Crafting the Collective Identity: The Origin and Transformation of Taiwanese Nationalism *

This essay starts with the observation that the common perspective on third world nationalism, which emphasizes the centrality of West/non‐West tensions, is inadequate in explaining the development of specific nationalist discourses in the third world. As an attempt to come closer to a good understanding of the specific situations of third world nationalism, it engages in a case study of post‐war Taiwan, whose nationalist discourse had gone through three phases: Political Nationalism, Rational Nationalism, and Identity Nationalism. How and why these different phases developed constitutes my overarching question. Noting the importance of social relationships and the specificity of contextual constraints in the life of a nationalist movement, I develop a perspective which stresses relationality and contingency. This newperspective leads to the recognition of the centrality of the relationships among the ruling party (the KMT), Taiwanese nationalists, social groups in Taiwan, and the dominant regimes in the world system in understanding the transformation of the Taiwanese nationalist discourse. This study points to the multiplicity of domination and contention, the reflection upon which reveals that particular groups, such as the bourgeoisie, are likely to occupy contradictory positions in the nationalist struggle, and that such contradictions may amount to transformative forces.