1960至1980年代八重山鳳罐產業的「台灣女工」：再現、敘事、反身性

“Taiwanese Female Emigrant Workers” of Canned Pineapple Industry in the Yaeyama Islands from 1960 to 1980: Representation, Narrative, and Reflexivity

本文旨在掌握1960至1980年代八重山群島鳳罐產業「台灣女工」的多元身影，探討再現、敘事、反身性三者之間的關連。這裡的「多元」意指兩方面，一是跳脫當地媒體再現底下的她們，二是強調研究者的我過往和書寫當時的生命態度，反映到研究對象的「鳳罐女工」身上，也表現到問題意識與書寫風格上。
研究發現，《八重山每日新聞》再現下的台灣女工是「替代性的勞動者」、「寄生蟲的高帶原者」，但透過當地台灣移民、沖繩人以及女工本人的訪談敘事，筆者拼湊出台灣女工在島上的其他身影，她們是「絕處逢生的移民」、「勤奮打拼的勞工」、「開拓格局的異鄉客」、也是「被投射的認同對象」，這些身影的浮現，讓人跳脫只從當地媒體的再現去捕捉她們。

This paper is an attempt to capture two aspects of Taiwanese emigrant female workers in the Yaeyama Islands, and to discuss the relationship of representation, narrative and reflexivity. The aspects include: to transfer the images of the female workers by local media at that time; and to make a confession of my past and present attitude to life at the time of writing. Consequently, it will reflect not only on the subjects, but also the awareness of the issues and the writing style.
My research found that Yaeyama Mainichi Shimbun considered Taiwanese female emigrant workers to be substitute laborers and parasitic disease-carriers. However, I was able to piece together the would-be images of them based on the reminiscences of local Taiwanese emigrants and the Okinawa islanders, and the narrative of these female emigrant workers. I concluded that the female workers were crisis-survival emigrants, hard-working laborers, pioneering outsiders and identified subjects of the local peoples, a totally different image from that of local media.