Contact: Sascha.klotzbuecher@univie.ac.at
These lectures, a workshop, and a walk through our own university building explore politics and history in their emotional and affective dimension. During three days, we interact in different formats to approach and discuss the role of emotions in politics with teachers, students from the University of Vienna and guest scientists from universities in Kaohsiung (ROC Taiwan). We discuss “politics of compassion” (Xu), and other forms of emotional manipulation on both sides of the Taiwan Strait.
A second focus will be politics of remembrance and memorial sites in public space: The statues of Chiang Kai-shek are the most controversial and affected objects of the authoritarian legacy in today’s Taiwan. Like the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall or Cihu Mausoleum for Chiang’s remains, these “lieux de mémoire” (sites of memory) materialized the state-defined personality cult in public spaces. They aimed to create a political ‘stage’. Today, these sites of former ideological rituals are the perfect location for calculated taboo-breakers, for their “contentious performances” (Tilly) with provocative scripts and irritating requisites, spectacular actions and emotional encounters. The original ideological message of a statue will be outdated, but statues have, as Aby Warburg argued, “afterlives” (Nachleben) that includes an overwhelming affectivity: The national debate on transitional justice in Taiwan after 2016 initiated local removals and a local political process. Communities began to discuss the transition of public space and what should these memorial sites represent in future. If these communities want to keep these statues, they try to make them more “immediate” and “consumable” (Taylor) for the local communities or the local host. A workshop on the last day explores how this future could look like.
The talk on “Decision Making Processes of Removing Chiang Kai-shek Statue in NSYSU” adopts a “garbage can” model to explicate how the statue removal issue was generated, processed and decided. The garbage can model portrays a decision that can be made often involving three independently flowing streams: problems (issues), solutions, and participants. A certain solution may look for a problem to link up with, whenever a proper decision-making occasion is opening and certain participants who pet the solution are also attending. The talk will utilize these elements, 3 streams and decision occasions, to narrate the story of Chiang Kai-shek Statue’s removal in NSYSU.
Abstract: Populism is seeing a global resurgence. Although many historical political movements have had populist elements (eg, communism), this term has often been applied to extreme rightist ideologies, such as Nazism. The populism now on the rise, in contrast, spans ideologies from right to left, and even to groups without rigid ideologies. Much of the difference of modern populism is due to social media. Through online platforms, populists can now directly connect with their followers in ways that are more frank and personal and less scripted than traditional politicians. Some prior researchers have sought to make a distinction between populism and connectivism: the former being exclusive, the latter being inclusive. This current paper proposes that there is, instead, a new, connective, style of populism. This means that populists employ both inclusive and exclusive means when communicating through online platforms: it is a way to bypass the media and get their messages out to the wider public (inclusion of all groups), but those messages often seek to delegitimize the establishment (exclusion of the ruling elites). This paper takes the campaign of Kaohsiung City’s newly elected Mayor, Han Guo-yu, as a case study. Han not only won in a landslide, but also had coat-tails for party candidates even in other cities where he was not on the ballot. Some Taiwanese journalists have termed this island-wide wave as the “Han Tide”. Some have further tried to trace how the Han tide formed and developed online. Indeed, Han’s campaign activities mainly started on the internet, building from there a core of supporters who mobilized online. Although information technology has been used in these journalistic analyses, the focus has been on who the frequent users of key social media sites such as PTT were, and on how they delivered their messages. In contrast, the message contents have not received sufficient consideration. Moreover, theoretical insights and applications have not been journalist concerns. Han’s success online is as much due to his message as to his technology-savvy campaign. Many observers have pointed out that Han’s language and slogans were simple, and were therefore able to be easily grasped and to quickly catch people’s attention. Avoiding a negative campaign, the main slogan was “love and contain.” The inspirational aspect of the message was key to its persuasive power, and is key to understanding what the Han Tide demonstrates about effective social media campaigning. This paper studies the Han Tide from the perspective of connective populism, and employs information technology not only to uncover his technical strategies online, but also to decode the messages hidden in his posts. The paper analyzes Facebook posts in particular.
One major reason of Mr. Han Kuo-yu 〈韓國瑜〉's victory over the Kaohsiung City Mayoral election last November is his South-South policy, which aims at expanding Kaohsiung's economic relations with provinces in southern China and countries in Southeast Asia. This talk will explore the programs and advantages of Mr. Han's South-South Cooperation policy. Mr. Han of KMT party was the winner in a city that has been governed by the DPP and is supposed to be a DPP stronghold for decades. However, with his South-South policy, Mr. Han takes up the major DPP „Southbound Policy“ that is supposed to be a means against Taiwan's economic reliance and dependency on Mainland China.
This paper seeks to understand how symbols of a state-led personality cult are not removed with a deeper institutionalization of transitional justice in Taiwan’s society and state after 2007 through 2018. The statues of Chiang Kai-shek, the former leader of the authoritarian regime of the Chinese National Party, are the most controversial and affected objects of the authoritarian legacy in today’s Taiwan. My discussion analyzes in a case study approach and in an ethnographical observation, and with interviews, reports in newspaper and social media, how a state university, the National Chengchi University (國立政治大學) (NCCU) in Taipei City discussed and finally removed only one of their two public accessible statues of CKS in August 2018. This paper traces how local communities against the backdrop of a national discourse of removal redefine the meaning of the statues in a new participatory setting. I outline how political and ideological material legacies are not removed, but undergo a local reinvention that make them more tolerable or consumable in these communities. This paper illustrates the historical origin of these statues, the protests and their post-authoritarian “afterlives” (Nachleben) as a local reaction in a national discourse of transitional justice: I this case study, I identify three types of “afterlives: Profanation, iconization, and localization of the sites and the surrounding space.
In recent years vandalism of Chiang Kai-shek relics have occurred more and more frequently in Taiwan. The debate about the country`s authoritarian past and the late dictators responsibilities in the White Terror and 228 Incident often manifests into a physical form. The presentation on “The Cihu Mausoleum: a physical and symbolic site of memory and its emotional effect” focuses on the protest at the Cihu Mausoleum, which took place on the 28th of February, the 71st anniversary of the 228 Incident. Protesters splattered red paint on the Generalissimo’s sarcophagus, the chosen colour symbolizing the victims’ blood. This talk shall examine how the Mausoleum changed as a physical and symbolic place of memory after said vandalism. It will describe the physical changes of the site after the reopening and how this resulted in a shift of the places’ symbolic meaning. Especially the mourning ritual, which was practiced by many visitors to honour Chiang Kai-shek, was restricted as a result of the physical alterations. Furthermore the prevailing consensus of people being able to honour the late dictator at his grave was dissolved. This lead to the creation of a new site of memory with different and new emotions attached to the Mausoleum.
This paper tries to answer the question what were the possible reasons for the PRC government's emotional political response to the Sichuan earthquake in China on May 12, 2008. Although it is known that the earthquake gave the government the opportunity to show a human face and an open attitude, which was necessary for the restoration of its image, this paper emphasizes another reason for the emotional response. I argue here that the collapse of schools, which caused many child deaths was one of the causes of the emotional political response of the government. Many children were the only child in the family mostly due to the one-child policy of China. The content analysis of media reports and the comparison with the Tangshan earthquake will help to exemplify this case.
It was known immediately after the earthquake that many schools collapsed, but other buildings were not that damaged at all. State media like the "People's Daily" reported one day later, on 13 May, the first collapsed school. In the next few weeks, there have been reports on collapsed schools, although never explicitly explaining the reason for the collapse. Many parents and liberal media blamed the poor construction of school buildings, of which the government should be aware. The government promised to investigate, and the people believed it. After a while, the government started to control all media, parents and non-government organizations, which did publications and meetings on this issue, so these actions were forbidden. It is assumed, that since the government was aware of the blame of the parents and people, it would be inappropriate for the government to act other than emotionally — the government which did not control the safety of school constructions and which carried out the one-child policy. Later on, the Chinese government excluded parents, who lost their child, or their child was acutely injured from one-child policy and allowed them to have new children or to register the illegal one.
Excursion to the Augarten with all participants including our Taiwanese guests.