Narrative as a site of subject construction

Abstract

The ordeal of `Comfort Women' who were sexually enslaved by the Japanese Imperial Military during the Second World War became widely known in the 1990s through these women's accounts of their experience. Instead of considering their narratives as historical data which reflect the `true' historical past, this article locates them within a broader framework of thinking of narratives. Drawing on the understanding of narrative as a key to the self and the subject which has been developed in narrative research, as well as Judith Butler on interpellation and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak on subaltern agency, this article argues that the `Comfort Women's' testimonies should not be read one-dimensionally in the light of `truth' and `falsity', but should rather be considered as the site of their subject-formation. Their narratives are where agency concurrently emerges, and `Comfort Women' are thus not powerless victims but are active participants in their creation of their own narratives and their own selves.

Rethinking ‘Rape as a Weapon of War’

“…In posing these questions, this article seeks to contribute to the growing body of feminist scholarship examining post-conflict justice mechanisms, such as war crimes tribunals, truth and reconciliation commissions, transitional/peace agreements, as spaces within which gender norms and identities are defined and reiterated (Kimura 2008;Campbell 2007;Ni Aolain and Rooney 2007;Engle 2005;Ross 2003). While the post-conflict period is often heralded as a richly transformative time in which social and political relations can be reconstituted, this literature has begun mapping how gender identity and relations are often reiterated in conservative ways, particularly through the assessment of gender and sexualised harm.…”

Museum Activism Against Military Sexual Slavery

“…Some say that they are activists themselves. Their narratives about how they survived sexual slavery and how they decided to sue the Japanese state were “the collaborative products” (Kimura :12) of themselves and the activists who supported them. Their subversive agency must have been fully acknowledged by those activists in panel creation.…”

Accounting for silence: Inheritance, debt, and the moral economy of legal redress in China and Japan

“…Within this framework, testimonial practices of breaking silence are often linked to the issue of subject formation. See, for example, Kimura , Park , and Yang and .…”