Preliminary Reflections on the CKS Memorial Hall
The Fulbright Taiwan program is generously sponsoring my year of sabbatical research here in Taipei, where I am investigating the relationships between public spaces and the emergence of democracy. I am interested in how Nationalist era symbols and rituals have been used on Taiwan from 1945 to the early 2000’s. Over this period, the Nationalist Party (the Kuomintang, or KMT) at first tried to use symbols and ceremonies developed on the mainland to turn former Japanese colonial subjects into dutiful Chinese citizens loyal to the party’s “revolutionary” leadership. From the outset there was tension and violence between local Taiwanese people and the hundreds of thousands of mainlanders that came over to Taiwan with the KMT, particular during the retreat from the mainland in 1949. As a result, for many residents “national” symbols were full of unintended ironies and variegated meanings. During my year here, I am exploring the uses of public spaces as these symbols were contested and transformed as Taiwan moved from a one-party dictatorship to a liberal democracy. Over time, popular public spaces come to acquire a “superabundance of meanings” (Jones 2000), and this was particularly true in the public spaces of Taipei as new forms of Taiwanese
