Japan, Global History, and the Great Silence

Datos Bibliográficos

ID4493955
AutoresMartin Dusinberre (0000-0001-5151-7796, University of Zurich, autor de correspondencia)
Año2017
Volumen83
Número1
Páginas130-150
Fecha de publicación2017-01-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessNo
TipoARTICLE
RevistaHistory Workshop Journal (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 1363-3554 • E-ISSN: 1477-4569
EditorialOxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1093/hwj/dbx012
OpenAlexW2606115600
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas4
Referencias citadas21

A young Japanese woman called Usa Hashimoto disembarks on Thursday Island, Queensland, in September 1897. Two months later, she briefly recounts her story to a British colonial official. What does her testimony mean for the way we write global history? Who, indeed, are the ‘we’ in global history? This experimental essay, divided into ten parts, revisits the question of ‘silence’ in history in order to argue that structure, form and writing style should be key tools in the struggle to hear voices from the past. Bringing W.G. Sebald, Greg Dening, Minoru Hokari, Julie Otsuka and Virginia Woolf into dialogue with each other, I suggest that global history demands new forms of writing. To illustrate my point, I draw on literary techniques of framing, sequencing, intertextuality and juxtaposition in an attempt to trace what I call the ‘moving first person’ in Hashimoto’s testimony. Whether my particular constellation works or not is for readers to judge; but at the very least, I would be happy if this one experiment also sparked others.

Aesthetics · Art · Art history · Framing (construction) · Intertextuality · Linguistics · Literature · Media studies · Silence · Sociology · TRACE (psycholinguistics) · World history · German Literature and Culture Studies · History · Literature and Cultural Memory · Philosophy · Poetry Analysis and Criticism