志异 Draft by Drama box July 2014 (english) | Page 48

W

hat happened on the early morning of
April 24 was unfortunate.2 Violence by the
state is to be censured. However (and ‘however’
is still necessary here) in the final analysis, this
violence stems not from individuals, but from the
system of the nation-state. In other words, be it a
capitalist or a socialist regime, all governments
will have more or less the same response when
faced with such a challenge, whether violent or
non-violent. Relative to Europe, the United States
and Japan, which are much admired by Taiwan’s
intellectual circles, if
we take the police
as a representative of
1 Edito
r’s Not
e: An a
state violence, state
edition
bridged
of the o
riginal
in Chin
violence in Taiwan is
article
ese wa
s publi
in Chin
shed
objectively speaking,
a Time
s on M
26, 201
arch
the most ‘civilised’
4. A fu
ll editi
publish
on was
ed on t
or the ‘softest’ and
he Fac
page of
ebook
Taiwan
there should be no
: A Rad
Quarte
ical
rly in S
contention about
ocial S
on the
tudies
same d
ay. We
this. It would
republ
are
ishing
the ful
here, w
perhaps be more
l editio
ith the
n
consen
author
meaningful if
t of the
.
we could take this
opportunity to elevate the grievances
on and condemnations of state violence to the
level of a discourse on ‘the nation-state and
violence’.
But the absence of a discourse or the failure
to raise the level of discourse is precisely a
striking feature of this ‘Sunflower student
movement’, wordlessly and objectively reflected

HAO KA

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