초록 열기/닫기 버튼
As can be seen from Lai He's life, which coincided with the period of Japanese colonial rule, the new literature for him was bound to take on the mission of the times: to promote Taiwanese self-awareness and the search for a new society. As with most colonizer-colonized relationships, Taiwanese society was subjected to various modernization efforts by the colonial power, Japan, to facilitate its takeover. The modernization led by the Japanese colonial rulers first defined themselves by the standards of civilization, and then considered the Taiwanese as an alien group with a backward culture. In turn, this meant that Taiwanese were to be regenerated through various modern institutions and education, and that Taiwanese culture was to conform to that of the colonial power, Japan. As a colonized intellectual, Lai He can be said to have created his works in a contradictory state of mind, unable to completely deny or affirm the various modern discourses created to secure the legitimacy of the colonial system and the submission of Taiwanese. Lai He's predicament can be made more concrete and current through Baek Nak Cheng's argument that the double project of adapting to modernity and overcoming modernity problematizes not only the Korean Peninsula, but also the modern capitalist system. For Baek Nak Cheng, modernity is a society in which both adaptation and overcoming exist simultaneously, especially in societies that have been subject to passive modernization, such as the Korean Peninsula, Taiwan, and Japan. The situation of Taiwanese intellectuals during the Japanese colonization is similar. The dilemma of wanting to see society develop and yet refusing to allow colonialism to be imposed on Taiwanese, in other words, resisting colonialism requires criticizing modernization, and accepting the baptism of modernity means accepting colonial rule, represents the ontological divide of Lai He and his contemporaries. Thus, the problem of adapting to modernity and overcoming modernity mentioned in the double project theory is a useful methodology for discussing the reality of colonial Taiwan and the existence of Taiwanese intellectuals. Beginning with Taiwan's first new novel, ＜鬥鬧熱＞, Lai He's work symbolizes the problems of feudalism and colonization. In works such as his autobiographical novel, the unfinished ＜阿四＞, he calls for the awakening of Taiwanese through the clash between the ideals of colonial education and reality. While these characteristics of Lai He's literature can be basically characterized as enlightenment through literature, its contemporary value will become clearer when it is discussed in relation to the core of the theory of the double project of adapting to modernity and overcoming colonialism, in that Lai He is faced with the predicament of resisting colonization while pursuing modernity. In this case, Lai He's literature has the advantage of reconstructing various problems caused by modernity from a contemporary perspective.
