Noise and Redundancy: Nonsense Literature as World Literature During the Cold War

January 1, 1947, Tonga Ilbo. "The 38th Parallel Blues." Image Credit: The Cold War Comic: Power and Laughter in Taiwan and South Korea (1948-1979) by Evelyn Ming Whai Shih

This lecture by Evelyn Shih (University of Minnesota) talk proposes a particular kind of nonsense literature as a countermeasure to regimes of authoritarian cultural control and the drive towards “oneworldedness” that characterized the communications crisis during the Cold War, linking examples from European surrealism, the négritude movement, and Latin American magical realism with what was happening in Taiwan and South Korea, where national division and colonial legacy made nonsense a particularly urgent necessity in literary praxis.

Thursday, February 12, 2026
4:00 PM - 5:30 PM (Pacific Time)

Bunche Hall, Rm 10383 & Online

The UCLA Taiwan in the World lecture series aims to promote Taiwan studies and disseminate knowledge about Taiwan in a global context and shed light on Taiwan's political economy, international relations, and US-Taiwan-China relations, as well as Taiwan's society, political system, social structure, and institutions.

Note: This lecture will be presented in a hybrid format. See registration links below to attend virtually or in-person.

Abstract

The Cold War era saw the rise not only of an interest in communications theory due to the emergence of new mass media technologies, but a crisis in communication itself. A bilateral world system split between the capitalist democracies and the revolutionary socialism dominated, cutting off alternative possibilities and demanding ideological conformity. In much of the world, including in authoritarian Taiwan and South Korea, the ideology of the state was reinforced with violence, further freezing the flow of communication. This effect was heightened in particular for post-colonial states, many of which found themselves swept up in the global race to swallow up the totality of the world’s cultures into a singular aesthetic world system.

This talk proposes a particular kind of nonsense literature as a countermeasure to regimes of authoritarian cultural control and the drive towards “oneworldedness” that characterized the communications crisis during the Cold War. Drawing from both Gilles Deleuze’s philosophical engagement with nonsense and Édouard Glissant’s concepts of opacity and counterpoetics, I suggest that a particular form of nonsense crossed ideological lines and worked to create a space of non-alignment. This was a world literary effect: the talk links examples from European surrealism, the négritude movement, and Latin American magical realism with what was happening in Taiwan and South Korea, where national division and colonial legacy made nonsense a particularly urgent necessity in literary praxis.

About the Speaker

Evelyn Shih is Korea Foundation Assistant Professor at the Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies with a joint appointment in Cultural Studies and Comparative Literature at the University of Minnesota. She teaches courses on film and media, as well as Korean culture and literature within a comparative and transnational framework. She studies colonial, Cold War, and contemporary East Asia.

Her first book manuscript, Cold War Laugh Lines: Comic Communication in Authoritarian Taiwan and South Korea, explores the comic forms that flourish under heavy censorship and ideological control. She dives into the archives of the anti-Communist sphere in Cold War East Asia to argue for the transnational circulation of a regional style of comic expression. Her work interweaves methodologies from affect and phenomenology, media historiography, environmental humanities, aesthetics and critical theory. Her second book will trace the origins of modern comic expression into the Japanese colonial period, looking into new concepts such as "nonsense" and "neurasthenia" that were introduced to Taiwan and Korea during that time.

This event is presented by the UCLA Asia Pacific Center's Taiwan Studies Program and co-sponsored by the UCLA Center for Korean Studies.