Remnants of American Justice: Okinawa's Transpacific Critique and the Post-1990s Redress Culture Lisa Yoneyama University of Toronto
Department: Asian American Studies
Date and Time: November 28, 2017 | 5:00 PM-7:00 PMEvent Location: TBA
Event Details
Remnants of American Justice:
Okinawa’s Transpacific Critique and the Post-1990s Redress Culture
Lisa Yoneyama
University of Toronto
Abstract
The U.S.-mediated post-conflict justice in the aftermath of the Asia-Pacific War has not only rendered certain violences illegible and unredressable. It also left many colonial legacies intact. In Cold War Ruins: Transpacific Critique of American Justice and Japanese War Crimes (Duke University Press, 2016), I argued that, much more than a product of the state policies capitalizing on the anti-Japanese sentiments or the ethnonational identity politics of distant nationalism seeking recognition in North America, the transnational efforts especially intensifying since the1990s to bring justice to the victims of Japanese imperial violence must be seen as a trace of failed justice—in particular, the failure of decolonization—under the Cold War. Once read conjunctively across the seemingly discrepant national, gendered, racialized, (neo)colonial, and other geographies, the post-1990s redress culture reveals the disavowed history of violence, complicity, and other problematic Cold War legacies. In my presentation, I will offer a transpacific critique of the memories of militarized violence and occupation in Okinawa to consider an alternative idea of justice that may move us beyond the Cold War knowledge formations and its structuring effects.