The Production of Indigeneity: Contemporary Indigenous Literature in Taiwan and Trans-cultural Inheritance

This study investigates the complicated interplay between indigenous and mainstream discourse in the production of Taiwanese indigeneity. Via the case study of Syaman Rapongan夏曼藍波安, an indigenous writer in Taiwan known for his ethnographic portrayal of his tribal culture, I examine how the production of indigeneity in Taiwan involves not only inscription of resistance from indigenous people but also strategic exploitations of transnational legacies by different social groups as they struggle over the definition of indigeneity to formulate their own specific agendas. It is the contention of this article that the question of Taiwanese indigeneity is not just about indigenous self-representation, that is, claiming the subject position of the indigenous people and seeking to restore declining, oppressed indigenous cultural heritages. The study shows that we need to go beyond the familiar scheme of binary opposition to deal with the complexity of the question of indigeneity. The article ends with a re-theorization of the relationship between indigenous and new Taiwanese identity discourse in terms of Jacques Derrida’s notion of “inheritance.”