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The Anxiety of Ambiguity: Nation and Identity in Ōe's Man'en gannen no futtobōru
Author(s) -
Lai Mingyan
Publication year - 2000
Publication title -
peace and change
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 1468-0130
pISSN - 0149-0508
DOI - 10.1111/0149-0508.00164
Subject(s) - national identity , modernity , identity (music) , allegory , ambiguity , gender studies , indigenous , narrative , sociology , hegemony , aesthetics , political science , history , literature , philosophy , art , law , art history , linguistics , ecology , politics , biology
Ōe's Man'en gannen no futtobōru is a powerful national allegory which affords serious meditation on the difficulties and perils of translating and transcribing the desires for collectivity and national identity in modernity. This essay analyzes the novel's attempt to weave the marginalized indigenous and the hegemonic Western into a ‘unique’ Japanese national identity. The narrative resolution of the identity crisisreveals a reinscription of exclusionary racial conceptualizations and elision of Japan's history of capitalist exploitation both within and outside of its national boundaries.