Sophia University Institute of Comparative Culture Lecture Series


*Making Hygienic Modernity Visible:*

Knowledge Translation, Everyday Life, and Taiwan in Asia's "Colonial Modern"

Hui-yu Caroline TS'AI

June 7, 17:00-18:15 Room 301, 3F, Building 10, Sophia University


This paper explores the issue of "omissions in the process of translation" and the nature of "knowledge consumption." The growing importance of the everyday life approach in recent postcolonial studies reveals to us a much more complicated set of interactions or negotiated processes between modes of power than was previously appreciated. I take the 1925 Taipei exhibit on police and hygiene as a case study, and focus on the issue of colonial modernity with regard to everyday life in Taiwan under Japanese rule (1895-1945). The new turn of colonial studies rests on a rich ground of "things visible" and "tangible." Public hygiene - both in terms of the upkeep of the environment and the cleanliness of the individual - was thus a key concept behind the new hygienic technology. This approach addresses the issue of "omissions in the process of translation" and the nature of "knowledge consumption." In particular, I examine how the colonial knowledge of hygienic modernity was presented and made visible. In an ironic twist, that is to argue, hygienic modernity made visible the power projection knowledge translation in everyday coloniality.


Hui-yu Caroline TS'AI is Research Fellow at the Institute of Taiwan History, Academia Sinica, and currently, a Visiting Fellow at ICC, Sophia University. Her latest publication in English is /Taiwan in Japan's Empire-Building: An Institutional Approach to Colonial Engineering/ (Oxford, UK: Routledge, 2009). Her earlier research includes neighborhood organizations in Asia, war and memory, and Japan's colonial administration in Taiwan. Among her major book publications (on oral history and in Chinese) are /The Lives and Times of Taiwanese Veterans, Township Administration in Taiwan, 1895 -1945/, and /The Taiwan Police Corps/. Professor Ts'ai is currently working on two book projects from the perspective of visual presentation: policing hygiene and everyday coloniality. Her recent articles include "Diaries and Everyday Life in Colonial Taiwan," /Japan Review/ 25 (Kyoto: Nichibunken, July 2013), pp. 145-168; and「植民地官僚の『日常生活』----家族と余暇」[/The "Everyday Life" of a Japanese Colonial Official: Family and Leisure/], in 近藤正己、北村嘉惠、駒込武, eds., 『蜈ｧ海忠司日記, 1928-1939: 帝國日本の官僚と植民地台灣』[/The Diary of Utsumi Chﾅｫji, 1928-1939: The Bureaucrats of Imperial Japan and Colonial Taiwan/] (Kyoto・必yoto University), pp. 145-179.


Language: English / No Prior registration necessary / This talk is organized by Professor Angela YIU (FLA).

http://icc.fla.sophia.ac.jp/html/events/2018-2019/180607_Ts'ai.pdf <http://icc.fla.sophia.ac.jp/html/events/2018-2019/180607_Ts%27ai.pdf>

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