Global Time-Space Reorderings: Literary, Cultural, and Cinematic Transformations

　　Global Time-Space Reorderings: Literary, Cultural, and Cinematic Transformations transnationally explores the impact of globalization on the reconceptualization of time and space in modern and contemporary literature, culture, and cinema. Yi-Hsuan Tso’s examination includes the novel Magical Mountain by the Nobel Literature Laureate Gao Xingjian, the Taiwanese Canadian poet Lo Fu’s epic Driftwood, the work of Taiwanese woman poet Hsia Yü, the Taiwanese documentary Let It Be, and third wave feminism in Taiwan. The book maintains that there are at least three axes of global time-space reordering. The first axis is the possibility of escape and freedom in time-space. In Magical Mountain, the escape from civilization is facilitated by the utopian nature with which a person communicates spiritually. Likewise, in Lo Fu’s Driftwood, the self gains freedom through the transcendence of local, local-global, and global time-space. The second axis is a translocal consciousness exemplified by the double-center globally migrating identity in Lo Fu’s Driftwood, the local, regional, and global entanglements in Taiwanese third wave feminism, and the acentric poetics of Hsia Yü. The third axis is the debate in Let It Be over whether to sustain the local-global economic interconnection or to lessen this interconnectivity confronting the spaces smoothed out by capitalism’s laissez faire policy.

作者簡介

Yi-Hsuan Tso（左乙萱）

　　Yi-Hsuan Tso is Assistant Professor at the National Taiwan Normal University. She has authored journal articles and book

　　chapters on Taiwanese cinema, feminism, Cathy Song, Rita Dove, John Keats, American multicultural poetry, and globalization curriculum. Her work also includes encyclopedia entries on contemporary American poetry as well as translations for a psychology textbook, poems, and newspaper articles.

節錄自〈Nature as Refuge in the Globalized World: The Form of Gao Xingjian’s Magical Mountain〉

In our era of globalization, the first axis of time-space reordering within modern literature is the possibility of escapism and freedom in time-space. In Gao’s Magical Mountain, nature is the utopia to which the protagonist and Gao flee in search of freedom from the constraints of civilization and the institutions of the nation-state. The rapport between the main character and his environment is textually manifest through the fusion of mind and nature expressed in the novel’s language and form.