Taiwan's Transpacific Medical Modernity: Race and Medical Humanitarianism in <em>Buddha Bless America</em>

Abstract

198 Chien-­ting Lin Taiwan’s Transpacific Medical Modernity: Race and Medical Humanitarianism in Buddha Bless America There is no escaping our obligations: our moral obligations as a wise leader and good neighbor in the interdependent community of free nations—­our economic obligations as the wealthiest people in a world of largely poor people, as a nation no longer dependent upon the loans from abroad that once helped us develop our own economy—­ and our political obligations as the single largest counter to the adversaries of freedom. —­ John F. Kennedy, from the official website of USAID Post‒Cold War historical writing that highlights the humanitarian nature of U.S. involvement in Asia resonates with the nationalistic sentiments expressed in this article’s epigraph; indeed, it is no accident that USAID cites John F. Kennedy in support of its long-­standing mission. After all, Kennedy’s invocation of the language of liberalism, humanism, and democracy to defend “freedom” unambiguously channels mid-­century preoccupations with Cold War logics of containment as practiced through industrialization, urbanization, and medicalization. For Taiwan, the imbrication of these Cold War logics meant specific transformations in medical modernization, including (but not limited to) the professionalization of nursing education and training according to the American standard (Chang 2010), the U.S.-­ directed implementation of family planning and birth control in relation to U.S. Cold War international politics of population control (Kuo 1998), and the flow of young medical professionals as part of a “medical emigration” from Taiwan to the United States (Hsu 2013, 56)—­ all of which was involved in the national regime of economic Taiwan’s Transpacific Medical Modernity 199 development and scientific progress. These progressive narratives in turn connect closely to the social imaginaries in Taiwan’s democratization process; besides shaping the popular imagination of ideas about science and technology in a liberal democracy, for example, the ideological (and affective ) underpinnings of Taiwan’s medical modernization are also deeply intertwined with the political economics of rationality, morality, rights, and humanity. Central to this political economy of postcolonial state building in the process of medical modernization in Taiwan, moreover, were calls for the democratization of health care, rights to health, scientific development, the institutionalization of Western modern medicine, and the legal reform and professionalization of medical education. This historical process of medical modernization works through a systematic identification and subjugation of the nonnormative miyi (secret doctors) subjects, knowledges, and practices that I have previously characterized as a “governing secrecy” in Taiwan’s medical modernity.1 Attentive to the politics of Cold War knowledge production, this article considers the social imaginary of U.S. medical modernity as refracted through the 1996 film Taipingtianguo (Taiping Kingdom of Heaven; known inEnglishasBuddhaBlessAmerica[BBA]),directedbyWuNien-­jen(1952–­).2 Set in 1960s Taiwan, BBA satirizes Cold War rationales for the U.S. military presence in Asia by following the film’s protagonist, A-­ sheng, as he allows U.S. and Taiwan troops to run maneuvers in his small village in the misguided hope that U.S. army surgeons can help his younger brother, whose fingers were severed in an accident in a Japanese-­ owned factory. The film’s ironic tone notwithstanding, this essay considers how BBA renders visible the struggles of the postcolonial nation-­state while at the same time falling short of fully critiquing the assumptions of democracy, rights, and liberalism. Given the historical gap between the 1960s (when the film is set) and the 1990s (when it was produced), I examine carefully the film’s revisiting of the lingering historical effects of U.S. Cold War imperialism as they bear upon the social formations of daily practices and life in post-­ 1980s Taiwanese society. In addition to being a prolific and versatile writer, director, and actor , Wu is well known for his role in working with leading Taiwanese New Wave directors like Hou Hsiao-­ hsien and Edward Yang. Departing from what was previously known as cinematic “health realism”—­movies that accentuate the positive aspects of social life being aligned with state politics—­these directors engage critically with Taiwan’s social phenomena through a focused attention to the everyday lives of ordinary people, making (for instance) film adaptations of late 1970s “nativist...