The Last Sky: Studies in Taiwan's Political Thought History

How have Taiwanese people acted and spoken throughout history?
After flying across the last sky, where will the bird go? —Mahmoud Darwish
 
For over four hundred years, Taiwan has experienced different stages of rule, along with a mix of various languages. As Taiwanese, the process of forming a political subjectivity has not only been long and complex, but it continues to this day. Wu Rwei-Ren has devoted thirty years of research to exploring the Taiwanese people's pursuit of subjectivity over the past century. Through studying Lian Wen-qing, Shi Ming, Huang De-shi, Ye Sheng-ji, Cai Rui-yue, Rakaw Walis, Kao Yi-sheng, Liao Wen-kui, Liao Wen-yi, Cai Pei-huo, the magazine "Free China," the Peng Ming-min and Hsieh Tsung-min self-salvation declaration, and Wu Zhuo-liu's novels, he has compiled this collection of essays on the history of Taiwanese political thought.

Historically, the formation of Taiwanese subjectivity has had four critical moments: the early to mid-Japanese colonial period's exploration and initial formation; the interruption and re-exploration from wartime to the early post-war period; the reconstruction after democratization; and the renewed instability under today's geopolitical landscape. This book primarily covers important changes from the 1920s to the 1960s, and through multi-layered interpretations, it reconstructs how ideas such as national self-determination, liberation for smaller nations, socialism, and nationalism influenced the perspectives of activists and intellectuals. What we now call local identity is the result of multiple peripheral positions. Must the Taiwanese people's articulation of their subjectivity only be, as Zhang Wen-huan described, "the thoughts of people crawling on the ground"? As an academic of the post-democratization generation, Wu Rwei-Ren demonstrates his painstaking effort to integrate a knowledge genealogy nurtured by both Eastern and Western thought, and points out the unstable and unfinished state of Taiwanese subjectivity discourse.

This is not a chronological history, but rather a depiction of the structural changes in the spirit and historical circumstances of activists across generations. As the author states: "I invite readers to personally enter the scenes of this intellectual history, to step into these rudimentary settings painstakingly reconstructed from the rubble and dust of memory, and to engage in dialogue with the activists within—those Taiwanese predecessors—who were trapped by historical fate, forced to ponder with limited knowledge, and desperately seeking a way out. Let us agonize with them, think with them, and walk that long, rugged, and endless road together."