Journal paper

Issue No.	Vol.24
Title	An Alternative Methodology of “Worldliness”: An Example of Taiwan Literary Criticism through the Lens of “Land Uncon-scious”
Author	Tsai, Chih-yen
Page	79-110
Abstract	This article revisits the issue of “Taiwan subjectivity” from the perspective of Western “universalism” as implied by the concept of “in the world” in Taiwan literature. It seeks to explore an alternative methodology within “another kind” of the world, aiming to resist the epistemological logic of knowledge formation shaped by dominant power structures. By juxtaposing the discussions of three papers by Naoki Sakai, Zhang Song-sheng, and Shih Shu-mei, this article not only highlights the historical realities of such dominant powers but also endeavors to stimulate the development of a proposed “in the world” methodology. Confronted with the imposition of Western dominance, which has caused numerous diverse subjectivities to be gradually organized into a singular, universal center of diverse particularities, we may require a perspective that allows both “the world” and “Taiwan” to function as “providers of knowledge.” The concept of “land” is precisely the approach this article attempts to introduce. Through the four perspectives of “land unconscious,” this article aims to concretize the feasibility of the so-called “textual land system” by critiquing the post-war texts of Nakaoka Mitsuru, the anti-anti-Communist subtext, the comparison between the Diaoyu generation and indigenous texts, and Huang Chong-kai’s Wenyichunqiu and Xin Baodao. This paper seeks to “re-politicize” the concept of “land” through literary discourse, with the hope that this will bring various “actions, expressions, and choices” in literature closer to different forms of “land.” This effort not only aims to incorporate “land” into the synchronicity and harmony of history and texts, but also hopes to offer a point of consideration for the “compatibility” between “Taiwan literature in the world” and East Asian “world literature studies.”
Keyword	land unconscious, collective sense of land, modern literary system, non-Western subjectivity, perspectives
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