根絕他者？後殖民論述下之台灣都市地景

Unrooted Otherness?--A Postcolonial Interpretation of Contemporary Taiwanese Cityscape

藉由後殖民論述，本篇報告企圖詮釋台灣當代都市地景所呈現的混雜性與台灣文化認同之關聯。當台灣的國族認同想像以離散者（the diaspora）的角色，從「中國」尋找可支配台灣文化再現原則及模式時，本篇報告提出這種對祖國的離散想像是虛構。同時本文提出並無「純」台灣本土性的存在，既然「他者」一直存於台灣的發展史中，根據峇峇（Homi Bhabha），對於失去主體性的族群，其文化的發聲，必須有「他者」的介入。因此，「他者」一直參與台灣文化認同感的建構，台灣文化的再現不在於「發現」或是「創新」，而在於不斷地「模仿」、「借用」、「混雜」。透過「混雜」（hybridisation），台灣都市地景所呈現的一種混雜的折衷形式正是「他者」在自我文化發聲中展演的成果，「混雜化」（hybridisation）是一種台灣文化認同感的再現方式。

This paper attempts to interpret the hybrid feature of contemporary Taiwanese cityscape in relation to Taiwanese cultural identity through drawing on an analysis of postcolonialism. While the diasporic consciousness –taking account of a desire for distanced homeland and searching for new aesthetic and practical principles to govern the mode of cultural representation in Taiwan – is on the rise, this paper argues that the diasporic sentiment creates a set of objects on which our cultural identity is projected without the depth of meanings. This paper also argues that a pure Taiwanese regional character might not exist after all, since 'otherness' has always been an inseparable inheritance in the history of the development of this island. Following Homi Bhabha’s elaboration on the term 'hybridity,' this paper points out that the representation of Taiwanese cultural identity has little to do with 'rediscovery' or 'invention' but rather with the 'imitation,' 'borrowing' or 'hybridisation' of identity and its representation in which 'otherness' is always employed to construct the identity of the self. By hybridisation, Taiwan’s cityscape has taken a more eclectic form, as a style of speaking of otherness, that has increasingly become a point of entry for an approach to materialising Taiwanese cultural identity.