|
Title |
The Formation of a Taiwanese National Consciousness during the 1920s Taiwan: An Examination of Chen Wangcheng’s Diary (1912-1930) |
|
Author |
Tzeng, Shih-Jung |
|
Assistant Professor, Graduate Institute of Taiwanese Literature, National Cheng-Chi University |
|
|
Abstract |
This article represents an attempt to use numerous volumes of mostly unpublished diaries, viewed as private forms of ego documents, as the main source for examining identity-centered issues. Using the private diary of a Taiwanese intellectual, Chen Wangcheng, I have examined how Taiwanese national consciousness emerged under the Japanese rule in the 1920s. The examined case suggests that Chen’s mental and ideological world experienced a radical reconstruction, between 1920 and 1925, which was followed by an emergence of his sense of Taiwanese national consciousness in the late 1920s. Chen’s sense of Taiwanese national consciousness was created via an empirical construction, on the one hand, through the working of the politico-social networks, and via an abstract construction through the spread of print-capitalism on the other. |
