To die a guest at home: on Oh my name,stand and walk on! A posthumous collection of the works of Nakaya Kōkichi |
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| Authors: | Shinjō Ikuo |
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| Institution: | Department of Languages and Cultures, University of Ryukyu, Okinawa |
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| Abstract: | Nakaya Kokichi is a writer whose work illustrates a singular unfolding of intellectual thought in Okinawa under the US military occupation. This article sheds light on the political potential of Nakaya’s thoughts through a close reading of his posthumous collection. In doing so, I pay particular attention to the three aspects of his thought. First, Nakaya’s texts reveal the violent nature of “interpellation” that sustains the system of the US–Japan military alliance. Nakaya’s work exposes the way in which such interpellation at once subject those who live in Okinawa and, therefore, prohibits them from becoming political subjects. Second, Nakaya’s writings critique the politics of Okinawan nationalist identity and seek an alternative political future in the solidarity among non-subjectified bodies. Third, Nakaya’s thoughts suggest a paradoxical possibility of Kakushi, or a death in a foreign land even in one’s own so-call “homeland,” once that helps to resituate Okinawa as an intersection of “refugees,” who remain unable to belong to nation-states, and their “histories that open up laterally.” |
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| Keywords: | Occupation Okinawa interpellation political subject non-subjectivative bodies |
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