The Memory Police: Rehashing the Image of Totalitarianism or Intentionally Anachronistic Writing?

Ana Došen

doi:10.25038/am.v0i28.604

Authors

Ana Došen Faculty of Media and Communications, Singidunum University, Belgrade Serbia

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.25038/am.v0i28.604

Keywords:

The Memory Police; totalitarianism; Yoko Ogawa; dystopic fiction; anachronism.

Abstract

Literary images, followed by their visual interpretation in diverse film adaptations have effective impact of reinforcing the “knowledge” about certain political ideologies. The cultural representation of fascism and totalitarianism seems to be reductively limited to its repetitive features of definite suppression of freedom and brutal control. Yoko Ogawa’s dystopian novel The Memory Police (1994) depicts the state of affairs of a novelist on an unnamed island where inhabitants are subjugated to oppressive regime of the Memory Police enabling the total amnesia of all the objects disappearing from everyday life. My intention is to explore whether Ogawa’s literary images challenge or underpin the previously established imagery of existing power structures. Further, I will discuss the notion of anachronism both as motif and (intended) literary approach. This novel is also analyzed through its allegory about the future perspective of the written word in the indifferent and oblivious world.

Author Biography

Ana Došen, Faculty of Media and Communications, Singidunum University, Belgrade Serbia

Ana Došen (1981), PhD., is an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Media and Communications, Singidunum University (Belgrade, Serbia), where she teaches media theory, East Asian cinema, and Japanese art and culture. She holds a PhD in Arts and Media Theory from Singidunum University. She has published articles in the fields of literature, media, film and cultural studies.

References

Asman, Alaida. “O metaforici sećanja.” Reč – Časopis za književnost i kulturu, i društvena pitanja, 56, 2 (1999): 121–35.

Barthes, Roland. Image-Music-Text. New York: Fontana Press. 1977.

Foong, Soon Seng and Chandran, Gheeta. “(Re)Imagining ‘Dystopian Space’: Memory and Trauma in Yoko Ogawa’s The Memory Police.” Southeast Asian Review of English 57, 1 (July 2020): 100–22.

Imanaka, Tsugimaro. “Fuashizumu undō ron.” In Imanaka Tsugimaro seijigaku ronshū, edited by Tanaka Hiroshi et al., Tokyo: Ochanomizu Shobō, 1981.

Jameson, Frederic. American Utopia: Dual Power and the Universal Army. London, New York: Verso, 2016.

Kumar, Sunil and Singh, Ravinder. “Suppression of Memory as Totalitarian Strategy: A Critique of Yoko Ogawa’s The Memory Police.” Literary Voice 2, 1 (January 2024): 111–19.

McManus, Patricia. Critical theory and Dystopia. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2022.

Ogawa, Yoko. The Memory Police. Translated by Stephen Snyder. New York: Pantheon Books, 2019.

Ovejero, José. L’éthique de la cruauté. Translated by Jean-Claude Villegas. Orbis Tertius, 2015.

Prasol, Eugenia. “Trauma Through Dystopian Distortions of Memory: Ogawa Yoko’s The Memory Police.” Journal of East-West Thought 14, 2 (2024): 47–60.

Rancière, Jacques. “The Concept of Anachronism and the Historian's Truth (English translation).” In/Print 3, 1 (June 2015): 22–52.

Tache, Lavinia. “Objects Reconfiguring the Present and the Presence. Routes of Displacement for Humans: Yoko Ogawa, Han Kang, Olga Tokarczuk.” Metacritic Journal for Comparative Studies and Theory 7, 1 (2021): 246–60.

The Memory Police: Rehashing the Image of Totalitarianism or Intentionally Anachronistic Writing?

Authors

DOI:

Keywords:

Abstract

Author Biography

Ana Došen, Faculty of Media and Communications, Singidunum University, Belgrade Serbia

References

Downloads

Published

How to Cite

Issue

Section

License