著者

飯田 祐子 IIDA Yuko

出版者

名古屋大学大学院人文学研究科附属超域文化社会センター

雑誌

JunCture : 超域的日本文化研究 (ISSN:18844766)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.10, pp.48-63, 2019-03-25

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In this paper, I examine Murata Sayaka’s works with a special focus on the concept of “genderqueer.” Genderqueer is a term born from Transgender theory, which criticizes the gender binary norm. Murata wrote about transgender characters who try to transcend gender, as well as, cisgender women, who deviate from the gender norm in extreme ways. Murata created these people to show her intolerance of the gender binary system, and by doing that, her trials resonate with the concept of genderqueer. In Convenience Store Woman, Murata reveals that “normal” is constructed with the exclusion of the others. Part of her focus is on the family system that she considers to be the most repressive. It is the basis of society and strongly gendered. The protagonist Keiko Furukura escapes from gender norms by identifying herself as a part of a convenience store. Convenience Human, the identity Furukura creates, is an allegorical non-gendered existence. In Murata’s other works, she continues to invent alternative sexuality in order to free sexual desire from the gender system. For instance, she features several types of sex with things practiced by girls, and she extends this idea and describes with enthusiasm having sex with the Earth. Her ideas are in the same direction as post-human or non-human ontology. In her most recent work, Earthian, she seeks a way to survive as an alternative post-human creature. She describes the binary confrontation “normal/abnormal” as “Earthian/alien.” The protagonists survive as aliens in the repressively gendered society, the Earth. In this paper, I demonstrate the concrete gender queerness in order to criticize the binary gender system, through Murata’s works created with her explosive imagination.