{"id":1788,"date":"2025-11-21T15:38:33","date_gmt":"2025-11-21T15:38:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/world\/?p=1788"},"modified":"2025-11-21T15:38:33","modified_gmt":"2025-11-21T15:38:33","slug":"derridian-haunting-the-disillusion-of-maternal-identity-in-japanese-science-fiction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/world\/2025\/11\/derridian-haunting-the-disillusion-of-maternal-identity-in-japanese-science-fiction\/","title":{"rendered":"Derridian Haunting: The Disillusion of Maternal Identity in Japanese Science Fiction"},"content":{"rendered":"

During 20th century Japan, the aftermath of World War II led to sociopolitical instability and growing anxieties about national identity and subjectivity. Raechel Dumas\u2019 article \u201cMonstrous Motherhood and Evolutionary Horror in Contemporary Japanese Science Fiction\u201d explores the idea that motherhood symbolizes a loss of identity between the mother and the child. The framework of motherhood in Japanese science fiction sets up mothers as vessels for forces that exceed or erase the identity of the self. When read alongside Jacques Derrida\u2019s theorization of spectrality and the instability of presence, Dumas\u2019s analysis reveals that the monstrous maternal is not merely a gendered threat but a philosophical challenge to ontological certainty itself.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Dumas uses the <\/span>Parasite Eve<\/span><\/i> to illustrate how the material body transforms and unravels identity. The mother figure Kiyomi experiences dream sequences that describe a \u201cwomb-like warmth\u201d consumes Kiyomi and makes her identity indistinguishable from her parasitic child Eve.\u00b9 This dissolution of the maternal body is a dramatic retelling of Derrida\u2019s concept of hauntology which is the condition in which the present is never whole or self-sufficient but is unsettled and in conflict with what comes before and after it.\u00b2 Kiyomi\u2019s dreams illustrate losing boundaries and becoming inhabited by the parasite Eve. This metamorphosis mirrors Derrida\u2019s claim that identity is always impacted by ghosts or external forces that aren\u2019t fully one\u2019s own. Kiyomi\u2019s maternal body becomes the site where the past overtakes the present, demonstrating Derrida\u2019s assertion that the living present is always \u201cdisjoined\u201d by those who are \u201cno longer or not yet there\u201d.\u00b3 The maternal process creates a disillusion of identity that portrays motherhood as a figure of excess, inseparable from external forces that affect the women themselves.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Derrida\u2019s ideas of logic are clearer in Dumas\u2019s reading of <\/span>Queen of K\u2019n-yan,<\/span><\/i> where the mother is not merely a biological threat but a spectral manifestation of historical trauma. The alien queen in this story is portrayed as a combination of human and alien forms caused by Japanese grotesque wartime crimes. Japan\u2019s imperialist crimes that were \u201cforgotten or culturally repressed\u201d illustrate Derrida\u2019s ideas concerning homogeneity.\u2074 Through the use of the media, societal structures, and academia, Derrida claims that one\u2019s identity is tied to the political and societal structures influential in one\u2019s life.\u2075 Dumas notes that Derrida\u2019s haunting \u201cbelongs to the structure of every hegemony\u201d and the past returns as a monstrous mother whose reproductive excess literalizes the return of the repressed.\u2076 The mother in K\u2019n-yan becomes a hauntological figure who embodies a presence that is never fully present but rather is an unstable identity that refuses containment. K\u2019n-yan\u2019s mother illustrates both biological horror and ontological crisis.\u2077 Overall, motherhood is shown to dissolve identities of bodies, histories, and identities which echoes Derrida\u2019s claim that the self is always already inhabited by others and not the self.<\/span><\/p>\n

Ultimately, through examining Dumas\u2019 reading of Japanese science fiction parallels between motherhood and Derrida\u2019s hauntology becomes obvious. Both <\/span>Parasite Eve<\/span><\/i> and the <\/span>Queen of K\u2019n-yan<\/span><\/i> illustrate how monstrous motherhood illuminates anxiety about identity\u2019s dissolution whether that be personal, familial, or national. <\/span>By reading Dumas’ article this loss of identity through the lens of Derrida, the maternal becomes a site for Japan to be haunted by its own repressed histories and unstable futures.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Raechel Dumas. \u201cMonstrous Motherhood and Evolutionary Horror in Contemporary Japanese Science Fiction.\u201d <\/span>Science Fiction Studies<\/span><\/i> 45, no. 1 (2018): 26-27.<\/span><\/li>\n
  2. Derrida, Jacques. <\/span>Specters of Marx: The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning, and the New International<\/span><\/i>. Translated by Peggy Kamuf, Routledge, 1994.<\/span><\/li>\n
  3. Dumas (n 1) 42.<\/span><\/li>\n
  4. Ibid.<\/span><\/li>\n
  5. Derrida, Jacques, and Bernard Stiegler. \u201cSpectographies.\u201d <\/span>The Spectralities Reader: Ghosts and Haunting in Contemporary Cultural Theory<\/span><\/i>, edited by Mar\u00eda del Pilar Blanco and Esther Peeren, Bloomsbury, 2013, pp. 37\u201352.<\/span><\/li>\n
  6. Dumas (n 1) 41.<\/span><\/li>\n
  7. Ibid. 43.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    During 20th century Japan, the aftermath of World War II led to sociopolitical instability and growing anxieties about national identity and subjectivity. Raechel Dumas\u2019 article \u201cMonstrous Motherhood and Evolutionary Horror in Contemporary Japanese Science Fiction\u201d explores the idea that motherhood symbolizes a loss of identity between the mother and the child. The framework of motherhood … Continue reading “Derridian Haunting: The Disillusion of Maternal Identity in Japanese Science Fiction”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":61,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1788","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/world\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1788","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/world\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/world\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/world\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/61"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/world\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1788"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/world\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1788\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1789,"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/world\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1788\/revisions\/1789"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/world\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1788"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/world\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1788"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/world\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1788"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}