書評 Taipei: City of Displacements
Joseph R. Allen. Taipei: City of Displacement . Seattle: University of Washington Press. 2012. xv, 280 pp. ISBN 978-0-295-99126-9. Paperback. (本文發表於 China Review International , 19-3, 2012) Taipei: city of displacement is an interesting and insightful book about the cultural politics of public space in a postcolonial East Asian city. Combining thorough investigation of historical material and long-term observation of contemporary urban spaces, Joseph Allen presents a brilliant spatial reading of historical and present-day Taipei. As Allen mentions in the book (p. 186), the theoretical framework of his study is primarily informed by Lefebvre, Harvey, and Hayden, whose works usually see space not as a backdrop for social and historical events, but as a type of agent actively engaged in these events. Similarly, Taipei focuses on how the visual representation of public spaces in Taipei supports the construction and reconstruction of ideology, especially the ideolo