“ ‘[They] danced, and, then, … it was our turn to dance’: Performative Cultural Diplomacy Between Tuvalu and Taiwan.”
Jess Marinaccio's thesis explores conceptions of diplomacy and discursive histories in Tuvalu-Taiwan relations and the cultural diplomacy projects that have both reinforced and undermined this relationship. In this seminar, Jess will briefly reflect on the outcomes of her PhD research before more comprehensively discussing a proposed post-doctoral project. In this project, she used trans-local Pacific histories and theories of relationship-building as conceptual frameworks to investigate two distinct ways Tuvalu and Taiwan have become embedded in the Pacific region.
For Taiwan, Jess examines how the development of Exclusive Economic Zones and a long history of illegal fishing have locked Taiwan in contentious relationships with numerous Pacific locales (including Tuvalu). These conflicts feature narratives of Taiwan’s multi-sited Pacific histories (and the multiple actors they have involved) that are missing from current academic discourse.
For Tuvalu, Jess contemplates Festival of Pacific Arts (FESTPAC), a major event held every four years in different Pacific locales, as a mobile site of trans-local history-making. At FESTPAC, Tuvalu has continuously situated and re-situated itself in relationships with other Pacific places (including Taiwan) since before its independence from the United Kingdom in 1978.
Although disparate, both of these topics on trans-local Pacific histories and relationship-building are founded on the strongest and most valuable findings from Jess's PhD. As she will argue, this warrants their further consideration in more extensive research projects.
Jess Marinaccio is a PhD Candidate in Pacific Studies at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. She received a Master’s in Chinese literature from National Taiwan University and, later, worked as a Mandarin-English interpreter for the Tuvalu Embassy in Taiwan. Jess’s research focuses on Tuvalu-Taiwan cultural diplomacy, as well as understandings of diplomacy and indigeneity in Taiwan and its Pacific allies. She has published/will be publishing relevant articles and book chapters in Issues & Studies, Asia Pacific Viewpoint, ANU In Brief, International Journal of Taiwan Studies, The Contemporary Pacific, and The China Alternative – Changing Regional Order in the Pacific Islands (Acton: ANU Press, 2019).
