Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power, 10: 109–131, 2003 Copyright © 2003 Taylor & Francis 1070-289X/03 $12.00 +.00 DOI: 10.1080/10702890390180732 Contesting Formosa: Tragic Remembrance, Urban Space, and National Identity in Taipak 1 Scott Simon Department of Sociology, University of Ottawa Ottawa, Ontario, Canada Throughout the world, national identities are inscribed on communities through the construction of social space. Although the identity of Taiwan—as Chinese versus Formosan—has been contested for the past fifty years, the struggles over space and memory have become increasingly visible since the lifting of martial law in 1987. This article, a product of five years of field research in Taiwan, is an attempt to read some ways in which so-called Native Taiwanese have begun to inscribe a non-Chinese iden- tity on social space in Taipak and beyond. In particular, I focus on how struggles for control over social memory have played out in the transformation of Taipak’s New Park into a memorial for the Massacre of February 28. Although it is only one social field on which the struggle for Taiwanese identity is fought, New Park has become one of the major points of contention between ethnic groups on the island. Key Words: nationalism, social memory, ethnicity, identity, Taiwan A “current of social thought” is ordinarily as invisible as the atmosphere we breathe. In normal life its existence is recognized only when it is resisted. (Halbwachs 1980 [1950]: 38) Throughout the world, national identities are inscribed on communities through the construction of social space. National monuments, such as the Lincoln and Washington Memorials in Washington, D.C., reinforce identities as tourists/pil- grims walk physically through social space to venerate the legendary deeds of past leaders. They leave concrete evidence of political change, as when the Monument to the People’s Heroes and the Great Hall of the People were built outside of the gates of the imperial Forbidden City in Beijing. They can also be conscious signs of reconciliation, as when the execution grounds of the French Revolution were reconstructed as Place de la Concorde in Paris. Yet the struggles that surely lay beyond the construction of those and other monuments are rarely visible in con- temporary life. Events at Taipak’s New Park give us a rare chance to observe the construction of space, the creation of collective memory, and how both are con- 109