著者
FLORES Linda
出版者
International Research Center for Japanese Studies
雑誌
Japan review : Journal of the International Research Center for Japanese Studies (ISSN:09150986)
巻号頁・発行日
vol.31, pp.141-169, 2017

This article examines Furukawa Hideo’s Umatachi yo, soredemo hikari wa muku de (Horses, Horses, in the End the Light Remains Pure) and Kawakami Hiromi’s “Kamisama 2011” (God Bless You, 2011), two 3.11 narratives that employ intertextuality to construct radical counter-narratives to trauma. As rewritings of earlier source texts by the respective authors, these intertextual narratives draw the reader into a dynamic relationship with the text, creating a subject position for the reader that is fluid and unsettled. As in the Barthesian “writerly text,” the reader becomes engaged not only in the consumption of the meaning of the text, but also in the very production of meaning. With Kawakami’s “Kamisama 2011” this occurs primarily through the use of language in the text; with Furukawa’s Horses, Horses this takes place through the necessary act of assembling the fragmented pieces of the narrative. This article explores how Kawakami and Furukawa employ intertextuality to represent hallmark trauma narratives that also function as counter-narratives to trauma through their engagement of the reader. These intertextual 3.11 narratives serve as examples of the Barthesian “writerly” text but simultaneously disrupt this aspect of Barthes’s narrative theory by placing emphasis on how the reader is actively implicated in the production of meaning of the text, and how this is contingent on the shared historical, temporal, and sociocultural experience or knowledge of trauma.