Sat, Dec 01, 2007 page8

• Johnny Neihu's NewsWatch: The touring human stain of Lacan

  • By Johnny Neihu 強尼內湖
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  Like most people who waste time at a computer, I battle spam. It's so bad now that among junk with headlines like "Start receiving borrowing inquiries immediately" and "She's hot, pity that you're so small," I'm even getting mail in Cyrillic.

  But something stood out of all the cyber-dross this week: an e-mail plugging a seminar by a former Taipei City Government cultural affairs head when Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) presidential candidate Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) was mayor. His name is Hsien-hao Sebastian Liao (廖咸浩), a professor of English and comparative literature at National Taiwan University. Topic: "Almost propaganda but not quite: Identity, modernity, and the (re)constructions of the native in two recent Taiwanese documentaries."

  I would have liked to attend, but it was at the University of Sydney in Australia, and I couldn't find any foundations willing to dip into their funds for the price of an air ticket and a room in Kings Cross -- which had been kindly arranged by my old transvestite informant Chantelle Dundee.

  It's a measure of the pan-green camp's ineptitude that they didn't see the potential of hiring old Johnny to go Down Under and crash the University of Sydney shindig, preferably by reducing it to pandemonium and causing an international incident. What can I say? Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) "Young Turks"? Bah ... they haven't got a damn clue.

  So I can't tell my long-suffering readers what went on. But I can share the summary of the paper. It's a blast, and starts thus:

  "The recent flourishing of documentaries in Taiwan, a peculiar boom amidst the general decline in other forms of filmic production, signifies the slow but steady rise of a larger trend of Taiwanese nationalism."

  Yeah, that makes sense, although Liao is wrong about a "general decline" -- there's no shortage of local "filmic productions" in theaters this year. Still, you would expect that documentaries would reflect the political mood of the era to some extent. But then Liao goes off the rails, and stays that way:

  "Many of the documentaries represent conscious or unconscious attempts at forging a nationalist cultural hegemony by processing `native' history or stories to adumbrate a longing for `modernity'."

  Ah, nationalist cultural hegemony. This is an expression beloved of "textual deconstructors," among others, although hegemony here refers to subtle changes to thought processes and structures -- including "unconscious" ones -- rather than strongarm tactics and displays of dominance. But can you guess what follows? Take a deep breath:

  "In their effort to appear all encompassing, however, they unwittingly reveal the `constitutive antagonism' (Mouffe and Laclau) of the national big Other which these narratives try to cover up but in doing so make it more conspicuous by inadvertently leaving various gaping Lacanian anamorphic stains. By calling attention to these stains, one could turn them into remedial hints for future rectification or going beyond of the thus far heady and reckless nationalist frenzy."

  Gaping Lacanian anamorphic stains? This is splendid stuff. It's right up there with smelly Socratic skid marks, variegated Voltairean varicose veins and holistic Hippocratic heat rash. Pity for Liao that so much of Jacques Lacan's writing is obscurantist, or -- if you accept the word of that fine book Intellectual Impostures -- fraudulent, thanks to frequent and willful misuse of scientific language.

  I could take pot shots at this kind of deranged "academic" English all day, but it should be clear now that the real problem is Liao using fancy linguistic dress and academic name-dropping simply to dump all over people who have the gall to support Taiwanese independence.

  And remember, this guy got a PhD in English, but he thinks it fit and tactful to promote cultural "rectification" for independence activists in 21st century Taiwan -- and worse, in front of Australians! Hey, you can take the man out of China (well, you can take his recent ancestry out of China), but you can't take China out of the man.

  Liao then gets down to business and selects the grand sample size of two titles to prove his case; handily, both contain "explicitly `propagandist' intent" and enjoyed "high publicity." The first, Life, is about victims of the 921 Earthquake, while the second, Viva Tonal paints a relatively positive picture of the Japanese era.

  I haven't seen these films. But even if they are nakedly propagandist -- and until I see them forgive me, professor, if I don't take you on your word -- what else is new? Since when did the concept of a faultlessly neutral and pristinely objective documentary start doing the rounds, anyway? And since when did one side of a political fence have a monopoly on propaganda?

  Liao says hundreds of people died in the 921 Earthquake. Dude, where the hell were you in 1999? More than 2,400 were killed and almost 11,500 were injured. But does Liao's carelessness point to something a bit deeper? Such as the kind of person who would call a -- by all other accounts sincere -- documentary on mass death and suffering a "tear-jerker"? Bear in mind that this film won prizes in Japan and France, and that its reputable director Wu Yii-feng (吳乙峰) was praised for "persistence" and "respect for his subjects" by a former director of the Taiwan International Documentary Film Festival, according to the October 2004 edition of Taiwan Journal. Could it be that Liao's fear of Taiwanese nationalism is so hegemonic that he unconsciously exploits suffering? (By the way, did you know that Life offers "a Benjaminian allegorical reading of the quake"? I ask: Has the director even heard of Walter Benjamin?)

  On Viva Tonal, Liao says that "blatant glorification of colonial modernity and futile suppression of Chinese influences instrumental in transmitting progressive ideas to Taiwan during the colonial period (such as women rights consciousness) indicates that the epistemic violence has unwittingly stricken back at the totalizing Taiwanese nationalist ideology."

  Blah, blah, blah. Let's leave it to level-headed historians to say what influences conflict-ridden China was able to exert on a Taiwan that was almost completely under the Japanese thumb. But I'll say it's fantastic to know that all those Taiwanese women who were raped, assaulted and killed by Nationalist troops after 1945 could only properly experience and enunciate their terror because of prewar Chinese "feminists."

  Thanks for that balanced observation, Sebastian. Of course, after 1945, that renowned feminist and voice of all things liberal, progressive and democratic, Soong Mayling (宋美齡), took charge of women's affairs as part of the KMT's domination of Taiwanese civic associations and activities. Betcha didn't mention that at the seminar, Seb.

  And I bet Liao didn't tell attendees from the university's Japanese Department about an Aug. 3, 2006, article in New Taiwan magazine that said he, like Ma Ying-jeou, failed to promote the preservation of Taipei's Japanese heritage out of cultural bias.

  Now why would that be? Maybe it's because Liao, like so many others of his ilk, cannot after 60 years understand or tolerate the fact that often-brutal, colonial-style Japanese rule ended up with a respectable reputation, partly out of cultural and political factors, but mostly because the KMT's depredations made the Japanese look good.

  The DPP has its share of ideological dickheads and hack propagandists. But the KMT does, too. You want fantasies of Chinese world domination and a return to a party-state autocracy? The KMT has these goons in the highest ranks. Liao, the chief cultural propagandist for the Taipei City Government -- he took over from Lung Ying-tai (龍應台), who infamously purged the 228 Museum of its founding management -- seems to think that cultural hegemony applies when someone supporting Taiwanese self-determination is in power, but not when he and his "one China"-touting bosses call the shots.

  Some might call Liao's approach inconsistent. I call it something else: complete bullshit.

  When Liao is not hypnotizing audiences at seminars in faraway lands or acting as a self-professed non-political aide to unificationists, he writes poetry.

  Of late, I've taken up the practice, too, because I can appear wise and informed when I'm with people who don't know any better. Why, just the other day I came forth with a little piece after holding court at an all-you-can-drink establishment in Wanhua (萬華).

  Here's a sketchy translation:

  The man who walks with harlots

  And can't read to page's end

  Who has no wider circle

  Who misses every trend

  If such a coarse man

  Then dies without acclaim

  He's prob'ly my best friend if

  He remembers my name.

  I was thinking of e-mailing a collection of my crappy poetry, entitled I Yam What I Yam, Taro Head to the good professor for his possible inclusion in his NTU syllabus. Then I thought that even if he did manage to look up from reading Dream of the Red Chamber for the thousandth time, he would still mark it as spam.

  I guess I've walked with too many harlots.

  Heard or read something particularly objectionable about Taiwan? Johnny wants to know: dearjohnny@taipeitimes.com is the place to reach me, with "Dear Johnny" in the subject line.
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