Normalization of the Indigenous: "Indigeneity" as a New Subjectivity in Taiwanese Curriculum Reforms

• In Event: Decomposing Whiteness, Indigenous Soil, Intimacies, and Stolen Childhoods

Abstract

Concepts of “indigeneity” are understood globally to embody the subjectivity of
ethnic groups—a liberating gesture toward identifying the individuality of “the
indigenous,” as opposed to “the colonized.” Drawing on a Foucauldian historical inquiry
into the temporality, this paper uses indigenous education in Taiwan to challenge that this
ostensibly liberating transformation of the indigenous, from “the oppressed” to a new
political subject, embodies, however, a paradox: subjugations of the indigenous into a
realm of political morality. The paper argues that “indigeneity” embodies ordering
principles in forming the moral citizen through particular education research deploying
strategies of classification thus normalization. This study decolonizes what has been
taken as political freedom of indigenous people and serves as a possible gesture toward
transformations.

Author

• Kai-Jung Hsiao, University of Wisconsin - Madison