Paper short abstract:

I analyze the nexus between language, memory, and materiality in Ogawa Yoko’s The Memory Police. I contend that the novel’s construction of future as one of regress, loss, and deprivation not only aptly critique contemporary politics, but also draws a parallel between corporeality and censorship.

Paper long abstract:

Although initially published in 1994, Ogawa Yōko’s Hisoyakana kesshō (1994) was only translated into English in 2019. It has since garnered not only critical acclaim, but also a newfound sense of relevance to our contemporary moment, characterized by the increased assault on the freedom of speech on the global scale. The story is set in what appears to be a post-catastrophic, secluded island where social existence is pockmarked by the escalating, yet indiscriminate, number of prohibitions. On the one hand, willful participants of the regime help destroy the artefacts, obediently aiding the eponymous memory police. On the other, racialized non-conformists retain the memory of the objects and are forced into hiding to escape persecution. Paradoxically, while prohibited objects are ‘disappeared’, they still exist materially, such as birds, emphasizing the locals’ role in orchestrating the collective amnesia. Rather, the memories and feelings associated with objects lose their meaning, altering the perception of reality. Thus, the future of the society is not associated with the ideas of technological progress and optimism, but rather with regress, loss, and deprivation. In my presentation, I examine the critical nexus between language, memory, and materiality in the novel. Through intertextual interplay with transnational histories of captivity and enforced disappearances, Ogawa’s novel draws critical attention to themes prescient to our time, specifically, the politics of memory, historical revisionism, manipulation of language, and censorship. The novel’s unnamed female protagonist scrambles to retain her agency through writing novels until the novels themselves are disappeared, leading to the inevitable collapse of bodily autonomy. In this way, the story draws a critical juncture between freedom of speech and material reality, pointing to the institutional disciplining of bodies.