"Is literary historiography still an option? Major implications and prospects in writing a literary historiography of Taiwan at the time of the Sinophone". Position paper presented at the conference Sinophone Studies: New Directions Harvard University, October 14th – 15th 2016.

This contribution addresses the significance of literary historiography of Taiwan at the time of the Sinophone. The historiography of Taiwan literature is a relatively recent research field which mainly sprouted out of the need either to support a China-centric view of Taiwan literature, or to assert the independent development of Taiwan literary experience. Great attention has been obviously given to the very name of the island’s literature, which could offer an interpretation in order to set it in the background. But is it still meaningful and useful to rethink a history of Taiwanese literature when even its naming is still argued (due to the unsolved political position of Taiwan), when concepts such as “transnational literature” are accepted, and the Sinophone perspective has radically questioned the centrality of literature from China? Or, on the contrary, to what extent can historiography draw new theoretical basis from Sinophone studies, describing the island’s literary experience beyond the opposition Taiwan/China that has been dominant for a long time? In accepting the Sinophone as a “notion in the process of disappearance” and in constant transformation, can we undertake the task of the historiography of a dynamic and hybrid literature? In answering these questions, my contribution will try to delineate the prospective project of remapping a literary outline of Taiwan literature with a Sinophone approach.