The Politics of Narrative Identity in the Mazu Cult

Abstract

In examining the development of Taiwan’s identity issue since 1987, we will investigate the reformation of discourse on religious identity in central Taiwan. On the one hand, our inquiry concerns what may be called the politics of discursive identity. It is politics in a microscopic sense: as we shall see, the religious identity of Peikang [Beigang] became a problem when another temple in Tachia [Dajia], which had maintained a branch relationship with Peikang and annually paid the latter homage, suddenly stopped its pilgrimages and switched its loyalty to Peikang’s neighboring rival temple, Fengtiangong in Hsinkang [Xingang]. On the other hand, our inquiry is also about “talking” politics. Hence, we shall introduce a post-structuralist view which renders discourse on identity fragmentary and self-conflicted, and reveals how workaday local people think about their equally fragmentary identities in a storytelling manner. Therefore, our main purpose will be to demonstrate how, by invoking an ancient territorial name of Penkang [Bengang] and its original Mazu temple, Peikang has attacked its rival, Hsinkang. However, amid its alternative recourses to aggressivity and narcissism, it also has yearned for the unification of both places. In short, it demonstrates a process of fragmentary politics involving narrative identity at the local level.