
Contents
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Disrupted History and Performative Identity in Stan Lai’s Xiangsheng Plays Disrupted History and Performative Identity in Stan Lai’s Xiangsheng Plays
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The Production of Taiwan Literature under the Translation Drive The Production of Taiwan Literature under the Translation Drive
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The Performative of Tradition The Performative of Tradition
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The Death of Xiangsheng, the Birth of the Xiangsheng Play The Death of Xiangsheng, the Birth of the Xiangsheng Play
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(Non)Repetitive Performative and Disrupted History (Non)Repetitive Performative and Disrupted History
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How Local Is Local? How Local Is Local?
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Absent China: Translating the Nation-State Absent China: Translating the Nation-State
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Absent Dreamers Absent Dreamers
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Conclusion Conclusion
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Bibliography Bibliography
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9 Performing Absence, Translating “China”
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Published:August 2019
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Abstract
Fusing theories from performance studies and Naoki Sakai's theory of translation as social address, this chapter examines Taiwanese playwright Stan Lai's xiangsheng (crosstalk) work as it challenges the concept of "China" (the Republic of China and the People's Republic of China) as the nation-state. While Stan Lai was one of the leading participants of the modern theater renaissance in the 1980s that was influenced by both the "tradition" and "native soil" discourses in the 1970s, his plays, as this chapter argues, go beyond their nativist imaginations. This chapter examines how Lai's work points to the discontinuity in tradition and critiques the alleged sense of place in the "native soil" movement. It also analyzes how Lai's plays challenge the continuity of national history, turning it into a series of performative events in which repetitions carry the potential toproduce and proliferate difference without origin. The discontinuity of linear history and the absence of identifiable characters in Lai's experimental historiographical plays produce "China" as a fundamentally heterogeneous social space that does not cohere with any nation-state.
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