What was Zainichi literature? - Intersectionality, incoherence, and 'post-racial' temporalities in Japan
“Zainichi literature,” referring to the literary production of Koreans in Japan, has been a central counter-discourse to the notion of an ethnically, culturally, and linguistically homogenous Japan in the decades since World War II. Recently, however, discussions have begun to emerge as to whether the “end” of Zainichi literature is at hand. This talk will consider the current state of Zainichi literature and the sense of crisis confronting its future by examining the career of (post-)Zainichi writer Yu Miri against a broader landscape of literary taxonomies, language politics, and intersecting hierarchies of race and gender in transnational Japan studies.
Cindi Textor is Assistant Professor of Japanese in the Department of World Languages and Cultures at University of Utah. Her research is grounded in critical and transnational approaches to the study of the Japanese empire and its aftermath, engaging with the illegible and incoherent in literature from Korea, Okinawa, and mainland Japan. Her work has appeared in positions: asia critique, Journal of Korean Studies, and Azalea: Journal of Korean Literature and Culture, and she is currently revising a book manuscript titled Anatomies of Incoherence: Zainichi Literature and the Intersectional Politics of Speech.