Introduction: Syaman Rapongan’s Littoral Gothic and EcoGothic Asia

Abstract

Since the emergence of modernity, the perceived Eastern emphasis on the harmony between humanity and nature has been profoundly challenged and reshaped by the processes of globalization, industrialization, and militarization. Asia, as a geo-poetic imaginary and a geopolitical locus, projects both utopic imagination and dystopic anxiety. It juggles between tropical paradise and over-populated mega-cities, philosophical serenity, and militarized bio-hazard zones. It boasts both keen recyclers and key polluters in the world. Landscapes by both non-Asian and Asian authors about or in Asia magnify, problematize, and sometimes accelerate such disquieting and polarized projections. Recent publications on Asian literatures and cultures have offered new ecological perspectives and insights, showing the necessity of addressing global environmental crises through more diversified and situated methodologies and perspectives. 1 Built upon previous scholarship, this special issue on EcoGothic Asia is one of the very first scholarly attempts to address the intimate connections between Asian landscapes and ecological consciousness through the dual lens of ecocriticism and the Gothic mode.Syaman Rapongan, a contemporary Indigenous writer from Taiwan, once compared spearfishing in the subtidal zone in the Pacific Ocean at night as "drifting into the esophagus of the evil spirit" ("Let the Wind Take the Evil Spirit Away"). 2 While night diving has been a traditional way of living for the Tao (Tau) people of Orchid Island, an island situated to the southeast of the island of Taiwan, not only does the darkness in the underwater world instigate fear in the minds of Indigenous fishermen, but the subtidal zone Rapongan frequents is also a treacherous terrain for both men and animals, with deep trenches connected to a valley nicknamed "The Valley of Cattle Grave" by the local tribesmen as, in the past, Tao people would chase straying cattle out of their sweet potato fields into the valley, and thus send these animals to their early death. It is also a place where people might find floating bodies of their relatives, victims of accidental drowning. The cove where Rapongan fished, facing another nearby island, Jiteiwan (in Tao language, or "Lesser Orchid Island" in Chinese) is called by local people as "the evil spirit's