From the Impersonal to the Ecological: Critique of Neoliberalism and Vision of Ecocosmopolitanism in Wu Ming-Yi's The Stolen Bicycle

From the Impersonal to the Ecological: Critique of Neoliberalism and Vision of Ecocosmopolitanism in Wu Ming-Yi's The Stolen Bicycle

The Stolen Bicycle begins with the story of the narrator's endeavor to retrieve the stolen family bicycle but slowly expands to incorporate more stories revolving around lost bicycles. These stories offer an alternative look into the material transformation of Taiwan and Southeast Asia during and after World War II. By turns sprawling and intimate, the complicated narrative entwines memories of personal loss around various historical developments. To read this novel as another testimony to imperial invasion or to subsume it under the genre of historical realism, however, would be missing the subtle critique the novel mounts against neoliberalism. This essay aims to tease out such a critique by examining the novel's inclusion of different narrative forms and its use of a detached narrator. I argue that by having stories of others included in his narrative in their own forms, the narrator gives up his control over the narrative and allows himself to be exposed to a larger ecosystem. And the detached position that he adopts further enables him to passive-actively participate in such an ecosystem. As such, the novel revises our vision of ecocosmopolitanism, a vision based not on a personal but on an impersonal form of ecological engagement.