This is Duke University.
In the 17th century, we see a period of
great contestation between the Dutch and
the Spaniards in the north of the island
also but the Dutch coming in to overtake
the native tribes and their labor and
their resources conscripting also Han
Chinese laborers from the mainland. And
then at the end of the century the helm
goes to the new Manchu dynasty which
remains the hegemon in Taiwan for over
200 years until 1895 when Taiwan as a
whole is ceded to Japan following the First
Sino-Japanese war. For 50 years after
that Taiwan is under Japan. From 1945 to
the present the government in Taiwan has
been the self-styled Republic of China
although many countries since the 50s
have not recognized it as such. So as
Richard Suchenski has said on the
experimental films of Nathaniel Dorsky
showing here this weekend at Duke, his
works are decontextualized and sometimes
unmoored from their surroundings
allowing connections to develop which
resonate not only between shots, but also
across the films as a whole encouraging
more active forms of awareness. Of course
this notion of  decontextualization is
a dynamic one when something is
decontextualized
from one web or configuration it is
projected into the moment of its own
micro Big Bang or long morphing the
creation of new becomings scatterings
tangling adhesions or may even
simultaneously precipitate as its own
object. In the thought of philosopher Gilles
Deleuze the substract of his binomial
of endo- and exo-consistency. Endo-
consistency is how things hold together
from within which does not require
presentational merit and exo-consistency
is how a subject of discourse holds up
by its external relations and dynamics.
Strictly speaking consistency of
consistence in the Deleuzian sense is not
logical but intuitive conceptual more
than empirical. Either way each of these
forms of structural coherence inner or
outer may be actual demonstrable,
measurable, repeatable, or in the virtual
capable of erupting into the actual any
moment or long-since without losing a
bit of their virtuality if they don't. It
is an intriguing question how these two
binomials endo- and exo-consistency in
actuality versus the virtual map unto
each other. Rather than answer that
question today what I'd like to do
instead is play with and trouble the
waters between these notions in a
personalised geo philosophy of my
childhood hometown of Tainan, Taiwan
as an empirical concept. Western contact
with my home region began centuries
before when Portuguese sailors coming up
probably from their pre-Malay
colony Malacca in 1542 spotted the
island that became Taiwan and moved by
its appearance exclaimed, "Ilha formosa"
beautiful island. Piracy in the
southeast coast of China grew ripe in
the later Ming Dynasty. Out of this rowdy
quadrant of sea banditry and trade came
Zheng Zhilong born in 1604 in Trento once
you Prefecture of Fujian or Hopkin.
Bouncing around the south eastern
seaboard he eventually built a
successful syndicate of pirate and
pirates and pirate ships founding posts
near Tainan. After capturing the southern
Ming fleet, imperial Ming fleet he then
was granted command of the very fleet he
had seized. Now Zheng had a son, Zheng Chenggong
or Chennggong wasn't buying his
father's policy of extreme expediency
instead it took over his father's
command and with a remnant Ming court in
tow
succeeded in crossing the Taiwan Strait
and taking over Tainan. In conventional
Han Chinese historic historiography he's
regarded as the father of Taiwan and
Guardian through his legacy of Han
Chinese culture both in its resistance
to the Qing rule under the Manchus and
the rallying figure against all foreign
including later Japanese domination, but
not the nationalist Chinese domination
because it is very nationalist Chinese
who propagated this narrative to suggest
a repeat of history of a loyal older
regime trying to fight for its survival
in Taiwan. The liberation of Taiwan
attributed to him was in truth in
invasion against the established Dutch
there the Dutch weren't always so
appreciative of their host culture
however to the earliest people to
inhabit this part of the eye from native
pre-Han
Serra and culture of the Tainan region.
One of the cultural projects of the
colonial period was Christianisation.
Here's an example of Gospel of Matthew
printed both in Dutch and in the
surround esaron
tong the extent to which the locals
received their Christian tutelage with
joy was revealed when they eventually
turn against the Dutch at coxinhas
invasion and siege and at the departure
of their Europeans destroyed the
Christian books they were obliged to
read killing those Dutch that they could.
We might see this rejection of Dutch
rule as symbolic of the larger tug and
shove of the islands geology and
geography
it appears that Taiwan finally split
after complex plates abductions and many
volcanic upheavals from the mainland
about eight to ten thousand years ago. The
pre han natives became Islanders
willy-nilly you ever just split off from
the mainland but they did not simply
stop there
according to ongoing research the ten or
so major tribes of indigenous Taiwanese
have languages related to the
austronesians throughout the pacific and
indian ocean basins from madagascar off
the coast of africa all the way to
Eastern
Islands named Taiwan is derived from a
local sir ayan term alia one retire one
people of the boat from Tao people in
our canoe or boat you would think that
because of the autochthonous origin of
the name Taiwan in the serene language
the people to whom it belongs would have
had first dibs at being recognized as
indigenous of the island not so long
excluded from both the governmental and
intertribal nod the group formally
applied in 2009 for official status in
to my knowledge still has not received
it this you see this line right below
the inside of my elbow come around show
you okay this is the inscription of
history on my body
according to recent study it is a line
that comes from indigenous genes the Han
Chinese imported by the Dutch largely
came as single male laborers and many
marry local sorry and women not only did
this intermarriage leaving mark on
subsequent progeny it also had the
effect of synthesizing the Syrians at
large i one has never been decolonial
eyes not only because it kept getting
shunted from one colonial overlord to
another but because as EMA tongue of MIT
has observed the imperialism or
colonialism of the ching much less that
of roc or potentially of the PRC has
never been recognized or acknowledged
but in closing i'd like to suggest that
finance who referent which i mean going
in many different directions and
carrying different things pleura front
trajectories and vectors as a self
differentiating EXO consistency gestures
toward and indeed perform ad
nationalized space both virtual and
actual as such it also opens a path to
unthinking taiwan and large as a
nationalistic anomaly and deficit hi
great talk very interesting so something
i noticed
you talked a lot about you know all
these historical vectors coming in to
Tainan and how those have affected its
trajectory over time but one word that I
noticed you didn't use this
globalization do you feel like term
globalization and what it stands for and
what it means has had an effect on
Tynan's historical trajectory and what I
would say is that obviously what
happened in Tainan in the 17th century
already was the beginning of modern
globalization no question about that the
question is how we think of things that
we have come to accept as globalization
insofar as we tend to assume that
globalization is a non-negotiable and
that it operates under the aegis of a
world system a singular singular or
single world system my choice and not
using that word is precisely to resist
that tendency and that risk
