The Heterotopic Agent in Chu T’ien-hsin’s “The Old Capital”

A number of heterotopias coexist in Taiwanese writer Chu T’ien-hsin’s novella “The Old Capital”: spaces of memory, reality, history; and here I analyze the female narrator in the story as a “heterotopic agent.” Building on Michel Foucault’s initial conceptualization of heterotopia as literature, I examine the agency of Chu’s narrator in terms of the operation of walking, the act of seeing, and the art of remembering, which, I argue, make the construction of a heterotopic space possible. The purpose of my Foucauldian reading of “The Old Capital” is twofold. On the one hand, it seeks to reconceptualize “heterotopia” in relation to the human subject. On the other hand, it intends to cast a new light on the creative agency of Chu, substantiated in her attempt to rewrite the past, live the present, and realize the future. From the perspective of “heterotopic agent,” we may further entertain a creative hermeneutics of contemporary Taiwanese identity.