Huei-chu Chu is distinguished Professor at the Graduate Institute of Taiwan Literature and Transnational Cultural Studies, National Chung Hsing University, Taiwan. She is the author of two books in Chinese, The Transplantation and Translation of “Modern”: Postcolonial Thinking in Colonial Literature from Taiwan (2009), and Power and Intimacy under the Japanese Empire: Race and Ethnic Relations in Colonial Literature from Taiwan (2017), both published by Rye Field Publishing Co. These two books explore, respectively, the issues of colonial modernity and race relations in Taiwan literature under Japanese colonial rule. Her English articles have appeared in Positions, Amerasia Journal, and Comparative Literature Studies. She is currently working on a book project focusing on cultural productions in Cold War Taiwan and Okinawa.

 

In January 2017, John Bolton, foreign policy adviser to President Donald Trump and former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations advocated that the United States revisit their “One-China policy” and reevaluate their political and military relationship with Taiwan as China had become “increasingly belligerent” in recent years. In addition to increasing military sales to Taiwan, he urged the United States to also interpret the Taiwan Relations Act more broadly and redeploy “at least some” U.S. forces from Okinawa to Taiwan, which would allow Washington to monitor China’s military activities in the South China Sea more closely, and enable the rapid deployment of forces throughout the region “should the need arise.”

Bolton’s hawkish proposal is a provocative response to China’s rising economic and military power, and its antagonism towards Taiwanese nationalism after the pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) returned to power in 2016. This also has to be understood as being part of the reshaping of the work project framework under the U.S.-Japan Mutual Cooperation and Security Treaty since the re-militarization of Japan in 2015.

In response to the resurgence of Cold War scenarios in the transpacific setting, this talk discusses short stories from the Japanese and Taiwanese-controlled Cold War islands of Okinawa and Kinmen. I will explore how literary representations of Cold War historical experiences and traumatic memories problematize the complicit yet asymmetrical relations between U.S. imperialism, the authorities of Japan and Taiwan, and the local patriarchy. Taking inspiration from Sakai Naoki’s “regime of translation,” I also examine how liminal perspectives and Japanophone/Sinophone articulations in these works illuminate the mechanism of ethno-national identity-making under Cold War politics and its repercussions.