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Race, Ethnicity and Post-Colonial Studies

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University of Puget Sound

Narrative

Articles 1 - 2 of 2

Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

Aesthetics, Ethics, And Narratives Of Race In The Bombings Of Hiroshima And Nagasaki, Cody Chun Nov 2016

Aesthetics, Ethics, And Narratives Of Race In The Bombings Of Hiroshima And Nagasaki, Cody Chun

Race and Pedagogy Journal: Teaching and Learning for Justice

I argue that American anti-Japanese racism enabled the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. American narratives of race fostered antipathy toward the Japanese to the extent that the Japanese became expendable. The accumulation of an increasingly racist anti-Japanese popular aesthetic, which took the form of textual, visual, musical, and filmic propaganda, resulted in the animalization and, subsequent, dehumanization of the Japanese people. This dehumanization allowed for the “ethical” bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki for diplomatic advantage with Russia. I conclude that the aesthetic, and its accumulation, possesses the ethical power to condition genocide and that America’s dehumanizing aesthetic narratives of the …


Through The Looking-Glass: Conceptualizing Narratives Of Race As Mimetic Non-Narratives, Cody Chun Mar 2016

Through The Looking-Glass: Conceptualizing Narratives Of Race As Mimetic Non-Narratives, Cody Chun

Race and Pedagogy Journal: Teaching and Learning for Justice

I frame a discussion of narrative based on its position between mimetic and diegetic poles. I argue that narratives of race are mimetic non-narratives in the sense that they attempt to narrate (false) realities of race and racial difference without acknowledging their narrativity. I examine various narratives of race and the ways in which they perpetuate ideas of race and racial difference. I end by looking at the relationship between narrative and reality and by suggesting that, given their ability to narrate meaningful realities, mimetic non-narratives can narrate a “reality” more reflective of the unreality of race and racial inequality.