The second life of a political cult: Official and popular reappropriation of Chiang Kai-shek statues in post-martial law Taiwan

Abstract

From 1945 to the beginning of the democratization, the Chinese nationalist party ruled Taiwan through a single-party regime. After being forced out of China in 1949, it implemented several policies promoting a national imagination in which Taiwan was turned into an ideal representation of China. One of the main symbolic pillars of the regime was the personality cult dedicated to its leader, Chiang Kai-shek. If the democratization put an end to the political ritual of the authoritarian era, the physical remnants of the cult have been subject to different reappropriations by public and private actors who publicly express a positive remembering of the deceased leader. This article explores the modalities of these reappropriations and their significance for the mnemonic divide characteristic from the symbolic Taiwanese landscape.