IISES International Academic Conference, Rome

EMBRACING AMBIGIOUS HERITAGE: A NARRATIVE IDENTITY STUDY ON TRANSCULTURAL POPULATION IN TAIWAN

YA-HSUAN WANG

Abstract:

Due to globalization driven by immigration and transnational marriages, a significant number of transcultural populations have emerged. Some minority groups struggle with the dark stigma associated with their contradictory heritage, much like the early indigenous peoples whose facial tattoos were once unappreciated. What should have been a source of cultural pride instead fostered a conflicted sense of stigma. This study adopts Merleau-Ponty’s (1962) concept of “ambiguity” as a phenomenological approach to perception, focusing on the ambiguous historical circumstances of trans-cultural populations—a phenomenon I term "ambiguous heritage." Heritage, at its core, is a deeply personal matter. Each individual accumulates their own heritage through personal life experiences, which, within their lived space, serve as reference points for personal values and memories (Tunbridge & Ashworth, 1996). Personal heritage is closely tied to a sense of place, emotions, and symbolic attachments (Williams et al., 1992). In historical contexts free of conflict or controversy, cultural heritage is often perceived as static and eternal. For example, when visiting museums to see the artifacts and ruins of ancestors from thousands of years ago, one does not typically experience contradiction or distress, as these relics belong to a shared collective memory of "everyone." Since this collective memory is considered universal, no matter what kind of history our ancestors had, it does not strongly or intimately impact our personal identity. However, who exactly constitutes "everyone"? The collective memory of a society often refers to the shared history of the dominant group. When I am not a member of the mainstream group, my cultural heritage does not become part of this "shared" collective memory. This is the challenge faced by minority groups or immigrants in mainstream societies. The collective memory of minorities and new immigrants differs from that of the dominant group, raising the question of whether their historical and cultural heritage is acknowledged and accepted by the mainstream. This acceptance—or lack thereof—ultimately affects the relationship between cultural heritage and identity. This study explores narrative identity by collecting stories from Southeast Asian immigrants in Taiwan, capturing moments when they encountered dark chapters of history and identifying their ambiguous heritage. It also proposes ways to positively embrace and integrate ambiguous heritage in cross-cultural populations, breaking the stigma of historical darkness and fostering genuine intercultural awareness. Using narrative identity as a research method, this study reviews the life trajectories of trans-cultural individuals, revisiting feelings of displacement and historical trauma. Through the process of overcoming trauma and reconstructing identity, self-healing is achieved. By observing how trans-cultural populations reclaim their historical memories, this research investigates how they confront the ambiguity of their heritage. More importantly, it explores how, after confronting the dark past of their ambiguous heritage, they can transform it into a more empowering and constructive form of trans-cultural knowledge.

Keywords: transcultural education, transcultural knowledge, narrative identity, immigrant research