英文摘要 |
Compared with gender issues and nationalism, the Marxist tradition instudies on Taiwan literature is no doubt relatively stagnant. This paper aimsto explore the long “absence of the left.” The first half of this paper engages indialogues with a few works on the history of contemporary Taiwan literatureas a meditation on the condition of “the absence of Marxism” in Taiwan’sscholarship on literary history and criticism. Although in works of literaryhistory, the leftist postcolonial historiographical viewpoint that emphasizesdiverse culture and local consciousness indeed tends to be critical of existinginstitutions, the main concern of “leftist” postcolonial historiography is stillto reflect on the havoc wreaked by the nation state upon ethnic groups andcultures, rather than to expose the intrinsic flaws of capitalist institutions. Thesecond half of this study returns to the post-martial law Taiwan fiction andruminates on how its politics of “ethnic identity” covers that of “class struggle”:local fiction writers from Mainland China often adopt a “class narrative” todistinguish between the different class positions of “rich islanders” and “poormainlanders.” However, the class narratives in contemporary Taiwan fiction,bearing no genuine objections to capitalism and class society per se, basicallyforeground the tensions of ethnic relations and are rooted in the particular circumstances in which mainlanders were placed after the lifting of martial law. |