Academia.edu no longer supports Internet Explorer.
To browse Academia.edu and the wider internet faster and more securely, please take a few seconds to upgrade your browser.
2020, What's Worth Reading
The everyday, made strange.
From the start of her career, contemporary Japanese writer Murata Sayaka 1 has been writing novels that dismantle the existing politics of gender, family and sexuality through stories set in dystopian or surrealistic worlds. In Satsujin shussan (The Birth Murder) she depicts a society in which a person can kill another if s/he gives birth to other ten. Women are given a contraceptive implant at the time of their first menstruation, sex is conceived as an act of lust, and pregnancy occurs exclusively by assisted fertilization and is also possible for men through the use of artificial uteri. This paper proposes a textual analysis, arguing how Murata creates a feminist " reproductive eutopian dystopia " and breaks both the concept of reproductive body as exclusive to females and the concepts of pregnancy and motherhood. The novel will be explored from a feminist perspective.
Kervan vol. 24. n.2
No Sex and the Paradise City - A critical reading of Murata Sayaka's Shōmetsu sekai 消滅世界 (2015) (Abstract and Bibliography; Full Paper Link in Abstract)2020 •
A critical reading of Murata Sayaka's Shōmetsu sekai 消滅世界 (2015) Anna Specchio Full paper available at: https://www.ojs.unito.it/index.php/kervan/article/view/5060 Murata Sayaka is a controversial story writer who questions Japanese current values of love, sex, and the nuclear family, pivoting on issues like gender and power. In her novel Shōmetsu sekai (Dwindling World, 2015), she depicts a parallel Japan where sex has disappeared, and modern birth control technology is used by the population. Thus, the novel has been labelled as dystopic, and Murata's readers think of her literary world as disturbing. In the Shōmetsu sekai scenario, gender-based social differences disappear for the community wellbeing, and the new biotechnology is used to improve social conditions. Therefore, should it be considered simply a dystopian work of fiction? By approaching the text from the perspective of gender, feminist and posthuman studies, and contextualizing it within Japanese society and Murata Sayaka's literary framework, I argue that it is possible to consider Shōmetsu sekai as an example of utopic feminist (or LGBTQ+) work of fiction and that the neutralisation of sex as we know it today should be intended as a means of social improvement.
Guerriere dal Sol Levante - Edizioni Yoshin Ryu
(IT & ENG) Armate di penna e coraggio. Le scrittrici del Giappone moderno e contemporaneo e le battaglie per l’affermazione di nuove soggettività plurali (in "Guerriere dal Sol Levante", Edizioni Yoshin Ryu, Torino, 2019, pp. 102-115).2019 •
(The paper is written in Italian and traslated in English by Deidre Corrignam as the politics of the volume wanted) Kirino Natsuo, Hayashi Mariko, Kawakami Hiromi, Matsuura Rieko, Uchida Shungicu, Taguchi Randy, Tawada Yōko, Miyabe Miyuki, Ogawa Yōko, Ekuni Kaori, Yoshimoto Banana, Kakuta Mitsuyo, Sakuraba Kazuki, Kashimada Maki, Kawakami Mieko, Murata Sayaka, Kanehara Hitomi, Wataya Risa: sono solo alcune delle scrittrici giapponesi tradotte e in procinto di essere tradotte in Italia, a dimostrazione della grande popolarità della narrativa contemporanea femminile che arriva dal Sol Levante. Quando si parla di letteratura giapponese oggi, infatti, risulta assai difficile discuterne senza prendere in considerazione le numerose autrici il cui insieme di opere costituisce il corpus denominato “letteratura femminile”.... - Il presente contributo intende esplorare le dinamiche di integrazione ed esclusione che hanno portato in epoca contemporanea all'affermazione di nuove soggettività femminili in letteratura e alla decostruzione dell'etichetta discriminatoria "joryū sakka".
In the aftermath of the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), many Chinese writers felt that their culture was rootless: the Cultural Revolution denounced traditional culture as corrupting and counter-revolutionary, and the new move towards Westernization in the 1980s further threatened traditional and folk cultures. These authors sought the roots of Chinese cultural identity in rural and peripheral cultures, and called themselves "Xungen" or "roots-seeking." Although theses authors looked into China's myths and memories to find the origins of Chinese cultural identity, they also looked to Latin American Magical Realism for inspiration; there is a deep kinship between Magical Realism and Xungen, and both movements are part of a larger cross-cultural literary dialogue that spans continents and centuries.
2008 •
2009 •
Journal of Asian Studies
Murakami Haruki in Greater China: Creative Responses and the Quest for Cosmopolitanism (Journal of Asian Studies)2009 •
THE BSFA Review Issue 6
Review of Archaeogaming: An Introduction to Archaeology in and of Video Games by Andrew Reinhard2019 •
2019 •
2016 •
The Global Novel and Capitalism in Crisis - Contemporary Literary Narratives
Aesthetic Attitudes to Globalisation: Rana Dasgupta, Capitalism-in-Crisis, and Narrating the World2020 •
Rethinking Modern Japanese Feminisms
Dangerous Women and Dangerous Stories: Gendered Narration in Kirino Natsuo’s Grotesque and Real World2018 •
2007 •
Doctoral Dissertation (2008)
The Art of Seduction and Affect Economy: Neoliberal Class Struggle and Gender Politics In a Tokyo Host Club (2008)2008 •
Orbis Litterarum
"The new children of the earth" Posthuman dystopia or a lesbian's dream in Larissa Lai's Salt Fish Girl2018 •
LangLit: An International Peer-Reviewed Open Access Journal” (ISSN: 2349-5189)
Soft copy of Langlit Special Issue of “Two-Day International Web Conference on The Role of Literature in the Time of Crisis Like Coronavirus Pandemic”2020 •
Irish Journal of Gothic and Horror Studies, #12
Roger Luckhurst, The Mummy’s Curse: The True History of a Dark Fantasy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013)2013 •
Literatures of Liberalization: Global Circulation and the Long Nineteenth Century
Literatures of Liberalization N E W C O M P A R IS O N S IN W O R L D L IT E R A TU R E Global Circulation and the Long Nineteenth Century2018 •
Southwest Popular/American Culture Association 41th Annual Conference 2020
Chunningg Guo's English Paper Selected by Southwest Popular/American Culture Association 41th Annual Conference 20202020 •
The Lion and the Unicorn
Is There a Text In This Advertising Campaign?: Literature, Marketing, and Harry Potter2005 •
Self, Sages, and Ages
Self and Space in After-Postmodernism: Latife Tekin's Manves City and Jenni Fagan's The Panopticon2020 •
US-Japan Women’s Journal, 43
BL Literacy: Subversion, Resuscitation, and Transformation of the (Father’s) Text2012 •
2011 •
2020 •