The Monday Lecture Series: Taiwan Literature and Culture in Focus
Zoom ID: https://stockholmuniversity.zoom.us/j/66676242329

Appropriating the Avant-Garde: Postmodernism in Taiwanese Poetry, 1980s and ‘90s

In the 1980s and ‘90s, a small number of young Taiwanese poets began to experiment with language in innovative ways, leading a number of critics to pronounce the arrival of postmodernism in Taiwan. Plurality, fluidity, otherness, and irony became fashionable keywords in critical discourse. This confident appropriation of Western thought, however, provoked a vehement backlash from postcolonialist critics who were loathe to deconstruct the “subjecthood” they had been struggling for. Three decades later, how do we evaluate these claims and counterclaims? What does it mean for intellectuals on a small, developing island to proclaim their own postmodernity? How does the Taiwanese avant-garde compare to other avant-gardes? And how can we interpret the fascinating experiments in poetic art that provoked the debate?

Brian Skerratt is a scholar and translator of modern Chinese and Taiwanese literature, specializing in poetry. He is an assistant professor at the Graduate Institute of Taiwan Literature and International Cultural Studies at National Chung Hsing University, Taiwan.

The Monday Lecture Series: Taiwan Literature and Culture in Focus is curated by Prof. Irmy Schweiger, Department of Asian, Middle Eastern and Turkish Studies.
This lecture series has been made possible with the generous funding provided by the Ministry of Education, Taiwan and the kind support from Taipei Mission, Stockholm.