Review of: Religion, Tradition and the Popular: Transcultural Views from Asia and Europe, Judith Schlehe and Evamarie Sandkühler (eds) (2014) Bielefeld: Transcript Verlag, 286 pp., ISBN 978-3-83762-613-1, p/bk, €35.99 Japanese Popular Culture and Globalization, William M. Tsutsui (2010) Ann Arbor, MI: Association for Asian Studies, 96 pp., ISBN 978-0-92430-462-0, p/bk, $15 The Dream of East Asia: The Rise of China, Nationalism, Popular Memory, and Regional Dynamics in Northeast Asia, John Lie (2018) Ann Arbor, MI: Association for Asian Studies, 138 pp., ISBN 978-1-95263-610-3, p/bk, $15.99
{"title":"Religion, Tradition and the Popular: Transcultural Views from Asia and Europe, Judith Schlehe and Evamarie Sandkühler (eds) (2014)","authors":"Björn Boman","doi":"10.1386/eapc_00056_5","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/eapc_00056_5","url":null,"abstract":"Review of: Religion, Tradition and the Popular: Transcultural Views from Asia and Europe, Judith Schlehe and Evamarie Sandkühler (eds) (2014)\u0000Bielefeld: Transcript Verlag, 286 pp.,\u0000ISBN 978-3-83762-613-1, p/bk, €35.99\u0000 \u0000\u0000Japanese Popular Culture and Globalization, William M. Tsutsui (2010)\u0000Ann Arbor, MI: Association for Asian Studies, 96 pp.,\u0000ISBN 978-0-92430-462-0, p/bk, $15\u0000 \u0000\u0000The Dream of East Asia: The Rise of China, Nationalism, Popular Memory, and Regional Dynamics in Northeast Asia, John Lie (2018)\u0000Ann Arbor, MI: Association for Asian Studies, 138 pp.,\u0000ISBN 978-1-95263-610-3, p/bk, $15.99","PeriodicalId":36135,"journal":{"name":"East Asian Journal of Popular Culture","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49097993","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The literary form of danmei, in which male–male romance and/or erotica is portrayed, is a flourishing genre in China which has received significant attention from academia in recent years. This article focuses on a notorious subgenre of danmei, A/B/O fiction, which introduces three additional sexes, alpha, beta and omega, into mankind, alongside the male/female binary sex/gender system. By focusing on a popular but atypical example of this subgenre, this study aims to contribute to the understanding of how female danmei writers constantly question the hierarchical and heteronormative system in the A/B/O world and interrogate the fixed identities of gender, sexuality and class, by imagining love, sex and intimacy among male protagonists. Drawing on Judith Butler’s gender performative theory and resignification politics, this article suggests that the behaviour of the characters in these texts engenders reciprocal and equal relationships, reverses the various heteropatriarchal norms through the employment of technology, and questions the compulsory regulatory power embodied in the biological pheromone in A/B/O. Simultaneously, this study also identifies the notion of ‘love’ itself as a limiting factor of this genre of male–male romantic and/or erotic writing.
{"title":"Problematizing heteronormativity: Performativity, resignification and A/B/O fiction in Chinese danmei literature","authors":"Liangyan Ge","doi":"10.1386/eapc_00051_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/eapc_00051_1","url":null,"abstract":"The literary form of danmei, in which male–male romance and/or erotica is portrayed, is a flourishing genre in China which has received significant attention from academia in recent years. This article focuses on a notorious subgenre of danmei, A/B/O fiction, which introduces three additional sexes, alpha, beta and omega, into mankind, alongside the male/female binary sex/gender system. By focusing on a popular but atypical example of this subgenre, this study aims to contribute to the understanding of how female danmei writers constantly question the hierarchical and heteronormative system in the A/B/O world and interrogate the fixed identities of gender, sexuality and class, by imagining love, sex and intimacy among male protagonists. Drawing on Judith Butler’s gender performative theory and resignification politics, this article suggests that the behaviour of the characters in these texts engenders reciprocal and equal relationships, reverses the various heteropatriarchal norms through the employment of technology, and questions the compulsory regulatory power embodied in the biological pheromone in A/B/O. Simultaneously, this study also identifies the notion of ‘love’ itself as a limiting factor of this genre of male–male romantic and/or erotic writing.","PeriodicalId":36135,"journal":{"name":"East Asian Journal of Popular Culture","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46442945","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In Warriors of the Rainbow, Wei Te-Sheng sharply distinguished between heroes and villains in the 1930 Musha incident – the Taiwanese heroes fight against the Japanese villains. This contrasts with Kano, where Wei presents the romantic Orient of Japanese colonization through baseball games. Although his films are not always historically accurate in details, they realistically represent Taiwanese collective emotions towards Japanese colonization. Preferencing Japanese colonization over Chinese administration is not unusual in today’s Taiwan and thus not original to Wei. Taiwan’s Japanese colonial past was previously acknowledged by two well-known Japanese writers, Ryotaro Shiba and Yoshinori Kobayashi, in the late twentieth century when Taiwan newly asserted its freedom of expression. This article will analyse the role played by Japan in establishing the creation and projection of a unique Taiwanese identity in the field of popular culture by employing a ‘point of view’ framework from narratology.
{"title":"Friend and foe: Wei Te-Sheng on Taiwanese emotions towards Japanese colonization and the Japanese perspectives of Ryotaro Shiba and Yoshinori Kobayashi","authors":"Tets Kimura, Shi Lin","doi":"10.1386/eapc_00047_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/eapc_00047_1","url":null,"abstract":"In Warriors of the Rainbow, Wei Te-Sheng sharply distinguished between heroes and villains in the 1930 Musha incident – the Taiwanese heroes fight against the Japanese villains. This contrasts with Kano, where Wei presents the romantic Orient of Japanese colonization through baseball games. Although his films are not always historically accurate in details, they realistically represent Taiwanese collective emotions towards Japanese colonization. Preferencing Japanese colonization over Chinese administration is not unusual in today’s Taiwan and thus not original to Wei. Taiwan’s Japanese colonial past was previously acknowledged by two well-known Japanese writers, Ryotaro Shiba and Yoshinori Kobayashi, in the late twentieth century when Taiwan newly asserted its freedom of expression. This article will analyse the role played by Japan in establishing the creation and projection of a unique Taiwanese identity in the field of popular culture by employing a ‘point of view’ framework from narratology.","PeriodicalId":36135,"journal":{"name":"East Asian Journal of Popular Culture","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42029854","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article analyses the understudied film Song of China, mainly directed by Fei Mu, and argues that Confucian morality is spatialized and encapsulated in various chronotopes through the construction and movement of three types of ethical space (the space of propriety, the space of misconduct and the liminal space between good and evil), which enhances the aesthetic effect of conveying moral and political messages. The three main characters in the movie – the FATHER, the SON and the GRANDSON – each open up one of the three ethical spaces, and the spatial constructions interact or conflict with each other in the larger polarized spaces of country and city. Eventually, the temporospatial transmission of Confucian ethical values is achieved when the space of propriety is expanded from the individual to the whole society, the space of misconduct is closed up and the liminal space is transformed into the space of propriety. This ideal moral state has the political implication of promoting fascist militarization in the social context of the time. This analysis of ethical space and chronotopes sheds new light on the artistic technique employed in this silent film.
{"title":"Spatialization of Confucian ethics in the Song of China","authors":"Wei Liu","doi":"10.1386/eapc_00049_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/eapc_00049_1","url":null,"abstract":"This article analyses the understudied film Song of China, mainly directed by Fei Mu, and argues that Confucian morality is spatialized and encapsulated in various chronotopes through the construction and movement of three types of ethical space (the space of propriety, the space of misconduct and the liminal space between good and evil), which enhances the aesthetic effect of conveying moral and political messages. The three main characters in the movie – the FATHER, the SON and the GRANDSON – each open up one of the three ethical spaces, and the spatial constructions interact or conflict with each other in the larger polarized spaces of country and city. Eventually, the temporospatial transmission of Confucian ethical values is achieved when the space of propriety is expanded from the individual to the whole society, the space of misconduct is closed up and the liminal space is transformed into the space of propriety. This ideal moral state has the political implication of promoting fascist militarization in the social context of the time. This analysis of ethical space and chronotopes sheds new light on the artistic technique employed in this silent film.","PeriodicalId":36135,"journal":{"name":"East Asian Journal of Popular Culture","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49568447","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Through a comparative study of two films, The Joy Luck Club and Crazy Rich Asians, the article elaborates how Chinese diaspora films use Mahjong’s cinematic symbolism and cultural significations to negotiate Chineseness in different ways. In particular, three differences between the two films are analysed. The first one is the different attitudes of the female protagonists towards Mahjong as well as the Chineseness embodied by it. The second concerns the disparate presences of Mahjong in films made by mainland China-based filmmakers and Chinese diasporic filmmakers due to Mahjong’s differed historical trajectories and sociocultural implications. The last one is about the distinct goals the two film directors set when they employ Mahjong to (re)construct their identity and Chineseness on the part of the Chinese diaspora. This article concludes that Chineseness is not a monolithic and rigid category, but rather a chameleonic formation that is contextually and individually determined; moreover, in the age of globalization when coexistence and interdependence are valued more than mutual-resistance, the dynamic nature of Chineseness necessitates a more hybrid and critical identity framework: in-betweenness.
{"title":"Mahjong, Chinese diaspora cinema and identity construction","authors":"Xiang Qi","doi":"10.1386/eapc_00050_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/eapc_00050_1","url":null,"abstract":"Through a comparative study of two films, The Joy Luck Club and Crazy Rich Asians, the article elaborates how Chinese diaspora films use Mahjong’s cinematic symbolism and cultural significations to negotiate Chineseness in different ways. In particular, three differences between the two films are analysed. The first one is the different attitudes of the female protagonists towards Mahjong as well as the Chineseness embodied by it. The second concerns the disparate presences of Mahjong in films made by mainland China-based filmmakers and Chinese diasporic filmmakers due to Mahjong’s differed historical trajectories and sociocultural implications. The last one is about the distinct goals the two film directors set when they employ Mahjong to (re)construct their identity and Chineseness on the part of the Chinese diaspora. This article concludes that Chineseness is not a monolithic and rigid category, but rather a chameleonic formation that is contextually and individually determined; moreover, in the age of globalization when coexistence and interdependence are valued more than mutual-resistance, the dynamic nature of Chineseness necessitates a more hybrid and critical identity framework: in-betweenness.","PeriodicalId":36135,"journal":{"name":"East Asian Journal of Popular Culture","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44380896","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This research note is the abridged version of the keynote speech delivered at the Second Conference of the East Asian Popular Culture Association (EAPCA II), on 4 December 2020 at the National Taiwan Normal University (NTNU) workshop for the twentieth anniversary of the International Taiwan Studies Center, College of Liberal Arts, NTNU, Taipei, and its audio-recorded version with live discussion took place online on 11–12 January 2021, at Kyushu University, Fukuoka, Japan. The oral keynote speech covered five parts. The first part sketches the geographical and conceptual idea of East Asia, with inclusion of a dichotomous self-concept based on gender identification. The second part covers a brief description on the history of the region, paying attention to the comparison between China’s and Japan’s development paths. This is followed by five selected case studies on Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Hong Kong and Taiwan that single out some of the specificities of their popular culture products. The fourth section contextualizes these specificities against the background of five characteristics of the region’s popular culture and identity politics. The concluding remarks reiterate the main points.
{"title":"The history and future of identity politics and popular culture in East Asia1,2","authors":"Y. Wang, Glyn Jones, Mihaela Cristina Ionescu","doi":"10.1386/eapc_00054_7","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/eapc_00054_7","url":null,"abstract":"This research note is the abridged version of the keynote speech delivered at the Second Conference of the East Asian Popular Culture Association (EAPCA II), on 4 December 2020 at the National Taiwan Normal University (NTNU) workshop for the twentieth anniversary of the International Taiwan Studies Center, College of Liberal Arts, NTNU, Taipei, and its audio-recorded version with live discussion took place online on 11–12 January 2021, at Kyushu University, Fukuoka, Japan. The oral keynote speech covered five parts. The first part sketches the geographical and conceptual idea of East Asia, with inclusion of a dichotomous self-concept based on gender identification. The second part covers a brief description on the history of the region, paying attention to the comparison between China’s and Japan’s development paths. This is followed by five selected case studies on Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Hong Kong and Taiwan that single out some of the specificities of their popular culture products. The fourth section contextualizes these specificities against the background of five characteristics of the region’s popular culture and identity politics. The concluding remarks reiterate the main points.","PeriodicalId":36135,"journal":{"name":"East Asian Journal of Popular Culture","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42701160","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Editorial","authors":"K. Taylor-Jones, A. Heylen, E. Vickers","doi":"10.1386/eapc_00046_2","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/eapc_00046_2","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":36135,"journal":{"name":"East Asian Journal of Popular Culture","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47299504","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Shin Gojira released five years after the devastating triple disaster of earthquake, tsunami and nuclear meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant of March 2011, is an unabashed metaphorical censuring of the Japanese government response to that disaster under Prime Minister Kan Naoto, as well as a warning of the dangers of continued reliance on nuclear power. In this respect, it diverges from the message of nuclear disarmament effected by its 1954 progenitor, Gojira, but it still hews true to Godzilla’s roots as the concretized fear of a particular historical moment with the atom at its heart. This new iteration of Japan’s favourite kaijū, however, offers a trenchant condemnation of Japan’s pursuit of energy autonomy by relying on nuclear power generation. An oblique evocation of Auguste Rodin’s The Gates of Hell at the end of the film and the tip of Godzilla’s tail drive this point home. Through the metaphor of the gate, Godzilla becomes a liminal marker of an alternative possibility. Ultimately, however, although Godzilla is positioned as both a destructive force and a source of hope – as was the atom – the current reality in Japan suggests that the safe path forward has already been closed to the Japanese population.
{"title":"Godzilla and Rodin’s The Gates of Hell","authors":"Erik R. Lofgren","doi":"10.1386/eapc_00053_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/eapc_00053_1","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000Shin Gojira released five years after the devastating triple disaster of earthquake, tsunami and nuclear meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant of March 2011, is an unabashed metaphorical censuring of the Japanese government response to that disaster under Prime Minister Kan Naoto, as well as a warning of the dangers of continued reliance on nuclear power. In this respect, it diverges from the message of nuclear disarmament effected by its 1954 progenitor, Gojira, but it still hews true to Godzilla’s roots as the concretized fear of a particular historical moment with the atom at its heart. This new iteration of Japan’s favourite kaijū, however, offers a trenchant condemnation of Japan’s pursuit of energy autonomy by relying on nuclear power generation. An oblique evocation of Auguste Rodin’s The Gates of Hell at the end of the film and the tip of Godzilla’s tail drive this point home. Through the metaphor of the gate, Godzilla becomes a liminal marker of an alternative possibility. Ultimately, however, although Godzilla is positioned as both a destructive force and a source of hope – as was the atom – the current reality in Japan suggests that the safe path forward has already been closed to the Japanese population.","PeriodicalId":36135,"journal":{"name":"East Asian Journal of Popular Culture","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46478805","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
John Saboe is one of the leading travel YouTubers on the internet, with dozens of podcasts dealing with a wide range of issues on travel throughout East Asia. His current work, The Far East Travels Podcast (https://fareasttravels.com/), receives thousands or even tens of thousands of views. He has been involved in broadcasting for most of his working life. Beginning in high school, John developed an interest spanning audio podcasts, digital podcasts and publishing a digital magazine, in addition to a background working in traditional radio and TV. He has taught at the Columbia Academy in Vancouver and currently runs training seminars in different aspects of internet broadcasting for customers all around the world.
John Saboe是互联网上旅游的主要youtuber之一，他有几十个播客，涉及东亚旅行的各种问题。他目前的作品“远东旅行播客”(https://fareasttravels.com/)的浏览量达到数千甚至数万次。他职业生涯的大部分时间都在从事广播工作。从高中开始，除了在传统广播和电视工作的背景外，约翰还对音频播客、数字播客和出版数字杂志产生了兴趣。他曾在温哥华哥伦比亚学院任教，目前为世界各地的客户举办网络广播不同方面的培训研讨会。
{"title":"Travelling through East and South East Asia with John Saboe","authors":"S. Sommers","doi":"10.1386/eapc_00055_7","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/eapc_00055_7","url":null,"abstract":"John Saboe is one of the leading travel YouTubers on the internet, with dozens of podcasts dealing with a wide range of issues on travel throughout East Asia. His current work, The Far East Travels Podcast (https://fareasttravels.com/), receives thousands or even tens of thousands of views. He has been involved in broadcasting for most of his working life. Beginning in high school, John developed an interest spanning audio podcasts, digital podcasts and publishing a digital magazine, in addition to a background working in traditional radio and TV. He has taught at the Columbia Academy in Vancouver and currently runs training seminars in different aspects of internet broadcasting for customers all around the world.","PeriodicalId":36135,"journal":{"name":"East Asian Journal of Popular Culture","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41657728","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Syaman Rapongan (1957–present) is a Tao Indigenous author from the Orchid Island (Taiwan) and Badaiwan de shenhua, a collection of his tribe’s myths, was his first publication. In its introduction, he explains how these myths’ intrinsic value system allows him to face the difficulties of our modernized and globalized society, where individuals often lose their sense of belonging and life’s meaning. The Lacanian psychoanalyst Massimo Recalcati traces this lack of meaning back to a loss of the ‘symbolic father’, who once provided the individual with both the interdicting function of a symbolic law and the recognition – thus, the word – to participate and speak in society. After a few years in Taiwan, where he studied and worked until the 1980s, Syaman Rapongan returned to Orchid Island and rediscovered this sense of belonging by re-appropriating Tao legends, rituals, productive skills, thus receiving his own father and the other tribe members’ recognition. The father figure as the storyteller par excellence passing on that symbolic word is the giver of Badaiwan de shenhua. Moreover, father-like characters and father-related emblematic images (e.g. the house), significantly recur both in these myths and in several subsequent stories. Taking advantage of Recalcati’s reflection, this article integrates an ecocritical approach to Syaman Rapongan’s literature by interpreting its recovery of the Indigenous paradigm as a recovery of the symbolic father. Through the analysis of examples from Badaiwan de shenhua and other stories, it demonstrates how the cosmopolitan value of his narrative does not reside so much in the revival of an ante-litteram ‘ecological’ lifestyle, but in its sine qua non, or the recovery of the ‘symbolic father’.
{"title":"Syaman Rapongan’s ‘The mythology of Badai Bay’: A symbolic father’s legacy","authors":"Martina R. Prosperi","doi":"10.1386/eapc_00048_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/eapc_00048_1","url":null,"abstract":"Syaman Rapongan (1957–present) is a Tao Indigenous author from the Orchid Island (Taiwan) and Badaiwan de shenhua, a collection of his tribe’s myths, was his first publication. In its introduction, he explains how these myths’ intrinsic value system allows him to face the difficulties of our modernized and globalized society, where individuals often lose their sense of belonging and life’s meaning. The Lacanian psychoanalyst Massimo Recalcati traces this lack of meaning back to a loss of the ‘symbolic father’, who once provided the individual with both the interdicting function of a symbolic law and the recognition – thus, the word – to participate and speak in society. After a few years in Taiwan, where he studied and worked until the 1980s, Syaman Rapongan returned to Orchid Island and rediscovered this sense of belonging by re-appropriating Tao legends, rituals, productive skills, thus receiving his own father and the other tribe members’ recognition. The father figure as the storyteller par excellence passing on that symbolic word is the giver of Badaiwan de shenhua. Moreover, father-like characters and father-related emblematic images (e.g. the house), significantly recur both in these myths and in several subsequent stories. Taking advantage of Recalcati’s reflection, this article integrates an ecocritical approach to Syaman Rapongan’s literature by interpreting its recovery of the Indigenous paradigm as a recovery of the symbolic father. Through the analysis of examples from Badaiwan de shenhua and other stories, it demonstrates how the cosmopolitan value of his narrative does not reside so much in the revival of an ante-litteram ‘ecological’ lifestyle, but in its sine qua non, or the recovery of the ‘symbolic father’.","PeriodicalId":36135,"journal":{"name":"East Asian Journal of Popular Culture","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48081454","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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