Shirin Nezammafi and an Ekkyō Feminist Counterpublic

Transgressing the Boundaries of Reception: Shirin Nezammafi and an Ekkyō Feminist Counterpublic By Eric James Siercks B.A., Lawrence University, 2007 A thesis submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate school of the University of Colorado in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the degree of Master of Arts Department of Asian Languages and Civilizations 2015 This thesis entitled: Transgressing the Boundaries of Reception: Shirin Nezammafi and an Ekkyō Feminist Counterpublic Written by Eric James Siercks has been approved for the Department of Asian Languages and Civilizations _______________________________________ Faye Kleeman _______________________________________ Janice Brown _______________________________________ David Atherton Date __________________________ The final copy of this thesis has been examined by the signatories, and we find both the content and the form meet acceptable presentation standards of scholarly work in the above mentioned discipline. Siercks, Eric James (M.A., Japanese, Department of Asian Languages and Civilizations) Transgressing the Boundaries of Reception: Shirin Nezammafi and an Ekkyō Feminist Counterpublic Thesis directed by Professor Faye Kleeman Abstract This thesis utilizes Michael Warner’s theory of counterpublics to engage with two novellas by Shirin Nezammafi, Salam and White Paper. I critically reconsider the use and reception of ekkyō bungaku 越境文学 (“border-crossing” literature) in contemporary Japanese literary criticism. I intend to shift the critical framework of ekkyō literature away from strictly defined Westphalian nation-state identities, proposing instead a more nuanced view of ekkyō that engages with systemic and societal boundaries that exist beyond the context of national borders. I situate Shirin Nezammafi, Salam, and White Paper within this discourse, positing ways in which she both adheres to and complicates a narrowly defined vision of ekkyō that emerges from national boundaries. iii CONTENTS CHAPTERS INTRODUCTION…………………………………………………………………………………………………1 I. Ekkyō Reception and Shirin Nezammafi’s Counterpublic……………………………5 II. Salam as Ekkyō Feminist Counterpublic…………………………………...……………….30 III. White Paper: Reading Ekkyō Within Hypernational Borders………………………55 CONCLUSION……………………………………………………………………………………………………..87 BIBLIOGRAPHY………………………………………………………………………………………………….89 APPENDIX A. Salam…………………………………………………………………………………………………..………97 B. White Paper………………………………………………………………………………………………..166 iv LIST OF FIGURES FIGURE 1. Contents of “Ekkyō Author Forum” from Tsuchiya Masahiko’s Ekkyō suru bungaku ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………10 FIGURE 2. Examples of hijab, an independent cloth used to cover one’s head ….…....59 FIGURE 3. Examples of chador, a full-length cloak that must be pulled closed ……….60 v Introduction Shirin Nezammafi, Ekkyō Reception, and Feminist Counterpublics This thesis engages with two novellas by Shirin Nezammafi シリン・ネザマフィ, Salam サラム and White Paper 白い紙, in an effort to critically reconsider the use and reception of ekkyō bungaku 越境文学 (“border-crossing” literature) in contemporary Japanese literary criticism. I intend to shift the critical framework of ekkyō literature away from strictly defined Westphalian nation-state identities, proposing instead a more nuanced view of ekkyō that engages with systemic and societal boundaries that exist beyond the context of national borders. In doing so, I expose the fetishization of nationality and native-language within critical reception of ekkyō literature—challenging the existence of a “natural native.” I situate Shirin Nezammafi, Salam, and White Paper within this discourse, positing ways in which she both adheres to and complicates a narrowly defined vision of ekkyō that emerges from national boundaries. By distorting the national framework of ekkyō with the concept of zure ずれ, what I call “misalignment,” I intend to expose the politics of Nezammafi’s texts that go unnoticed in wider critical reception. My approach to uncovering these politics springs largely from Michael Warner’s notion of the “counterpublic.” In this thesis, I deploy counterpublics in a way that simultaneously complicates the Westphalian grammar of nation-states and engages with a feminist political discourse that I recognize in Nezammafi’s writing. I see the politics of Nezammafi’s works surpassing the discourse of border-crossing— where borders between nations appear to be accepted as such—and linguistic 1 performative identity. These two themes have come to dominate the reception of ekkyō texts, and Nezammafi’s works specifically, within a broadly defined literary public. Instead, I focus on the way that gender politics in Salam and White Paper complicate strict borders or boundaries, whether those exist between nation-states or individual human beings. Chapter 1 introduces the critical discourse on ekkyō as it has been established in contemporary Japanese literature, addresses the shortcomings of this approach to border transgression, and drafts a critical framework by which I see ekkyō feminist counterpublics developing in Nezammafi’s texts. I use “literary reception” in this context to mean specifically the responses to Nezammafi’s—and other so-called ekkyō writers—works by literary prize selection committees. I contend that these reviews represent the position of “ekkyō” within the dominant literary discourse as represented by the literary elite. In crafting the framework within which I deploy the concept of the counterpublic, I situate Nezammafi within five essential questions: What is a public? What is a counterpublic? How is Nezammafi’s public “counter”? How is Nezammafi’s counterpublic feminist? How is Nezammafi’s counterpublic ekkyō? Chapter 2 addresses Salam specifically, particularly in the way that it creates an ekkyō feminist counterpublic. I provide a brief synopsis of the text, as well as the historical and cultural context of Afghan refugees in contemporary Japan. I locate the kind of linguistic and cultural hybridity in Salam that can be recognized as stereotypically “ekkyō,” while also demonstrating the ways Salam breaks from a narrow mold of national borders, clear cultural or linguistic identity, and naturally 2 accepted conceptions of citizenship. Stateless refugees complicate the grammar of Westphalian nation-states, national identities, and natural nativeness. Through a careful consideration of the politics of the non-citizen, I identify how Salam problematizes the rhetoric of ekkyō that surrounds the work. Through this approach, I construct a new understanding of the text as a feminist counterpublic that rejects Westphalian deployments of national identity and resists hegemonic, male- dominated contemporary immigration policies. Chapter 3 focuses on White Paper, again deploying an ekkyō feminist counterpublic to demonstrate problems of ekkyō reception, hypernationalization, and the necessarily gendered oppression of a national wartime project. I provide a synopsis of the text, along with relevant historical and cultural background—in this case, I highlight the development of feminism in Iran from the time of the White Revolution to today and the history of the Iran-Iraq war. Expanding on my earlier criticism of ekkyō reception, I demonstrate how White Paper breaks with convention through a narrative focused exclusively outside of contemporary globalized Japan. Nezammafi creates a novella inundated with the hypernationalism of Iran at the moment of war, carefully writing other nations and cultures out of the text. By largely removing national boundaries and transnational hybridity from White Paper, Nezammafi reveals the unseen boundaries that divide and separate humans from each other. It is these boundaries that she then transgresses as an act of ekkyō. Within this new context of border-transgression, I contextualize the politics of White Paper within a feminist counterpublic, exposing the unacknowledged connections 3 between gendered nationalization within hypernational Iran and contemporary Japan. Finally, I conclude with a brief look forward at the ways that I see the concept of counterpublics challenging literary reception within a dominant ekkyō discourse. I also address some ways that my study could be expanded and complicated, as well as how Japanese ekkyō literature itself might expand and complicate our understanding of counterpublics as they are theorized today. 4 Chapter 1 Ekkyō Reception and Shirin Nezammafi’s Counterpublic At the ideographic level, ekkyō 越境 implies surpassing or overcoming (koeru 越える) constructed boundaries or borders (sakai 境). Superficially, ekkyō could be conceptually linked with the English word “transnational.”1 By the Nihon kokugo daijiten 日本国語大辞典 definition, however, ekkyō means: “To cross a border, particularly in the case of entering another country illegally.”2 Thus, “border- transgressing” may be a more accurate English translation of ekkyō, rather than wringing “transnational” from the semantic meanings of the characters in order to fit within a critical discourse contextualized by non-Japanese conceptions of transnational exchange. In this sense, I will be using ekkyō to mean border- transgressing. I believe “borders” in my definition must engage with the societal and cultural boundaries—gender, sexual preference, class, birthplace, etc.—that exist 1 Itself a difficult term to define precisely, “transnational” discourse often emerges from globalization studies that focus on national and global economies. For a broad picture of the transnational turn and the integration

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