Written by Yang-Hsun Hou.
Image credit: Countryside landscape of Taiwan by Marek Ślusarczyk / Wikimedia, license: CC BY 3.0.
Dear Island Lands and Waters,
I am just starting to understand that the ground beneath my feet was never still. The earthquakes that rocked my growth along the edges of the Pacific filled me with pride, fear, and oddly enough, the illusion of stillness, that you are here, still. I write to re-tether myself, not to the nation-state that falsely told me that they were stable, but to the soil and the salt water that is forever churning, constantly changing. I will write to mend, to slow my breath to your movements. I write to exhale. I write to build and not populate. I write to find a way to return that moves us to gentle futures.
Ours Truly,
Sûn-Sûn– Yang-Hsun Hou, “Affective Dimensions of Han Settler Colonialism” in Feeling Taiwan, p. 128
More than three years ago, I wrote this letter in graduate school, at a time when I was feeling at odds with everything I was told. I am a former engineering student, and back then I was just starting to dabble in social sciences-oriented research around race, racism, and colonialism. While most of my graduate research at the time focused on US-based racial contexts, I felt shifts in how I thought about my position as a Han person who grew up in Taiwan. I was also living in the wake of George Floyd’s murder and another Black Lives Matter uprising. It was hard to stare systemic racism in the face and not reflect on the privileges and colonial legacies that intimately craft my family’s livelihoods. Why did my parents stop speaking to me in 河洛語/Hokkien as a child? Why were many of the factory workers in my great-uncle’s business Indigenous? Why am I starting to feel like I can relate to my White colleagues when they talk about racial privilege?
At the core, I realised I was starting to feel differently about my relationship with Taiwan. The pride I feel in being Taiwanese is still there, but this pride began to feel volatile, complicated, and multi-dimensional in the realities of ongoing Han settler colonialism and serial colonialism in Taiwan. Whiteness in the US mirrored how I had grown up in Taiwan, not thinking about being of Han settler descent. Yet, feeling absent of any racial identity is one of the defining feelings for Han people in Taiwan. This feeling contains the luxury of being mainstream, the standard, and the “civilised.” It speaks over the existence of Indigenous Peoples. This feeling is a part of Han settler colonialism. In truth, I had grown up centring a Han colonial view of Taiwan, a view that excludes Indigenous sovereignties and my own relationship with the lands and waters that we now know as Taiwan. I urgently needed to revise my understanding of my position in Taiwan’s power structures.
In the midst of these unsettling feelings, I am honoured that my reflexive chapter was included in the book Feeling Taiwan: Emotions in Everyday Politics, Social Movements, and Research Practices. Centring affect, this book gives emotions the academic attention that they deserve. While some people may regard emotions as irrational or unimportant, recent literature has seen an affective turn, reinvigorating research in affect. Not to mention, Indigenous and feminist scholars have always argued that knowledge is felt, emotional, intimate, and political. Feeling Taiwan provides a unique and needed opportunity to revisit our emotions and what they tell us about Taiwan. Our emotions hold important messages. Emotions are related to how we want to engage with the world, and how the world engages with us. Because of this, emotions tell us about our location in broader systems.
My chapter is titled Affective Dimensions of Han Settler Colonialism: Autoethnographic Reflections from a Transnational Taiwan Studies Scholar. This chapter covers my emotions as I travelled between graduate school in the US and my home in Taiwan, two very distinct racial contexts. The chapter focuses on my revisions to what it means to be from Taiwan as a Han person and the responsibilities I hold.
Part one of the chapter focuses on how I felt illegible in US-centric discourses on race. I present a story where we were in a virtual class in graduate school, and we had to choose to enter either a “White” or “People of Colour” discussion group. I watched as everyone else slipped effortlessly into either the “White” or “POC” option, disappearing quickly away from my screen, leaving me alone, frozen, stumped, and guilty. I am not White, but I felt awkward relating to my peers’ experiences with racism when I never experienced it in Taiwan. I also worried about being “perceived as a foreigner, fitting into the broader stereotypes of the bumbling international student who could not grasp the US norms at hand” (p. 133). I worried that I appeared foreign because I did not fit neatly into US conversations on race. However, solely defining racism by White Supremacy perpetuates the myth that it only happens in the US, and contributes to how many in Taiwan feel like “there is no racism in Taiwan.”
Part two is about feeling Han settler colonialism in Taiwan. The emotional side of Han settler colonialism surfaced again and again in my dissertation research with Ljavek, a mainly Paiwan Indigenous buluo in my home in Takao/Kaohsiung City. For example, discriminatory remarks against Indigenous Peoples (e.g., Indigenous Peoples are “wealthy because of social welfare”) might feel instinctual and normal. In the chapter, I write that “colonialism not only warps historical narratives but also disciplines what people should feel, at times normalising dehumanisation and making people feel that discriminatory remarks are reasonable” (p. 134). Colonialism is felt when racist stereotypes feel “natural” and go unquestioned, and colonial structures maintain their power when Han people continue to feel unbothered by our discriminatory beliefs. In another example, I named how recent discussions about Han and Indigenous genetics are often misconstrued to erase Indigenous existence and manufacture the feeling of legitimate Han presence in Taiwan. But, more importantly, I want to point out here that the emotional side of Han settler colonialism has material consequences. Such as, Han people’s fear and misunderstandings of land rematriation can contribute to ongoing Indigenous land dispossession.
Together, this chapter summarises several ways that I felt Han settler colonialism across the US and Taiwan. As a Han person, I felt Han settler colonialism, even when I didn’t recognise it as I was growing up. Listening to Indigenous Peoples is vital to revising how we recognise our feelings and how we take responsibility for our feelings in broader colonial structures (e.g., literally listening to podcasts like Dear Han People and What’s up Umav?).
In the broader context of serial colonialism, this is not simply about righting past wrongs, but it is also vital if I, as a Han person, want to strengthen my relationship with Taiwan. As a 河洛/Hokkien person, my family’s colonial timeframe is minuscule compared to Indigenous Peoples’, but through this journey of sitting with the realities of colonialism, I have finally begun to feel curious and proud about my 河洛/Hokkien/Minnan culture, language, and histories. I started going to Gong Sheng events, listening to Siri Lee, and speaking to my family in 河洛/Hokkien. Transitional justice feels more relevant and personal to me now, in stark contrast to my old school days when I felt bored while flipping through my high school history textbooks on martial law.
Yang-Hsun Hou holds a PhD from the University of Washington, College of Education. Their research explores learning in social movements and community building, with particular focus on the role of emotions and affect in these learning processes. They collaborate with Ljavek, a Paiwan Indigenous community in Kaohsiung City, Taiwan, who are advocating for their residential and land rights in urban spaces. They identify as a queer, trans, Ho̍h-Ló/Hokkien, and Han scholar.
This article was published as part of the special issue on ‘Feeling Taiwan’.