And then we’re all objects – the living and the dead. There’s no difference.

(95)

As she kneels over Kenji’s dead body, preparing to chop it up, Yoshie summarises for readers one of the central tenets of Natsuo Kirino’s disturbing Out, which is a plot driven by the author’s investigation and critique of life in modern Japan. In this novel, bodies are nothing more than an economic transaction in the world of baccarat clubs, bento-box factories and the bathrooms of your colleague’s house, where you can get your husband chopped up with a sashimi knife for a price.

(Natsuo Kirino for Makoto Watanabe)

The concept of ‘the body’ in the novel is so far removed from the humane that it is possible in Kirino’s imagining of the Tokyo suburbs that anybody can literally be belittled and reduced to nothing more than any other body, some mutilated flesh in a shopping bag in exchange for some 500,000 yen.

The transactions of bodies we see in this text reflect and critique the role they perform as a cog in the wheel of human capitalism in the industrial world of Japan. While reading this text, I felt Michel Foucault’s concept of biopolitics and biopower taking centre stage in how the Japanese culture of industry is illustrated as being powerful and having a central role in the lives and the survival of our characters. These characters work in dire conditions that see them “standing on the cold concrete floor” (Kirino 11) for hours at a time, with “a replacement filling in on the line”  as they run for bathroom breaks. The characters are portrayed as having accepted this as their reality and have assumed a rather docile position in the workplace.

This was the secret to lasting at a place like this without ruining your health.

11

It seems that the factory views its staff as a body of work that makes up one labour force, working as a “team” (Kirino 11) to achieve mass production for low costs. This level of control is reminiscent of what Foucault said in one of his lectures at the Collège de France, that “a … seizure of power … is directed not at man-as-body but at man-as-species … a “biopolitics” of the human race” (Society Must Be Defended 243). Seeing the workers as nothing more than a “species” reduces them to little more than one singular body made valuable through the volume of production that it can achieve.

There’s a transaction at play here: the workers surrender their dignity and their humanity to the machine in exchange for low pay and, arguably, escape from their depressing home lives. The machine, in turn, exploits their ‘humanness’ and, with that, their capabilities to function as one large workforce in order to achieve maximum production.

 Ben Anderson’s idea of “the ‘object-target’” (‘Affect and Biopower’ 28)  is an interesting lens for this text and looking at how the central characters of Out pertain to and adhere to this definition uniquely because of their marginality, highlights the formative role they play in the “contemporary forms of biopower” (29) in industrial Japan. Readers are made starkly aware of how easily reduced human beings can be to a mass of life that is quantified and used as a resource for the state. Human life, as we see it in Out, has “become the ‘object-target’ for specific techniques and technologies of power” (Anderson 28).

In his observation here, Anderson is referring to the concept of biopower, which is slippery in its frustratingly variable definition but broadly translates to the power over life. I find it really intriguing how Kirino’s depiction of biopower and biopolitics does not give a blanket illustration of this control over Japanese lives. Rather, she offers nuanced insights into how biopower is engaged with very marginalised groups like the Brazilian-Japanese population and the four women that are the focal point of the plot.

 … if your husband is white-collar, the wife is blue …

New york times

In an interview with the New York Times, Kirino remarks on how the status of the woman in Japanese society “inevitably remains a rung below” (French, “A Tokyo Novelist Mixes Felonies with Feminism”). It is interesting how Kirino’s writing asks readers to look between the lines here and see how industry in Japan takes advantage of these groups of people who are unable to upskill and are given no alternative but to work in unskilled labour. I believe this is why Masako seems to be given a central role in the novel as Kirino has noted that Masako “is a symbol of Japanese women who cannot be promoted in society … she could not climb the corporate ladder …” (Duncan, ‘Kirino Interview’).

Ultimately, this novel excels in showing its audience how industry in Japan is not only exploitative of human beings as a species, but also of these marginalised groups in society. The four women central to the plot are offered no place to turn to for comfort; their home lives are disastrous, and so I think what Kirino really achieves here is an illustration of how biopower can take real effect over a person’s, or, by extension, a woman’s life in this case and develops into “the ‘real subsumption of life’” (qtd. in Anderson 32).

There seems to be no break between the work life and the domestic in Kirino’s novel and I think this is excellently summarised in Yoshie’s defeatist statement: there really is no difference between the living and the dead in this society; each person is nothing but an object, a part in the machine that further propels the growth and expansion of biopower.

Laoise McWilliams

                                   ‘Who am I? And how can I be that person?’

These two questions form a central motif in Beatty’s 2015 The Sellout sustaining an interrogation into identity throughout the novel. The narrator, Me or Bonbon, is introduced to the soothing nature of the questions by his father a psychologist sent to get a ‘psychotic motherfucker to lower his gun.’ His Father’s voice had ‘a way of relaxing the enraged and allowing them to confront their fears anxiety free.’ Beatty similarly employs a soothing authoritative voice to delve into key issues facing Black Americans in a ‘post-race’ society through his use of humour. By embedding humour into the fabric of the novel Beatty offers a dynamic narrative reflective of multifaceted nature of humans and emphasising societies unwillingness to substantively address race issues. In the prologue of the novel Bonbon on trial in the Supreme court states:

‘Your honour, I plead human.’

His objection to the binary negotiations of guilt instantly shatters ideas of typical human nature. He is neither guilty nor innocent with the simplistic and honest style of language imbuing the scene with a theatricality and humour. Naughton argues that by pleading human Beatty questions ‘the universalist ideal of an ordinary and irreducible humanity underlying and legitimising legal definitions of phrases like “human rights” or “crimes against humanity”.’ What we mean by human and an overarching sense of identity is presented as futile and exclusionary as the terms do not reflect Bonbon’s reality. Furthermore, the typical trappings of identity are stripped of Bonbon as he explains:

‘Like the entire town of Dickens, I was my father’s child, a product of my environment and nothing more. Dickens was me. And I was my father. Problem is they both disappeared from my life, first my dad, and then my hometown, and suddenly I had no idea who I was, and no clue how to become myself.’

The consumptive and encompassing language propels the notion that the grounding features of identity, place and family, are denied Bonbon and the population of Dickens. Markers of home and safety are usurped continually leaving the inhabitants in a state of identity crisis. Who they are is lost and progression doesn’t exist within typical linguistic terms. Beatty has created a framework to allegorise the experience of Black people as ‘notions of human identity itself as universal or unchanging may be recognised as a historical construct constituted by the exclusion, marginalisation and oppression of racial others.’ (Bennet & Royle) If Black identity is not included in universal ideals Beatty is pinpointing the failure of language and the repercussions of a loss of identification and belonging.

As a response to being ‘exiled to the netherworld of invisible L.A communities,’ Bonbon draws a border around the town. Through his diagram on his ‘empowerpoint’ he writes binaries such as:

‘WHITE AMERICA / DICKENS,’ ‘THE HOOD / NO MATTER HOW MANY TIMES REFERRED TO AS THE HOOD – NOT THE HOOD,’ and ‘THE BEST OF TIMES / THE WORST OF TIMES.’

Beatty is pinpointing the essential differences between the black community and the surrounding neighbourhood and deliberately portraying black life as a place in opposition to those around it tapping into stereotypes and tropes created by a white-centric narrative. However, he does so through humour and with a creative playful tactic. Beatty himself asserts that ‘Humour is vengeance’ to satirise or mock the harsh reality is presented as an affective form of rebellion. The essential humour does not distil the seriousness of the content as even Bonbon reflects ‘I was more serious about this than I thought’ and felt that the border invoked an ‘implication of solidarity and community’ even though ‘it was just a line.’ The border offers a space of control and importance, it invokes a sense of belonging which whilst humorous it re-establishes a sense of community. Similar to the relaxing tone Bonbon’s father used to ‘make the client feel important, to feel that he or she is in control of the healing process.’ Bonbon’s border is a psychological tool to help rebuild identity compounded by humour that exemplifies the rage and sense of loss experienced by Bonbon.

At the end of the novel Bonbon reflect that ‘Silence can be either protest or consent, but most of the time it’s fear.’ Whilst throughout the novel Bonbon focuses primarily on external markers of identity such as mottos, borders, and signage he distils fear through the use of humour. The novel concludes with Bonbon explaining:

‘I’ve whispered ‘Racism’ in a post-racial world.’

And in doing so ironically ‘managed to racially discriminate against every race in the world all at the same time.’ The act of whispering correlates with soothing, he exposes the fragility of societal structures and the ideological delicacy of America and the fault lines hindering identity and belonging. In doing so Beatty fulfils Frank Wilderson III’s request for ‘something that celebrates the absoluteness of rage’ yet this rage is presented through calming terms and humour. Beatty reflects on the rage and loss by using his humour as a form of vengeance he writes ‘if an increasingly pluralistic America ever decides to commission a new moto, I’m open for business.’

Bibliography:

Aaron Robertson, The Year Afropessimism Hit the Streets?:A Conversation at the Edge of the World, 27 August 2020

Beatty, Paul. 2016. ‘The Sellout.’ (Germany: Oneworld Publications)

Beatty, Paul. 2008. Hokum: An Anthology of African-American Humor. (United States, Bloomsbury Publishing)

Bennet, Andrew & Royle, Nicholas. 2016. ‘An Introduction To Literature, Criticism and Theory’ (Oxon: Routledge

Gerald David Naughton. 2023 “‘Pleading Human’ in Paul Beatty’s The Sellout”, Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction, 64:3, 443-452, DOI: 10.1080/00111619.2022.2047879

Everyone aboard? Next stop, freedom. Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad cleverly interweaves time and space in a fictional network that reinvents the history of the underground railroad, and the pathways to freedom it provided. The historical basis of this novel nevertheless proves to be in an ambiguous relationship with both past and present as it alternates between historical facts, fantasy and more contemporary influences. Time, as it turns out, is not only defined by sunsets and sunrises or the ticking of a clock. It is shaped by the rhythms and patterns of daily life, by modes of transport and communicative networks. In other words, the relationship we have with the present is partially defined by “the technological apparatuses by which the relationships between speed, time and space are determined.” (Boxall, 3) Only when the overwhelming chaos of the present fades into the past can we reconsider the effects a specific time had on our worldview. Cora faces a similar challenge; her worldview is expanded by her escape journey towards freedom, but it is also disrupted by setbacks and surprises, and it seems that the question of freedom can only be answered in hindsight as well.

History is told through certain narratives that outline our conceptions of the past. The Underground Railroad bases itself on these narratives, but interweaves fact and fiction in such a way that it becomes difficult to discern where one blurs into the other. The suspension of disbelief shies away from the manifestation of a literal underground railroad and towards the violence and cruelty that the characters in the novel have to endure.

Whitehead’s novel features a displacement of time and space to create a narrative framework that encourages self-reflection. Both Cora and the reader are invited to think about the conditions of enslaved people once Cora boards the first underground train. At first, she is unable to imagine any form of freedom at all, as “To escape the boundaries of the plantation was to escape the fundamental principles of your existence: impossible.” (8) Three weeks later, she decides she will attempt the impossible. This decision brings her to the Museum of Natural Wonders, where the life of an enslaved person is curated into a Living History exhibition. The narrative form of Living History museums would not become an exhibition practice until the 1990s, but the displacement of this contemporary element in a novel set in the nineteenth century allows Cora to reflect on her own enslaved reality. (Dubey, 113) Cora searches the crowd for a weak link and stares into their eyes until they break under her gaze. Her micro-rebellion towards the visitors of the museum represents her first stage of freedom. She is no longer contained by the violence of the plantation, but she is still shackled down by a similar narrative in the Museum of Living History.

“Cora stared into her eyes, unwavering and fierce, until the woman broke, fairly running from the glass toward the agricultural section.” (125)

Cora resurfaces in a number of states where she interacts with various forms of freedom. Freedom seems to be at her fingertips in a settlement in South Carolina, until she discovers that the bodily autonomy of former enslaved people is being threatened by government-run medical experiments. Whitehead turns to an aesthetic of anachronisms to create a narrative in which skyscrapers, syphilis experiments, and eugenics form an antihistorical setting that is not so antihistorical after all.

“Postrace fiction employs these new forms of fantasy to reverse the usual course of fantasy, turning it away from latent forms of daydream, delusion and denial, toward the manifold surface features of history.” (Saldívar, 594)

Periodization and historical accuracy become a secondary concern in Whitehead’s novel. Rather, this speculative form of historical fiction seems to dispute the utopian idea that we could currently be living in a post-racial society, when the narratives of our past cannot be delinked from our present. (Dischinger, 85) The tales that have been told to justify slavery are forms of delusion and denial as well, but they nevertheless persisted and harmed. The truth of the past lingers in the present, and Sartre’s analogy that we can only understand the chaos of the present in hindsight, looking over our shoulder in a speeding carriage, seems to be present in the novel as well. (Boxall, 2)

“If you want to see what this nation is all about, I always say, you have to ride the rails. Look outside as you speed through, and you’ll find the true face of America.” (69)

Cora discovers different forms of independence throughout her journey, and her perspective on freedom constantly shifts in hindsight of the events that take place in the novel. The final form of freedom that she discovers is intellectual freedom. Valentine Farm offers Cora a community and an education, which allows her to access stories and ideas previously unavailable to her. The brief respite in this almost utopian community is rudely disrupted by a fire caused by white vigilantes that destroys Valentine Farm and the literary corpus it holds. Once again, Cora is faced with a harsh reality that seizes her individual and intellectual freedom.

“She put miles behind her, put behind her the counterfeit sanctuaries and endless chains, the murder of Valentine farm. There was only the darkness of the tunnel, and somewhere ahead, exit.” (304)

Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad creates a speculative history that opens up an interpretive space in which different forms of freedom are reconsidered in a contemporary novel. Cora’s struggle for freedom remains ambiguous in this narrative as it conflates history and fantasy within the expansive network of the underground railroad. Past and present prove to be inseparable from each other when nation and imagination are tied together in narratives that remember a traumatic past. The question of what it means to be free in the United States can then only be answered in hindsight of a nation that was built on the enslavement of Black people.

Bibliography

Boxall, Peter. Twenty-First-Century Fiction: A Critical Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013.

Dischinger, Matthew. “States of Possibility in Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad.” The Global South 11, no. 1 (2017): 82-99. https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2979/globalsouth.11.1.05.

Dubey, Madhu. “Speculative Fictions of Slavery.” American Literature 82 no. 4 (2010): 779-805.

Dubey, Madhu. “Museumizing Slavery: Living History in Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad.” American Literary History 32, no. 1 (2019): 111-139. https://muse.jhu.edu/article/756506.

Saldívar, Ramón. “Historical Fantasy, Speculative Realism, and Postrace Aesthetics in Contemporary American Fiction.” American Literary History 23, no. 3 (2011): 574-599. https://www.jstor.org/stable/41237456.

Whitehead, Colson. The Underground Railroad. New York: Anchor Books, 2016.