We Are All Like Taiwanese
Resource
中外文學, 35(6), 085-134
Journal
中外文學
Journal Volume
35
Journal Issue
6
Pages
85-134
Date Issued
2006-11
Date
2006-11
Author(s)
Abstract
The “Taike phenonmenon” has been in recent years one of the hottest and most controversial cultural issues in Taiwan. This essay attempts to shift the focus of the question, “Who are the Taike?” in current discussions by posing a slightly different question: “What are the Taike like?” The argument will be developed from and elaborated upon the theorization of “simularity” as both the image crash and the route detour created by constant re-cite/re-site of global popular culture in local con-texts.
The argument is divided into four parts. Part I deals with the “simularity” between Taike and Hip-Hopper by focusing on the tacky, mix & match, retro dress style of the “Hip-Hop Tai” as the glocalization of Hip-Hop culture in Taiwan. Part II explores the hybrid image of the “Hip-Hop Tai” as a subversive potential in the discoursive formation of national identity in Taiwan by comparing the current “authentic Taike” discourse with the “fake Taiwanese” discourse developed in the early 90s. Part III tries to foreground the androcentric and masculinist tendency in current Taike discourses by examining the involved gender politics in the newly created term “Taimei” as the female counterpart of Taike. The “simularity” between Taimei and the “Spice Girl” will also be mapped out as the transhistorical, transnational and transcultural routing of glocal fashion. Part IV would shift the focus of discussion back to the possible disruption between visual and aural images of Taikei and Taimei to reveal how the “Taiwanese Mandarin” accent could return as the repressed historical trauma. This revelation will further lead to the final problematization of “simularity” as the cultural crash between the postmodern and the postcolonial: the former's carnivalesque overturning of inside/outside, local/global, copy/original seems to collapse constantly into the latter's traumatic lagging behind as the inescapable symptom of cultural marginality.
Subjects
台客
台妹
嘻哈
時尚
全球化
路徑
國族認同
性別政治
Taike
Taimei
Hip Hop
fashion
globalization
route
national identity
gender politics
Type
journal article
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