Fireworks in Afterimage: My Encounter with the Eighties

Fireworks in Afterimage: My Encounter with the Eighties

I was a Ph.D. student at Stanford for the better part of the eighties. And that was the time when my life was all of a sudden inundated with all kinds of theories. But this period cannot be looked upon in isolation. With the immediately preceding period serving as the trigger for this immersion and the immediately following as the time of praxis on the basis of the theories that I came into contact with, my life at Stanford became the liminal phase of a rite of passage through theory, out of which I too claim my humble share in the songs of experience of our times. Before I went to San Francisco, my exposure to contemporary theories was limited or at least not as up to date as students of today. The theoretical scene in Taiwan back then was still a bit behind due to the hurdles in information circulation imposed by, among other things, martial law and the blockade of the ocean. Buying foreign books was never easy, let alone having other channels as we do today. Nevertheless, we managed to have bits and pieces of information from the other side of the world, trying to climb out of the pit and comfort zone formed by New Criticism that our professors had herded us in. I became interested in contemporary theory not only because I found New Criticism to be lacking as an academic methodology, but also because there were personal stakes involved too.