1138 | 270 | The Alteration of Commemorative Street Names and City Governance in Taiwan

Following the Second World War, Taiwan was placed under the control of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) on October 25, 1945. The KMT government took the «De-Japanization» policy by the Commemorative street-renaming strategy to eradicate the symbol of Japanese authority and promote Chinese consciousness. From then on, most streets were renamed after the Confucian moral code, Three People’s Principles or national leaders in every city of Taiwan. After martial law period, with the gradual rising of local consciousness in recent years, Chen Shui-Bian, the mayor of Taipei city primarily renamed the Jei-shou Road in front of the President House to Ketagalan Boulevard to challenge hegemonic structures of power on 21st, March, 1996. From then on, one by one street was named after aboriginal tribes, such as Siraya Boulevard, Monga Boulevard to present the transformation of streetscapes in Taiwan. _x000D_
This paper will discover the semiotic and political operation of commemorative street names to focus on a political analysis of naming practices and the cultural production of place by examining the procedures of the naming and the renaming of streets in the cities of Taiwan. Further, we complicated how street names, in addition to their fundamental role in the spatial organization and semiotic construction of the city, are also participants in the cultural production of shared past. In order to conclude that the power of commemorative street names stems from their ability to implicate the national narrative of the past in numerous narratives of the city._x000D_

Wenchuan Huang
Taiwan and Regional studies department, National Dong Hwa University

ID Abstract: 270