Woman and Sea
Gender, Identity, and Decolonization in Sea Imagery by Contemporary Women Poets from Taiwan
Chen-chen Tseng *
Abstract
This paper takes a look into sea imagery created by contemporary women poets from Taiwan.  Before 80s, sea is represented more as a literary emblem depicting “feminine jouissance” than as a geographical space inviting physical exploration.  Since 80s, we hear in sea poems created by Li Yuanzhen, Hong Suli, Xia Yu, Ling Yu, and Zhang Fangci a double reclaim of women’s right to speak for the autonomy of female desire and national destiny of Taiwan.  Their poems demonstrate how feminism, post-colonialism, and post-structuralism affect women writers in Taiwan as they reflect upon the interlocked issues involving gender, space, subjectivity, and identity.  Analogous to female artists in other post-colonial countries, their enterprise of decolonization evolves from double “reterritorialization,” i.e., simultaneous efforts to re-map female body and the sea that defines Taiwan as an island state, into “deterritorialization,” i.e., setting adrift the specific national identity by assuming nomadic subjectivity of sea-farers.

Keywords: sea imagery, body, gender and space, post-colonial identity