The Lure of Community in Tanin no kao
The Lure of Community in Tanin no kao
This chapter provides a reading of Abe’s 1964 novel Tanin no kao through focus on the notion of community. In its traditional determination, community presupposes that identity and difference be conceived as oppositional. For example, the collective identity that grounds communal existence in one case is typically seen as constitutive of its difference from other cases. Abe’s dissatisfaction with this understanding finds expression in his attempt to think communal formation on the basis of contingency. What this means, among other things, is that no community can exist as simply given. Here the identity required to form community conceals an even deeper level of identification, and this demands that attention now be directed to the question of ideology.
Keywords: Abe Kōbō, Japanese literature, race, nationalism, Korean residents of Japan
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