Written by Wen-chi Li
Image credit: Keelung Islet (Ke-lâng-khi̍t), northeastern Taiwan. Photo by Shi Yeu Nga.
As a scholar trained in Sinology, I have always positioned myself as a Sinologist. For some scholars in the United States working under the banners of Chinese studies or, more broadly, East Asian studies, the term Sinology, and its derivative, Sinologist, may sound outdated or even archaic. Yet in Europe, Sinology, or Sinologie, remains the standard designation for academic departments, rooted in a tradition that dates back to the missionary encounters of the sixteenth century. The term cannot escape its entanglement with Orientalism, and European Sinologists continue to grapple with this burden, often with a sincere and self-reflective commitment to revising and reorienting the field. I am honoured to be part of this tradition and grateful to have encountered many Sinologists who are now my mentors, colleagues, and friends.
In Europe, the development of Taiwan studies has long relied on the strong support of Sinologists, and the field is often housed in departments of Sinology. In the past, it was viewed as a marginal topic, positioned at the periphery of Chinese studies. Taiwan studies was often treated as either a subfield of Chinese studies, an alternative lens through which to view China, or even as a more accessible, “free version” of China, particularly during periods when the People’s Republic of China (PRC) remained relatively closed to the outside world, or even after it reopened. It had long been undervalued, even not taken seriously by many working in Chinese studies.
As Taiwan confronts the growing pressures of Chinese hegemony, the need to affirm Taiwan studies as a distinct and vital field of inquiry becomes ever more urgent. I do not deny that my intellectual formation is deeply rooted in Sinology; I am, in part, a Sinologist. Yet I also claim the identity of a Taiwanist. I propose the terms “Taiwanist” and “Taiwanology” to articulate the growing institutionalisation of Taiwan studies. These terms are not coined ex nihilo; Niki Alsford has used the term “Taiwanologists” in his scholarly discourse. Traditionally, however, scholars in the field have been referred to as “Taiwan scholars,” “scholars who study Taiwan,” “Western Taiwan scholars,” “Taiwan experts,” or “Taiwan specialists,” and their work is often described as “Taiwan-related research” or “Taiwan studies.” The nascent notion of Taiwanology does not seek to repudiate Sinology, nor to imagine a stark separation between the two, as if black and white could never shade into one another. Rather, it affirms a coexistence, an intellectual companionship with Sinology and Sinologists, grounded in the mutual enrichment that emerges through sustained dialogue.
I also introduce these terms alongside their counterparts because, like Sinology, Taiwanology has found fertile ground in European academic traditions. With the new term of Taiwanology (or Taiwanologie in German), I seek to acknowledge both the decades-long development of Taiwan studies and its persistent parallel to more established fields such as Sinology (Sinologie), Japanology (Japanologie), and Indology (Indologie). If Sinology, Japanology, and Indology exist, so too must Taiwanology, and with it, the generative figure of the Taiwanist. Taiwanology, as I envision it, embraces interdisciplinary methods and resists the flattening forces of globalisation that tend to erase difference. Rather, it turns towards a vision of planetarity that celebrates plurality, complexity, and entanglement. How might we perceive Taiwan not merely in the world, but as of the world, as a site that speaks for the Earth? The term “Taiwanist,” like “Americanist,” does not serve a nationalist agenda. It neither seeks to make America great again nor Taiwan great again, but instead signals a commitment to the careful, humble study of a place and its histories, cultures, and futures. Taiwan has never succumbed to China. And Taiwanists, too, do not succumb.
The path to becoming a Taiwanist often begins within the domain of Sinology. For many non-Mandarin-speaking scholars, Chinese language and culture are first encountered through departments of Sinology; even Taiwanese researchers like me may find ourselves initially shaped by this disciplinary framework. Yet the transition from Sinology to Taiwanology, from Sinologist to Taiwanist, is not merely a shift in focus but a process of becoming. I invoke the term “becoming” to signal a philosophical approach, particularly influenced by Gilles Deleuze’s formulation of the concept. For Deleuze, becoming is not a transitional phase between two fixed states, nor a linear progression from one identity to another. It is a movement without origin or destination, a pure dynamism unfolding between heterogeneous terms. The temporality of becoming-different constitutes its own immanent time, distinct from the Kantian a priori form, which presupposes the structures of a particular kind of consciousness. Becoming resists closure: it is not a process aimed at resolution or final form, but a continual modulation, a state of transformation that unsettles identity and defies the teleology of linear time. Becoming is an “abstract line,” a “line of flight” that deterritorialises, reterritorialises, and transgresses all established norms and forms. It generates new ways of thinking rather than settling into familiar grooves of what is conventionally recognised as philosophical thought. It is, in this sense, both a flight and a fight. It is f(l)ight.
All becoming is becoming-minoritarian: becoming woman, becoming Indigenous, becoming animal, becoming queer, becoming Taiwanist. This movement of becoming unfolds neither along a straight line nor towards a fixed destination. It refuses any teleological narrative that positions Taiwanology as a stable endpoint, just as it resists reducing Sinology to a singular origin to be abandoned. Instead, becoming Taiwanist inhabits a terrain of continual variation, of movements that undo, displace, and reconfigure inherited identities. At its core, becoming Taiwanist enacts a minoritarian mode of thought and identity formation, a refusal to be subsumed by the macrostructures of Chinese studies or the nation-state logics of geopolitical discourse. It is a deterritorialisation of both self and field. This becoming does not simply reject Sinology; it complicates and reconfigures its boundaries. It exposes the violence of disciplinary majoritarianism and the ways Sinology can serve as an instrument of state authority and discursive monopoly, manifest, for example, in Confucius Institutes or Hanban. Becoming Taiwanist is thus both a struggle, a “fight” against hegemonic claims that erase Taiwan’s specificity, and a “flight,” carving out spaces for intellectual autonomy and minoritarian solidarity.
This kind of becoming also resists the impulse to anchor Taiwanology in fixed institutional borders or essentialised cultural claims. Instead, it invites an open, generative movement that destabilises both the subject and the field. It weaves through Sinology, imperial legacies, coloniality, nationalist authoritarianism, and postcolonial critique, tracing lines that do not settle but reverberate. Taiwanology resembles a rhizome, one that rejects clear beginnings, middles, or ends, but recognises every point as simultaneously a beginning, middle, and pause. It illuminates specific issues and elucidates broader problematics vital to planetary understanding. Taiwanology thus emerges not as a fixed object of knowledge but as a mobile, performative process.
The personal stories collected in Taiwan Studies Revisited, edited by Dafydd Fell and Hsin-Huang Michael Hsiao, offer valuable support for my reflections on “becoming Taiwanist.” In this volume, the editors invited leading Taiwan specialists to revisit their monographs and recount their early academic journeys, tracing the field’s decades-long development. Many of these narratives reveal how scholars originally trained as Sinologists gradually became Taiwanists. Thomas B. Gold recalls that his visits to Taiwan in the late 1960s and 1970s, amidst political repression and the emergence of democratic movements, inspired his lifelong engagement with Taiwanese society. Shelley Rigger’s academic trajectory was redirected by the Tiananmen Incident, which made research in China increasingly difficult and led her to turn to Taiwan’s democratic transition instead. The same event also led Melissa J. Brown to focus her research on Taiwan. Henning Klöter began his academic training in Chinese studies before developing a sustained interest in Taiwanese languages and dialects. Dafydd Fell likewise found an opportunity to spend time in Taiwan in the 1990s, closely observing successive elections, an experience that would eventually form the basis of his doctoral research.
I could offer more stories of scholars who became Taiwanists, but these examples suffice. Many began their training in Sinology, and a formative encounter with Taiwan early in their careers, whether through a visit, a fellowship, or a period of study, redirected the course of their intellectual lives. These scholars underwent what Deleuze might describe as deterritorialisation followed by reterritorialisation: a movement away from Sinology and a re-entry into it along a different axis, with Taiwanology bringing an alternative, fresh perspective to Sinology.
I resist defining Taiwanology by fixed borders or disciplinary constraints. For me, it should remain a space of potentiality, a potentiality that is neither realised nor fully actualised, in the sense Giorgio Agamben attributes to being. All potentialities within Taiwanology contain both the potentiality to be or do something and what Agamben calls impotentiality: the potentiality not to be or do that very thing. This impotentiality is not a mark of failure, passivity, or inability, but rather a deliberate withholding from actualisation. It is this unfulfilled, unfinalised openness that I believe should define Taiwanology, a field that refuses closure in order to remain radically generative. Such a vision does not weaken Taiwanology’s legitimacy; instead, it endows the field with a rare strength: the ability to hold multiplicity, contradiction, and deferral within itself, without demanding resolution. In this way, Taiwanology may remain an ever-unfolding, inclusive practice of thought.
Becoming a Taiwanist is therefore not a departure from Sinology, nor an arrival at a final destination. It is a movement between disciplines, languages, histories, and communities. It is a continual process of deterritorialisation and reorientation that resists closure while remaining grounded in the study of Taiwan. Taiwanology emerges not as a bounded field but as a space of encounter: between Taiwan and the world, between majoritarian and minoritarian forms of knowledge, and between established disciplines and new intellectual possibilities.
In this sense, to become a Taiwanist is not to arrive at a completed identity. We move across linguistic, disciplinary, and geopolitical divides in pursuit of moments of “ecstasy,” what Immanuel Levinas describes as an epistemological transcendence “out of one’s state,” a stepping beyond the enclosure of the self. In this movement, we are no longer bound by the weight of the past. Instead, we turn towards a future that beckons, not as destiny but as a planetary horizon of potentiality, charged with solidarity, aspiration, love, and the promise of freedom. Like an angel sounding a call from beyond the horizon, “becoming” invites us towards futures that remain open, unfinished, and yet to be imagined. So I sing:
I am coming. I am becoming.
Wen-chi Li is the author of Taiwanese Face, Chinese Masks: Yang Mu and His Postcolonial Poetry (Cambria, 2026), and editor of Taiwanese Literature as World Literature (Bloomsbury, 2022) and Identity, Multiplicity, and Resistance in Taiwanese Poetry (Routledge, 2025). As a translator, he co-translated Decapitated Poetry by Ko-hua Chen (Seagull Books, 2023).