2011/11/07 by Jennifer A. Liu · 3 citations
Social Sciences · #Aesthetics #Diaspora, migration, transnational identity #Gender studies #Genealogy #History #Identity (music) #Japanese History and Culture #Philippine History and Culture #Philosophy #Sociology
paper · doi:10.1080/01459740.2011.630333
openalex publication_date 2011/11/07 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/04/05
Notions of identity in Taiwan are configured in relation to numbers. I examine the polyvalent capacities of enumerative technologies in both the production of ethnic identities and claims to political representation and justice. By critically historicizing the manner in which Aborigines in Taiwan have been, and continue to be, constructed as objects and subjects of scientific knowledge production through technologies of measuring, I examine the genetic claim made by some Taiwanese to be "fractionally" Aboriginal. Numbers and techniques of measuring are used ostensibly to know the Aborigines, but they are also used to construct a genetically unique Taiwanese identity and to incorporate the Aborigines within projects of democratic governance. Technologies of enumeration thus serve within multiple, and sometimes contradictory, projects of representation and knowledge production.