Hanwen and Taiwanese subjectivities: A genealogy of language policies in Taiwan, 1895-1945

This historical dissertation is a pedagogical project. In a critical and genealogical approach, inspired by Foucault's genealogy and effective history and the new culture history of Sol Cohen and Hayden White, I hope pedagogically to raise awareness of the effect of history on shaping who we are and how we think about our self. I conceptualize such an historical approach as effective history as pedagogy, in which the purpose of history is to critically generate the pedagogical effects of history.;This dissertation is a genealogical analysis of Taiwanese subjectivities under Japanese rule. Foucault's theory of subjectivity, constituted by the four parts, substance of subjectivity, mode of subjectification, regimen of subjective practice, and telos of subjectification, served as a conceptual basis for my analysis of Taiwanese practices of the self-formation of a subject. Focusing on language policies in three historical events: the New Culture Movement in the 1920s, Taiwanese Xiangtuˇ Literature Movement in the early 1930s, and the Japanization Movement during Wartime in 1937-1945, I analyzed discourses circulating within each event, particularly the possibilities/impossibilities created and shaped by discourses for Taiwanese subjectification practices. I illustrate discursive and subjectification practices that further shaped particular Taiwanese subjectivities in a particular event.;The analysis of language policies and issues in the three events suggests that Hanwen, the Classical Chinese language, endured during the entire colonial period of Japanese occupation. Hanwen was versatile in different linguistic forms and literary genres, which were performed for different political purposes. The variety of Hanwen practices continued to shape possibilities and impossibilities for Taiwanese practices of the self.