Abstract
In this chapter, it is analyzed the narrative approach and the way a particular place is constructed as a site of difference. With this approach the author tries to analytically unify a series of apparent contradictions. The first part of the chapter argues that stories imply the worlds they are set in by establishing them as build from differences, contrasts, and contradictions, just the stuff that makes a story worth narrating. Thus, the construction of the local world through narrative does not arise from the reinforcement of identity but on the contingencies of difference—each story implying its own internal differences that ultimately constitute the immanent alterity of Shuiwei. It is also theorized how these differences are already encoded in the relation between storyteller and audience and the consequences of their diverging cultural identities. In the second section, the author briefly outlined some aspects of the anthropology of space and the way current research considers space and place as continually constructed and coded. Here alterity is stressed in the construction of place.
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Notes
- 1.
媽祖 Māzǔ, whose real name was 林默娘 Línmòniáng, is one of the most popular deities in Taiwan. Mazu was originally worshiped as the goddess of the sea, but now she is worshiped as an all-powerful protective deity (Katz 2003, p. 395). The 太平媽祖 Tàipíng Māzǔ is the Mazu of the 福興宮 Fúxìng temple in 西螺 Siluo. Every year this temple organizes a big pilgrimage that passes through Lunbei, after touching the neighboring county of Changhua.
- 2.
“De Doctrina Christiana Libri Quatuor” and “De Magistro Liber Unus.” Fully available on: <http://www.sant-agostino.it/latino/index.htm>; Simone (1992), see especially the Chapter “Semiologia Agostiniana” 63–92.
- 3.
Please refer to Todorov (1969).
- 4.
I borrow the word verisimilar (verosimile in its original Italian) from Vico, which means “that seems to be the truth, that may have happened the way it’s been reported.”
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Lazzarotti, M. (2020). Locus. In: Place, Alterity, and Narration in a Taiwanese Catholic Village. Asian Christianity in the Diaspora. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-43461-8_2
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