Translating Maternal Violence [electronic resource] : The Discursive Construction of Maternal Filicide in 1970s Japan /
Castellini, Alessandro.author.
This book provides the first full-length, English-language investigation of the multiple and often contradictory ways in which mothers who kill their children were portrayed in 1970s Japan. It offers a snapshot of a historical and social moment when motherhood was being renegotiated, and maternal violence was disrupting norms of acceptable maternal behaviour. Drawing on a wide range of original archival materials, it explores three discursive sites where the image of the murderous mother assumed a distinctive visibility: media coverage of cases of maternal filicide; the rhetoric of a newly emerging women's liberation movement known as ūman ribu; and fictional works by the Japanese writer Takahashi Takako. Using translation as a theoretical tool to decentre the West as the origin of (feminist) theorizations of the maternal, it enables a transnational dialogue for imagining mothers' potential for violence. This thought-provoking work will appeal to scholars of feminist theory, cultural studies and Japanese studies.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Introduction -- Chapter 1 -- Filicide in the media: news coverage of mothers who kill in 1970s Japan -- Chapter 2. The Women's Liberation Movement in 1970s Japan -- Chapter 3. Contested meanings: mothers who kill and the rhetoric of ūman ribu -- Chapter 4. Filicide and maternal animosity in Takahashi Takako's early fiction -- Conclusion. .
This book provides the first full-length, English-language investigation of the multiple and often contradictory ways in which mothers who kill their children were portrayed in 1970s Japan. It offers a snapshot of a historical and social moment when motherhood was being renegotiated, and maternal violence was disrupting norms of acceptable maternal behaviour. Drawing on a wide range of original archival materials, it explores three discursive sites where the image of the murderous mother assumed a distinctive visibility: media coverage of cases of maternal filicide; the rhetoric of a newly emerging women's liberation movement known as ūman ribu; and fictional works by the Japanese writer Takahashi Takako. Using translation as a theoretical tool to decentre the West as the origin of (feminist) theorizations of the maternal, it enables a transnational dialogue for imagining mothers' potential for violence. This thought-provoking work will appeal to scholars of feminist theory, cultural studies and Japanese studies.
Sociology.
Crime-Sociological aspects.
Feminist theory.
Ethnology-Asia.
Literature-Translations.
Oriental literature.
Gender Studies.
Crime and Society.
Feminism.
Asian Culture.
Translation Studies.
Asian Literature.