Translating Maternal Violence: The Discursive Construction of Maternal Filicide in 1970s Japan (Thinking Gender in Transnational Times) - Softcover

Castellini, Alessandro

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1349711616 ISBN 13: 9781349711611

Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020

Synopsis

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.  

About this title

About the Author

Alessandro Castellini is LSE Fellow in Transnational Gender Studies at the London School of Economics and Political Science, UK. 

From the Back Cover

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.

Edition details

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Publication date: 2020
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1349711616
• ISBN 13: 9781349711611
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 284