Realities at the Historical “Turning Point”: A Desire in Discourses after the Great Tohoku Earthquake

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  • 過去の供犠
  • 過去の供犠 : ホモ・ナランスの防衛機制
  • カコ ノ キョウギ : ホモ ・ ナランス ノ ボウエイキセイ
  • ――ホモ・ナランスの防衛機制――

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Abstract

<p>Since 11th March 2011 there have been a flood of discourses which tend to define the Great Tohoku Earthquake as a “turning point” in Japanese history. In spite of the urgent messages in them, those discourses on the whole seem to be working like a monster machine that greedily consumes and processes the tragic event into something else. Of course it is our instinct as homo narrans to arrange things in chronological and narrative order to give them some meaning in a specific historical context. But it is also true that by our discursive power we distort and transform things into what they are not. In this sense language is as destructive as the tsunami. Here I will examine how the realities of the earthquake are covered under the great waves of discourses and then reconsider whether it is possible to express them in language.</p>

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