Settler self-discovery: Yang-Hsun Hou, ‘Affective Dimensions of Han Settler Colonialism: Autoethnographic Reflections from a Transnational Taiwan Studies Scholar’, in Po-Han Lee, Alvaro Martinez-Lacabe, Yu-chin Tseng (eds), Feeling Taiwan: Emotions in Everyday Politics, Social Movements, and Research Practices, Routledge, 2026 | settler colonial studies blog

Settler self-discovery: Yang-Hsun Hou, ‘Affective Dimensions of Han Settler Colonialism: Autoethnographic Reflections from a Transnational Taiwan Studies Scholar’, in Po-Han Lee, Alvaro Martinez-Lacabe, Yu-chin Tseng (eds), Feeling Taiwan: Emotions in Everyday Politics, Social Movements, and Research Practices, Routledge, 2026

06Mar26

Abstract: This chapter presents a critical autoethnographic inquiry into the author’s felt experiences as Hokkien/Hohlo, Han, and a Taiwanese international graduate student in the United States. In the ongoing realities of global racialization, racism, colonialism, and imperialism, studies have emphasized how self-examination and disclosure can contribute to anti-oppression and resist harmful narratives in academia. I present in this chapter the emotional contours of my epistemic routes and tensions wrestling with what I have learned as a transnational graduate student, and how they have rearranged my relations with my identities, the lands and waters that we now know as Taiwan, and the Indigenous sovereignties and communities in Taiwan. This chapter takes seriously emotions and affects as openings toward settler accountabilities and decolonial solidarities. I highlight the nuances that nudged me toward reconfiguring my relationship with Taiwan, whether in my graduate coursework in the United States or during spontaneous moments during my dissertation research fieldwork. This study surfaces how my perceptions of Taiwan and what it means to be Taiwanese have become more dynamic over the years, moving toward a closer alignment with how lands and waters have never been still and toward a critical reflection of settler colonial nationhood.

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