The Openness of Death: (Re)constructing Indigenous Identity in Post–martial Law Taiwan

Abstract

This article presents a set of interrelated close readings of works by four Indigenous Taiwanese cultural producers—the Puyuma writer Sun Dachuan, the Atayal painter Anli Genu, the Truku sculptor Labay Eyong, and the Atayal director Laha Mebow. I discuss the important symbolic role Taiwan’s Indigenous population has played in the development of a Taiwanese national imaginary and how this has affected Indigenous cultural expression. I argue that rather than trying to root out the improper intrusion of this ‘outside’ force into Indigenous cultural life, the works of these four cultural producers instead show how Indigenous identity can flourish through an honest navigation of the relationship brought about by that intrusion. They present an understanding of Indigenous identity in Taiwan as convoluted and changing, never fully in possession of itself but not any less authentic for that. My theorisation of this builds on Sun Dachuan’s notion of ‘the openness of death’, which he uses to highlight the need for Indigenous culture to transform itself in dynamic relation to the wider context in which it is embedded.