Bodies and Structures 2.0: Deep-Mapping Modern East Asian History

God's-eye and Person's-eye Views

For the most part, I present the information in this module, both the narrative and spatial material, from a god’s-eye perspective that is typical of most historical writing. Historians wade through copious amounts of material, much of it first or second-hand in its origin, in order to understand the past, but when they construct their narratives, they step back and observe from a considerable height, or distance, in order to put all of the pieces together. Although historians do not make claims of omniscience, they are external to the events that they study and are able to encompass a broader contextual range, although less immediate detail, than a participant could see. Readers should be aware that I have combined, condensed, and otherwise interpreted my sources in order to provide a cohesive, although not seamless, explanation of historical change. These points are true of the narrative pages as well as the maps contained therein, which invariably display a god’s-eye view that sees all but does so at a high degree of simplification that obscures—perhaps intentionally—the texture of the everyday, or the person’s-eye view.

The person’s-eye view is not completely absent from these pages, because it is the perspective of the everyday. It exists in the images of temples, in the descriptions of festivals, and in the actions of people and groups as they linked sacred and physical geographies in these spaces and celebrations. Readers are encouraged to not be limited by the god’s-eye view I have imposed upon the material, but to experience the content of this module more as the historical actors would have engaged with the city and its important sites. Walk from one temple to another, as one might do on a tour of Jilong in the past or present; visit only Buddhist temples, or only Taiwanese temples; observe only the festivals and follow the deities as they were carried through the city, to see the extent of their territorial cults. The person’s-eye view is fundamentally a part of the multiple pathways through this module.
 

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