of the “delocalization” and the “de-sinicization” have actually decontextualized the origin of the current phenomenon. Because of this decontextualization, the issues attached to each social problem are defocused. That is the main reason, why the proper solutions for the current social problems are always marginalized.
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Understanding Kant's Concept of the highest Good
Cheng-Hao LIN/PhD Candidate in Philosophy, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, DE
Kant’s moral thought is an unshakable milestone in the history of ethics. His formalism and rigorism has become a model of the deontological Ethics. He strictly exclude any consideration of the consequences of behavior and happiness in the establishment of his moral principle, which is well-known part of his ethics. However, this is not the whole picture of Kantian ethics, whose moral system includes a controversial theory of highest good. The so-called highest good is that moral and happiness correspondently in proportion present in the moral actors, in simple terms, a morally good person should also have the happiness he deserves. About this concept of the highest good, Kant further claims that it is the a priori object of human will, and if the highest good were not possible, then the moral law would be fake (KpV, V: 114). This idea strongly counters our impression of Kantian ethics, and it seems that it will make Kant’s system into a self-contradiction. Since the moral law does not consider to achieve the goals of actions from duties, nor require it to bring the results of happiness, then how could the possibility of the highest good that contains the happiness affect the valid of the establishment of the concept of moral law. Faced with this problem, the simplest solution is to regard this inherent inconsistency of the theory as the limitation of Kant’s thought under the religious authority at his time, thereby Kant can further argue that in order to sustain the possibility of the highest good we have to presuppose the existence of god, so that his system was not contrary to the mainstream thinking at the time. However, if we grasp Kant’s system deeply, such an interpretation not only ignores the spirit and purpose of Kant’s critical philosophy as a whole, but also gives up the possibility to find a more coherent interpretation in accordance with the principles of charity. In this article I will try to point out that Kant introduced the concept of the highest good in its philosophical system, is still based on the formal normativity of moral, merely this introduction is considered for the different aspect in the ethics. This concept not only doesn’t conflict with his formalism, is but also an integral part for the last purpose in terms of his entire philosophical system. Because the ultimate goal of Kant's critical work is not to eradicate all metaphysics, but to establish a scientifically valid metaphysics. Thereby, how the objects of traditional metaphysics (God, the soul, etc.), whose cognitive meaning is denied by Critique of Pure Reason, restore their status, will be Kant’s unavoidable task, and just in this aspect, the concept of the highest good plays an irreplaceable role. If this attempt is successful, it will show that the spirit of critical philosophy does not consist simply of the choosing between superficial conflicting concepts (e.g. either consider only the duties, or only consider the results), but the correct classification of concepts, striving to maintain their validity by applying them in their effective domain respectively. In addition to making Kant’s original ethical thoughts, which are seemingly rigorous cold, closer to our intuition, this work can also let us reflect the advantages of the holistic thinking from classical figure in our time, when we are used to thinking with the divided topics of the whole philosophy.
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The limit problems of phenomenology－On the phenomenology of death
Yun-Hong, YANG/PhD Candidate in Philosophy, Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg, DE
The triple relation, consciousness-meaning-language, is one of the most important issues since the very beginning of "the phenomenological Movement"１, and has a great effect around all modern continental philosophy. If meaning as a event in our experience cannot be thinking of without consciousness, how could we think the rupture between experience and language form the unconsciousness-problem, like death, born ,sleep, mystical religious experiences２or other unconsciousness situations, in the phenomenology. The problem of death is one of the most difficult problems. For phenomenology, to describe, analyze and reduce the essence from experience, is a fundamental work. But obviously, we can't experience our own death, and go back to doing the phenomenological work. However, as a specific type of Being, the human being, we have no chance to avoid death. How can we think the death problem in phenomenology?
Martin Heidegger in 1927 in one of his famous works, "Sein und Zeit(Being and Time)"３, was mentioned the concept of "das Sein zum Tode "(being-toward-death). And leaving a considerable influence in 20th century. But after the late manuscripts４by Edmund Husserl, the founder of phenomenology, in 2014 published. We can find another understanding on the question of death.
As we know, Husserl and Heidegger have a very different understanding and influence in development of phenomenology５. But death problem to both of them, is a unavoidable issue in phenomenology. For Heidegger, death is the direct question to "Dasein" as the end of Being-in-the-world. Similarly, Husserl also point to the living world as a holistic meaning. Death as a lost puzzle, in the way of happening and continuing experience world that we can never receive.
In this text, I will compare about death problem by Husserl in "Grenzprobleme der Phänomenologie" and by Heidegger in "Sein und Zeit(Being and Time)", and describe the phenomenology of death between Husserl and Heidegger.
- The concept of "The Phenomenological Movement", see Herbert Spiegelberg, "The Phenomenological Movement: A Historical Introduction",3rd edition. with the collaboration of Karl Schuhmann. The Hague: Nijhoff. 1982. Or Hans Rainer Sepp, (Hrsg.): "Edmund Husserl und die phänomenologische Bewegung. Zeugnisse in Text und Bild." Alber, Freiburg u. München 1988.
- For the analysis of mystical experience is not the same with mystik or okkultismus.
- Martin Heidegger, "Sein und Zeit", Niemeyer, Tübingen, §§ 46-53, 2006. Will be referred to as SuZ.
- Edmund Husserl, "Grenzprobleme der Phänomenologie - Analysen des Unbewusstseins und der Instinkte. Metaphysik. Späte Ethik (Texte aus dem Nachlass 1908 – 1937)", Husserliana: Edmund Husserl – Gesammelte Werke, Band 42, Springer, 2014. Will be referred to as Hua XLII.
The argument between Husserl and Heidegger in " Phenomenology" draft in "the Encyclopaedia Britannica". After this, Husserl also criticized, that Heidegger made phenomenology as a "philosophical anthropology". See Edmund Husserl, Psychological and transcendental phenomenology and the confrontation with Heidegger (1927–1931) (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1997).
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Visual-spatial processing in ageing: neuroimaging and cognitive correlates
Yvonne LAI/PhD Candidate in Academic Psychiatry, Newcastle University, UK
There is increasing interest in furthering our understanding of the relationship between cognitive decline in ageing and the brain regions associated with this. The hemispheric asymmetry reduction in old adults (HAROLD) hypothesis suggests that the two hemispheres show different decay speeds. Older adults with preserved cognitive function are able to utilise limited brain resources efficiently. Additional brain resources in one hemisphere are applied to ‘scaffold’ the other hemisphere that shows declined cognitive ability. Previous studies on this topic have utilised only verbal-related cognitive ability, which is restricted to prefrontal cortex activations. This study aims to observe such scaffolding mechanism with visual-spatial tasks that are underpinned by temporal-parietal activation. Categorical and coordinate spatial relations are two types of spatial relations in visual-spatial memory. Categorical spatial relations describe objects’ spatial relations in an abstract manner, e.g., the pan is on the left of the eraser. Coordinate spatial relations illustrate spatial relations between objects with a numeric and precise method, e.g., the pan is 5cm away from the eraser. Categorical spatial relations are associated with the left hemisphere processing while coordinate spatial relations rely on the right hemisphere processing. The hemispheric specificity of the two spatial representations enables the researcher to examine the HAROLD hypothesis and observes possible compensatory mechanism in ageing.
Two studies were designed to observe cognitive performance and the underlying neural mechanism in older adults. Fifty-five healthy older participants (aged between 40 and 69 years old) were recruited in the neuropsychological study. The participants experienced a neuropsychological battery including psychomotor speed tests, attention and central executive function tests, verbal ability tests, and spatial ability tests along with two visual-spatial memory tasks developed in our lab, the CATCOORD task and the dot-cross task. Participants were separated into Old-High (OH) and Old-Low (OL) group in accordance with their cognitive composite. The OL group showed significant correlation with verbal ability when performing the visual-spatial memory tasks whereas the OH group did not associate other cognitive ability. That is, OL participants recruited additional verbal information to perform the visual-spatial tasks yet it did not aid the performance. The neuroimaging study recruited 37 older participants from the neuropsychological study. The participants were required to perform the dot-cross task in an fMRI scanner. The neuroimaging results showed bilateral activation when judging categorical and coordinate spatial relations. However, stronger and broader neural network was found in the OH group than the OL group when perform the task. In addition, the OH group recruited greater frontal regions, which are associated with attention/executive function ability, when processing difficult trials than the OL group.
Overall, the results demonstrated a compensatory strategy in the OH group by including additional attention when facing cognitive challenge. The OL group, on the other hand, showed lack of attention and resulted in poor cognitive performance. Future study intends to assist cognitive decline in ageing could enhance attention and central executive ability in older adults and to improve their overall quality of life.
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Unemployment, Economic Growth, and Trade: Empirical Application of Okun's Law in Taiwan
Eric Yu-Shen LIU/PhD Candidate in Economics, University of Southampton, UK
The relationship between unemployment rate and the rise of real production is widely examined by empirical economists. Okun (1962) firstly concludes the relationship between the gap of real GNP and the gap of unemployment rate to be negative in US data, and this structure, known as the “Okun Coefficient” is later commonly applied by researchers worldwide. Since Taiwan has long been recognized as an economic entity highly dependent on its international trade, the paper attempts to further supplement the existing empirical literature on Okun Coefficient in Taiwan, via adding export growth as an extra explanatory variable within the Autoregressive Autoregressive Distributed Lag Model (ADL) framework. Is trade growth also significantly affecting unemployment rate cyclically? If so, how can we explain it?１
By applying the Hodrick–Prescott filter (H-P filter), and Holt-Winters de-seasonal smoothing to construct two different data sets, the paper attempts to examine in robustness if a theoretical prediction proposed by Dutt, Mitra and Ranja (2009), i.e., a more liberate free trade agreement between countries could be not as benign as expected, but harmful to overall employment cyclically２.
Furthermore, the paper examines if there is any “shock” that occurs at assumed breaks date that would create structural changes with the Chow test statistics, in accordance with the theoretical prediction of Dutt et al. The assumed break date is 1990q1 when Taiwan reinitiates Trade with China, a country relatively lower 1990q1 when Taiwan reinitiates Trade with China, a country with relatively lower capital per labor ratio at the time, and 2002q1, when Taiwan has joined World Trade Organization (WTO), a FTA with average capital labor ratio slightly higher than that of Taiwan then３. Lastly, a Quandt Likelihood Ratio test has been included as to see when the break most likely to happen in both filtered and de-seasonal data set. The result of the two datasets show resemblance: as the break date with the highest QLR statistics are at the beginning of 1986, which could be a result of multiple, intertwined shocks, e.g., initiation of the bubble economy in Japan, the international raw material prices hit the record-breaking lowest levels, and the Taiwanese martial law, was finally about to be abolished after 38 years of enforcement４.
- The GDP and export in Taiwan is shown Fig.1
- Please see Fig.2 and 3, which are graphic example of the result of HP-filter, and HW-desmoothing.
- The capital-labor ratio over the years is graphed in Fig.4
- The result in QLR is presented in Fig.5
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Potential risks of loans made by Taiwan domestic banks to China enterprises
Wei-Ming HUANG/Master of Laws, LL.M., Queen Mary University of London, UK
Under the trend of internationalised capital flows, it is usual to see domestic banks have business contact with foreign or multi-national enterprises. However, can a same concept be recognised in the condition of Taiwan banks making loans to China enterprises? From the view of financial risk in this articis article, some doubtable contents might be analysed.
Recently, syndicate loan cases be lent from Taiwan's domestic banks to China enterprises raised the Taiwan public's attention. Some lender banks of those cases faced the potential risks of dead loans which might not only result from their internal inspection but also revealed the weakness of Taiwan's financial supervisory framework. The major categories of Taiwan banks making loans to China enterprises nowadays can be separated into two types: one is syndicate loan lead by foreign agent banks to form Taiwan banks into a consortium, then the bank consortium make loans to China enterprises. As can be seen in some cases, they are unsecured loan. Once the borrowers become insolvent, syndicate loans without collateral might lead syndicate loans unable to be repaid. That is the reason why first type of are worth noting.
Nonetheless, the second type of loan is also worrisome when China enterprises issuing depositary receipts in Taiwan (Taiwan depositary receipts, TDRs) and using their TDRs to get loan from banks. Management of TDRs market is not matured enough. Market abuse might happen which will cause domestic investment loss when their original stock price plummet. Furthermore, the nature of depositary receipt (DR) is still different from stock. The framework of TDRs market is still highly rely on Operating Rules of the Taiwan Stock Exchange Corporation instead of an act included financial services or financial conducts. Concerning the integrity of financial conducts, an integral act might can expect to be established in order to fill the gap between securities regulation and financial service act. If TDRs cannot be seen as a stable vehicle, applying TDRs as collateral is still questionable.
To sum up, this article wants to illustrate three points. Firstly is the potential risks of dead loans between Taiwan domestic banks and China enterprises from the perspective of practise and regulation views. Secondly, some UK financial acts will be introduced to discuss it is possible for Taiwan to apply in Taiwan’s financial market, and whether it can be can be can be amended in Taiwan financial supervisory framework. Lastly, the availability of a Memorandum of Understanding made by some Taiwan and China banks will be discussand to define if it is more effective for Taiwan lenders to get repaid by their borrowers.
