本文檢視從1980年代末期至今的一個批判「本土」論述──有關社會、文化、文學、歷史與在地概念的理論化過程。首先我們討論1990年代中期一段有關「本土」的激辯，文化研究學者指控某些社會學家的「本土」研究在為一個新的國族論述服務，這個指控造成了學院內部衝突，也連帶損壞了「本土」想像。本文將在此一學術衝擊中，重尋一個另類本土觀。本文提出，這個另類想像事實上孕育了後來的臺灣研究學門，指引其自我認同過程朝向自我批判與交互主體溝通的道路邁進。本文將探討這股批判活力如何持續在新的世紀運作，當1980年代活躍的研究生們如今都已位居學院裡的不同位置。過往的基進記憶鞭策這個新學門，在學院的重重機構限制中持續創新進擊。

This article examines an insurgent bentu discourse in the late 1980s through the present, about the theorization of society, culture, history, and locality - that were raised and intensively discussed back then by activist students and their sympathetic teachers during a time of political emergency. Before addressing this bentu quest, We first examine a so-called "nationalist social sciences" question that, triggering a feud between sociology and cultural studies in the mid-1990s, had damaged a version of bentu initiative. This article attempts to restore bentu in an alternative sense and argues that the discourse of bentu has actually helped to breed a discipline of Taiwan Studies in which self-recognition marches hand-in-hand with self-critique and inter-subject communication. It investigates how critical vigor has continued to function and to be disrupted among those former college and graduate students who are now positioning in different institutions of higher education.