On the Third Hand: Why to taiwan World Literature

On the Third Hand: Why to taiwan World Literature

All literature from Taiwan is non-Worldly. * Unless, say, you are reading it from Belize or one of the other dwindling number of small countries that formally recognize Taiwan, this demonstrably extant state is not demonstrably extant at all. The shifting leverage of China in the world political system over the past seventy years has meant that Taiwan has no seat at the United Nations or myriad other global institutions. Even when Taiwan manages to eke out a World space for itself as a formal entity, such as at the Olympics, it must almost always appear under a pseudonym. These noms de plume vary from (World) space to (World) space and are always the result of contested negotiations, not of sovereign choice: Taiwan exists in the world, of course, but not in the World. And if Taiwan, an open-ended literary narration if nothing else—hence all its working titles—does not emanate in the World, then neither do its literatures. Those literatures are, therefore, a signal space from which to interrogate World Literature. After all, “Taiwan” speaks to a palpable failure of the World to recognize what materially exists. There is a denial of intellectual and ethical responsibility here. To take up that responsibility, consequently, would be to take down a dominant and deleterious narrative. And for these reasons, I suspect, Taiwan should be a verb: to read for the unwritten and so unwrite oneself. This would be to taiwan World Literature. It would also be to taiwan Taiwan along the way. As part of taiwaning the World.